storm-god that rules o'er the broad Adriatic
Is mightier its billows to rouse or to calm.

"What form, or what pathway of death him affrighted
Who faced with dry eyes monsters swimming the deep,
Who gazed without fear on the storm-swollen billows,
And the lightning-scarred rocks, grim with death on the shore?"

In reviewing the work of the year 1874, he writes: "So far as individual
work is concerned, I have done something to keep alive my tastes and
habits. For example, since I left you I have made a somewhat thorough
study of Goethe and his epoch, and have sought to build up in my mind a
picture of the state of literature and art in Europe, at the period when
Goethe began to work, and the state when he died. I have grouped the
various poets into order, so as to preserve memoirs of the impression
made upon my mind by the whole. The sketch covers nearly sixty pages of
manuscript. I think some work of this kind, outside the track of one's
every-day work, is necessary to keep up real growth."

In July, 1875, he gives a list of works that he had read recently. Among
these are several plays of Shakespeare, seven volumes of Froude's
England, and a portion of Green's "History of the English People." He
did not limit himself to English studies, but entered the realms of
French and German literature, having made himself acquainted with both
these languages. He made large and constant use of the Library of
Congress. Probably none of his political associates made as much, with
the exception of Charles Sumner.

Major Bundy gives some interesting details as to his method of work,
which I quote: "In all his official, professional, and literary work,
Garfield has pursued a system that has enabled him to accumulate, on a
vast range and variety of subjects, an amount of easily available
information such as no one else has shown the possession of by its use.
His house at Washington is a workshop, in which the tools are always
kept within immediate reach. Although books overrun his house from top
to bottom, his library contains the working material on which he mainly
depends. And the amount of material is enormous. Large numbers of
scrap-books that have been accumulating for over twenty years, in number
and in value--made up with an eye to what either is, or may become,
useful, which would render the collection of priceless value to the
library of any first-class newspaper establishment--are so perfectly
arranged and index