dinner he asked me whether I had made up my mind on the burning
question of compulsory Greek for a university degree. I said, No, that as
then advised I was half inclined to be against compulsory Greek, but it is
so important that I would not decide before I was obliged. "So with me,"
he said, "the question is one with many subtle and deep-reaching
consequences." He dwelt on the folly of striking Italian out of the course
of modern education, thus cutting European history in two, and setting an
artificial gulf between the ancient and modern worlds.

_Saturday, Jan. 2._--Superb morning, and all the better for being much
cooler. At breakfast somebody started the idle topic of quill pens. When
they came to the length of time that so-and-so made a quill serve, "De
Retz," said I, "made up his mind that Cardinal Chigi was a poor creature,
_maximus in minimis_, because at their first interview Chigi boasted that
he had used one pen for three years." That recalled another saying of
Retz's about Cromwell's famous dictum, that nobody goes so far as the man
who does not know where he is going. Mr. G. gave his deep and eager Ah! to
this. He could not recall that Cromwell had produced many dicta of such
quality. "I don't love him, but he was a mighty big fellow. But he was
intolerant. He was intolerant of the episcopalians."

_Mr. G._--Do you know whom I find the most tolerant churchman of that time?
_Laud!_ Laud got Davenant made Bishop of Salisbury, and he zealously
befriended Chillingworth and Hales. (There was some other case, which I
forget.)

_The execution of Charles._--I told him of Gardiner's new volume which I
had just been reading. "Charles," he said, "was no doubt a dreadful liar;
Cromwell perhaps did not always tell the truth; Elizabeth was a tremendous
liar."

_J. M._--Charles was not wholly inexcusable, being what he was, for
thinking that he had a good game in his hands, by playing off the
parliament against the army, etc.

_Mr. G._--There was less excuse for cutting off his head than in the case
of poor Louis XVI., for Louis was the excuse for foreign invasion.

(M171) _J. M._--Could you call foreign invasion the intervention of the
Scotch?

_Mr. G._--Well, not quite. I suppose it is certain that it was Cromwell who
cut off Charles's head? Not one in a hundred in the nation desired it.

_J. M._--No, nor one in twenty in the parliament. But then, ninety-nine in
a hundred in the army.

In the afternoon we a