any a time seen him in London and at Hawarden
not far from trivial. But here at Biarritz all is appropriate, and though,
as I say, he can be playful and gay as youth, he cannot resist rising in
an instant to the general point of view--to grasp the elemental
considerations of character, history, belief, conduct, affairs. There he
is at home, there he is most himself. I never knew anybody less guilty of
the tiresome sin of arguing for victory. It is not his knowledge that
attracts; it is not his ethical tests and standards; it is not that
dialectical strength of arm which, as Mark Pattison said of him, could
twist a bar of iron to its purpose. It is the combination of these with
elevation, with true sincerity, with extraordinary mental force.

_Sunday, Jan. 3._--Vauvenargues is right when he says that to carry through
great undertakings, one must act as though one could never die. My
wonderful companion is a wonderful illustration. He is like M. Angelo,
who, just before he died on the very edge of ninety, made an allegorical
figure, and inscribed upon it, _ancora impara_, "still learning."

At dinner he showed in full force.

(M172) _Heroes of the Old Testament._--He could not honestly say that he
thought there was any figure in the O. T. comparable to the heroes of
Homer. Moses was a fine fellow. But the others were of secondary
quality--not great high personages, of commanding nature.

_Thinkers._--Rather an absurd word--to call a man a thinker (and he repeated
the word with gay mockery in his tone). When did it come into use? Not
until quite our own times, eh? I said, I believed both Hobbes and Locke
spoke of thinkers, and was pretty sure that _penseur_, as in _libre
penseur_, had established itself in the last century. [Quite true;
Voltaire used it, but it was not common.]

_Dr. Arnold._--A high, large, impressive figure--perhaps more important by
his character and personality than his actual work. I mentioned M. A.'s
poem on his father, _Rugby Chapel_, with admiration. Rather to my
surprise, Mr. G. knew the poem well, and shared my admiration to the full.
This brought us on to poetry generally, and he expatiated with much
eloquence and sincerity for the rest of the talk. The wonderful continuity
of fine poetry in England for five whole centuries, stretching from
Chaucer to Tennyson, always a proof to his mind of the soundness, the sap,
and the vitality of our nation and its character. What people, beginning
with