son. I doubt if this thesis has much body in it. He was for
Shelley as the most musical of all our poets. I told him that I had once
asked M. to get Tennyson to write an autograph line for a friend of mine,
and Tennyson had sent this:--

"Coldly on the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day."

So I suppose the poet must think well of it himself. 'Tis (M173) from the
second _Locksley Hall_, and describes a man after passions have gone cool.

_Mr. G._--Yes, in melody, in the picturesque, and as apt simile, a fine
line.

Had been trying his hand at a translation of his favourite lines of
Penelope about Odysseus. Said that, of course, you could translate similes
and set passages, but to translate Homer as a whole, impossible. He was
inclined, when all is said, to think Scott the nearest approach to a
model.

_Monday, Jan. 4._--At luncheon, Mr. Gladstone recalled the well-known story
of Talleyrand on the death of Napoleon. The news was brought when T.
chanced to be dining with Wellington. "Quel evenement!" they all cried.
"Non, ce n'est pas un evenement," said Talleyrand, "c'est une
nouvelle"--'Tis no event, 'tis a piece of news. "Imagine such a way," said
Mr. G., "of taking the disappearance of that colossal man! Compare it with
the opening of Manzoni's ode, which makes the whole earth stand still. Yet
both points of view are right. In one sense, the giant's death was only
news; in another, when we think of his history, it was enough to shake the
world." At the moment, he could not recall Manzoni's words, but at dinner
he told me that he had succeeded in piecing them together, and after
dinner he went to his room and wrote them down for me on a piece of paper.
Curiously enough, he could not recall the passage in his own splendid
translation.(295)

Talk about handsome men of the past; Sidney Herbert one of the handsomest
and most attractive. But the Duke of Hamilton bore away the palm, as
glorious as a Greek god. "One day in Rotten Row, I said this to the
Duchess of C. She set up James Hope-Scott against my Duke. No doubt he had
an intellectual element which the Duke lacked." Then we discussed the
best-looking man in the H. of C. to-day....

_Duke of Wellington._--Somebody was expatiating on the incomparable
position of the Duke; his popularity with kings, with nobles, with common
people. Mr. G. remembered that immediately after the formation of
Canning's government in 1827, when it was generally thought t