t me as if he thought
me a very wicked fellow; and, I dare say, has by this time discovered
that, if you write my name in Tamul, leaving out T in Thomas, B
in Babington, and M in Macaulay, it will give the number of this
unfortunate Beast.

I am very comfortable here. The Governor-General is the frankest and
best-natured of men. The chief functionaries, who have attended him
hither, are clever people, but not exactly on a par as to general
attainments with the society to which I belonged in London. I thought,
however, even at Madras, that I could have formed a very agreeable
circle of acquaintance; and I am assured that at Calcutta I shall find
things far better. After all, the best rule in all parts of the world,
as in London itself, is to be independent of other men's minds. My power
of finding amusement without companions was pretty well tried on my
voyage. I read insatiably; the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil, Horace,
Caesar's Commentaries, Bacon de Augmentis, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto,
Tasso, Don Quixote, Gibbon's Rome, Mill's India, all the seventy volumes
of Voltaire, Sismondi's History of France, and the seven thick folios of
the Biographia Britannica. I found my Greek and Latin in good condition
enough. I liked the Iliad a little less, and the Odyssey a great deal
more than formerly. Horace charmed me more than ever; Virgil not quite
so much as he used to do. The want of human character, the poverty of
his supernatural machinery, struck me very strongly. Can anything be so
bad as the living bush which bleeds and talks, or the Harpies who
befoul Aeneas's dinner? It is as extravagant as Ariosto, and as dull
as Wilkie's Epigoniad. The last six books, which Virgil had not fully
corrected, pleased me better than the first six. I like him best on
Italian ground. I like his localities; his national enthusiasm; his
frequent allusions to his country, its history, its antiquities, and
its greatness. In this respect he often reminded me of Sir Walter Scott,
with whom, in the general character of his mind, he had very little
affinity. The Georgics pleased me better; the Eclogues best,--the second
and tenth above all. But I think the finest lines in the Latin language
are those five which begin,

"Sepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala--"

[Eclogue viii. 37.]

I cannot tell you how they struck me. I was amused to find that Voltaire
pronounces that passage to be the finest in Virgil.

I liked the Jerusalem better than I u