A kind and discreet priest, at Avignon, talked to Kenelm in the same sense, reminding him of the saying of St. Francis of Sales, "that scruples are the worst things in the world except sin." Kenelm's mind recovered its wonted cheerfulness and activity: family affections, change of scene, and new occupations soon completed what good advice had begun. He was yet too young to enter into society: he laboured to perfect himself in the French language; he was delighted with drawing, declaring that, were it consistent with duty, he could pass the whole day in that amusement. He continued his classical studies from the point at which they had been interrupted by his leaving college, where he was in his fifth or poetical year. I read with him Homer and Virgil. Of the Iliad he said, that, a few well-known sublime passages excepted, the rest, was vulgar: and when I mouthed forth the Greek, in order to impose on him the conviction that it was very fine,--"I grant you that Homer has the advantage of a sonorous language and the hexameter line; but there is very little grace in the expression, nor is the thought deserving of it." He admired the delicacy of sentiment in the Æneid: he discovered in it traces of more advanced civilization and more improved knowledge than are to be found in Homer, as well as a more correct and refined taste. I recommended the Odyssey to him, not only on account of its varied fable and "specious wonders," but for the justness with which human character and natural feeling are there rendered. We also read together that Machiavel of historians, Tacitus, who, as I endeavoured to persuade Kenelm, has treated the fame of Tiberius with great injustice, by representing him, on every occasion, as a cunning and cruel tyrant; whereas he was always wise, habitually just, and often beneficent. Let any one fairly and impartially analyse the actions of this sovereign and the comments of the historian, and he will perhaps be inclined to allow that my opinion is not altogether unreasonable. Concerning the personal vices of Tiberius there is here no question.