He became an habitual attendant at the House of Lords, and, while it was sitting, he usually appeared in the Library about an hour before the House met. He took a very lively interest in what was going on, examining new books, and making a thousand suggestions. If the Lords' Library contains to-day one of the most complete collections of Latin and Greek literature in the country, this is largely due to the zeal of Lord Cromer, who was always egging me on to the purchase of fresh rarities. He was indefatigable in kindness, sending me booksellers' catalogues in which curious texts were recorded, and scouring even Paris and Leipzig in our behalf. When I entered into this sport so heartily as to provide the Greek and Latin Fathers also for their Lordships, Lord Cromer became unsympathetic. He had no interest whatever in Origen or Tertullian, and I think it rather annoyed him to recall that several of these oracles of the early Church had written in Greek. Nothing in history or philosophy or poetry which the ancient world had handed down to us came amiss to Lord Cromer, but I think he considered it rather impertinent of the Fathers to have presumed to use the language of Attica. He had not an ecclesiastical mind. Lord Cromer's familiar preoccupation with the classics was a point in his mental habits which deserves particular attention. I have always supposed that he inherited it from his mother, the Hon. Mrs. Baring, who was a Windham. She was a woman of learning; and she is said to have discomfited Sir William Harcourt at a dinner-table by quoting Lucan in direct disproof of a statement about the Druids which he had been rash enough to advance. She sang the odes of Anacreon to her son in his infancy, and we may conjecture that she sowed in his bosom the seeds of his love of antiquity. Lord Cromer made no pretension to be what is called an "exact" scholar, but I think it is a mistake to say, as has been alleged, that he did not take up the study of Latin and Greek until middle life. It is true that he enjoyed no species of university training, but passed from Woolwich straight into the diplomatic service. In 1861, at the age of twenty, he was appointed A.D.C. to Sir Henry Storks in the Ionian Islands, and I believe that one of the first things he did was to look about for an instructor in ancient Greek. He found one in a certain Levantine in Corfu, whose name was Romano, and their studies opened with the odes of Anacreon. Whether this was a coincidence, or a compliment to Mrs. Baring, I do not know. This is a rather different account from what Lord Cromer gave in the preface to his _Paraphrases_, but I report it on his own later authority.