"This new object in life gives me huge pleasure. Of course, I knew the catch quotations in Dante, but I never before attempted to read him. The difficulty scared me." Now, on the contrary, the difficulty was an attraction. He worked away for hours at a time, braving the monotonies of the _Purgatorio_ without flagging, but he broke down early in the _Paradiso_. He had no sympathy whatever with what is mystic and spiritual, and he was extremely bored by the Beatific Vision and the Rose of the Empyrean. I confess I took advantage of this to recall his attention to _Veluvana_, for which it was no longer possible to hope that the author would collect any material out of Dante. An invitation from Cambridge to lecture there on Russian history during the Long Vacation of 1916 was a compliment to the value of the Russian chapters of his _Memories_, but it was another distraction. It took his thoughts away from _Veluvana_, although he protested to me that he could prepare his Cambridge address, and yet continue to marshal his fancies for the book. Perhaps I doubted it, and dared to disapprove, for he wrote (March 17th, 1916):-- "You scold me for writing too much. That is the least of my troubles! You must remember that debarred as I am from taking part in society, the Three R's alone remain to me, and, indeed, of those only two--for owing to my having enjoyed an Eton education in days when arithmetic was deemed to be no part of the intellectual panoply of a gentleman, I can neither add, subtract, nor divide! I am a gluttonous reader, and only write from time to time." He was really composing more actively than he himself realised. About this time he wrote:-- "Just now I am busy trying to whitewash Lord Hertford--not the Marquess of Steyne, that would be impossible--but the unhappy hypochondriac recluse of the Rue Lafitte, who I believe has been most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony in Paris--all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities even hinted at. The good British public has so long been used to look upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and amuse it to be told that he had many admirable points."