_T._ "Keats would have become one of the very greatest of all poets, had he lived. At the time of his death there was apparently no sign of exhaustion or having written himself out; his keen poetical instinct was in full process of development at the time. Each new effort was a steady advance on that which had gone before. With all Shelley's splendid imagery and colour, I find a sort of _tenuity_ in his poetry." * * * * * _T._ "'Locksley Hall' is thought by many to be an autobiographical sketch; it's nothing of the sort--not a word of my history in it. Read FitzGerald's _Euphranor_ and let me know what you think of it." * * * * * One day we talked of Winchester and the rather meagre list of great men educated there. I rejoiced in the college boasting of an _alumnus_ in Lord Seaton, the famous leader of the 52nd Regiment at Waterloo. "I remember," _T._ said, "addressing a coachman by whose side I was sitting as we drove in a coach through that place, and I asked him, 'What sort of a place is Winchester?' Answer: 'Debauched, sir, debauched, like all other Cathedral cities.'" * * * * * _T._ "I am inclined to agree with Swinburne's view of Mary Queen of Scots; she was brought up in a Court that studied the works of Brantôme." * * * * * We often talked of Farrar's book and Maurice's opinions on Eternal Punishment. The Poet was fond of quoting Dante's line: Fecemi somma Sapienza ed il sommo Amore, insisting on Dante's intense belief in a God of Love. He more than once repeated the famous lines of Moschus,[70] adding, "I think those the finest lines in all Greek antiquity." * * * * * _T._ "My friend, Sir Henry Taylor, on being called a Christian Jupiter, remarked, 'I wish I was much more of a jovial Christian.'" _T._ "I once asked Rogers, 'Did you ever write a sonnet?' He answered, 'No, I never dance in fetters.'" * * * * * _T._ "I am told that the best prose version of the _Odyssey_ is by Professor Palmer of Cambridge University, America. Since Matthew Arnold's lectures on Homer, a new translation has appeared annually in that country. It would take me ten years to translate the _Iliad_ into Bible English." He liked Worsley's translation of the _Odyssey_. * * * * * "The purest English is talked in South Lincolnshire. The dialect begins at Spilsby in Mid-Lincolnshire, and that is the dialect of my Lincolnshire poems."