works: few _chefs-d'oeuvres_; Madame de Sévigné the best; the only three of a high class are Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Stael, and (Bobus Smith said) Sappho, but of her not above forty lines are extant: these, however, are unrivalled; Mrs Somerville is very great in the exact sciences. Lady Holland would not hear of Madame de Stael. They agreed as to Miss Austen that her novels are excellent. Quintus Curtius is confirmed by Burnes' travels in Bokhara, but was reckoned no authority by the greatest scholars; Lord Melbourne said Mitford had expressed his confidence in him. Of the early English kings there is no reason to believe that any king before Edward III. understood the English language; the quarrel between Beckett and King Henry II. was attributed (by some writers) to the hostile feeling between Normans and Saxons, and this was the principal motive of the quarrel and the murder of the Archbishop. Klopstock had a _sect_ of admirers in Germany; some young students made a pilgrimage from Gottingen to Hamburg, where Klopstock lived in his old age, to ask him the meaning of a passage in one of his works which they could not understand. He looked at it, and then said that he could not then recollect what it was that he meant when he wrote it, but that he knew it was the finest thing he ever wrote, and they could not do better than devote their lives to the discovery of its meaning. September 7th, 1834 {p.130} [Page Head: LORD MELBOURNE'S LITERARY CONVERSATION.] At Holland House again; only Bobus Smith and Melbourne; these two, with Allen, and Lord Holland agreeable enough. Melbourne's excellent scholarship and universal information remarkably display themselves in society, and he delivers himself with an energy which shows how deeply his mind is impressed with literary subjects.