January 2, 1861.—­Mr. Grey (Canon) came to dine and stay the night.  He told me a curious old custom of millers, that they place the sails of the mill as a Saint Andrew’s Cross when work is entirely suspended, thus x, but in an upright cross, thus +, if they are just going to resume work.  He also mentioned that he was at school with Dr. Tennyson (father of the poet), and was a great favourite of his.  He remembers that Tennyson used to do his school-translations in rhyme.

May 9th.—­Met in Common Room Rev. C.F.  Knight, and the Hon’ble.  F.J.  Parker, both of Boston, U.S.  The former gave an amusing account of having seen Oliver Wendell Holmes in a fishmonger’s, lecturing extempore on the head of a freshly killed turtle, whose eyes and jaws still showed muscular action:  the lecture of course being all “cram,” but accepted as sober earnest by the mob outside.

Old Oxford men will remember the controversies that raged from about 1860 onwards over the opinions of the late Dr. Jowett.  In my time the name “Jowett” only represented the brilliant translator of Plato, and the deservedly loved master of Balliol, whose sermons in the little College Chapel were often attended by other than Balliol men, and whose reputation for learning was expressed in the well-known verse of “The Masque of Balliol":—­

      First come I, my name is Jowett. 
      There’s no knowledge but I know it;
      I am Master of this College;
      What I don’t know isn’t knowledge.

But in 1861 he was anything but universally popular, and I am afraid that Mr. Dodgson, nothing if not a staunch Conservative, sided with the majority against him.  Thus he wrote in his Diary:—­

November 20th.—­Promulgation, in Congregation, of the new statute to endow Jowett.  The speaking took up the whole afternoon, and the two points at issue, the endowing a Regius Professorship, and the countenancing Jowett’s theological opinions, got so inextricably mixed up that I rose to beg that they might be kept separate.  Once on my feet, I said more than I at first meant, and defied them ever to tire out the opposition by perpetually bringing the question on (Mem.:  if I ever speak again I will try to say no more than I had resolved before rising).  This was my first speech in Congregation.

At the beginning of 1862 an “Index to In Memoriam,” compiled by Mr. Dodgson and his sisters, was published by Moxon.  Tennyson had given his consent, and the little book proved to be very useful to his admirers.

On January 27th Morning Prayer was for the first time read in English at the Christ Church College Service.  On the same day Mr. Dodgson moved over into new rooms, as the part of the College where he had formerly lived (Chaplain’s Quadrangle) was to be pulled down.

During the Easter Vacation he paid another visit to the Tennysons, which he describes as follows:—­