“January 10. 1821.

“Day fine—­rained only in the morning.  Looked over accounts.  Read Campbell’s Poets—­marked errors of Tom (the author) for correction.  Dined—­went out—­music—­Tyrolese air, with variations.  Sustained the cause of the original simple air against the variations of the Italian school.

“Politics somewhat tempestuous, and cloudier daily.  To-morrow being foreign post-day, probably something more will be known.

“Came home—­read.  Corrected Tom Campbell’s slips of the pen.  A good work, though—­style affected—­but his defence of Pope is glorious.  To be sure, it is his own cause too,—­but no matter, it is very good, and does him great credit.

“Midnight.

“I have been turning over different Lives of the Poets.  I rarely read their works, unless an occasional flight over the classical ones, Pope, Dryden, Johnson, Gray, and those who approach them nearest (I leave the rant of the rest to the cant of the day), and—­I had made several reflections, but I feel sleepy, and may as well go to bed.

“January 11. 1821.

“Read the letters.  Corrected the tragedy and the ‘Hints from Horace.’  Dined, and got into better spirits.  Went out—­returned—­finished letters, five in number.  Read Poets, and an anecdote in Spence.

“Alli. writes to me that the Pope, and Duke of Tuscany, and King of Sardinia, have also been called to Congress; but the Pope will only deal there by proxy.  So the interests of millions are in the hands of about twenty coxcombs, at a place called Leibach!

“I should almost regret that my own affairs went well, when those of nations are in peril.  If the interests of mankind could be essentially bettered (particularly of these oppressed Italians), I should not so much mind my own ‘suma peculiar.’  God grant us all better times, or more philosophy!

“In reading, I have just chanced upon an expression of Tom Campbell’s;—­speaking of Collins, he says that no reader cares any more about the characteristic manners of his Eclogues than about the authenticity of the tale of Troy.’  ’Tis false—­we do care about the authenticity of the tale of Troy.  I have stood upon that plain daily, for more than a month in 1810; and if any thing diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity.  It is true I read ‘Homer Travestied’ (the first twelve books), because Hobhouse and others bored me with their learned localities, and I love quizzing.  But I still venerated the grand original as the truth of history (in the material facts) and of place.  Otherwise, it would have given me no delight.  Who will persuade me, when I reclined upon a mighty tomb, that it did not contain a hero?—­its very magnitude proved this.  Men do not labour over the ignoble and petty dead—­and why should not the dead be Homer’s dead?  The secret of Tom Campbell’s defence of inaccuracy in costume and description is, that his Gertrude, &c. has no more locality in common with Pennsylvania than with Penmanmaur.  It is notoriously full of grossly false scenery, as all Americans declare, though they praise parts of the poem.  It is thus that self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting any thing which happens, even accidentally, to stumble upon it.