I dined the day before yesterday at Sir George Philips’s with Sotheby, Morier the author of “Hadji Baba,” and Sir James Mackintosh.  Morier began to quote Latin before the ladies had left the room, and quoted it by no means to the purpose.  After their departure he fell to repeating Virgil, choosing passages which everybody else knows and does not repeat.  He, though he tried to repeat them, did not know them, and could not get on without my prompting.  Sotheby was full of his translation of Homer’s Iliad, some specimens of which he has already published.  It is a complete failure; more literal than that of Pope, but still tainted with the deep radical vice of Pope’s version, a thoroughly modern and artificial manner.  It bears the same kind of relation to the Iliad that Robertson’s narrative bears to the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis.

There is a pretty allegory in Homer—­I think in the last book, but I forget precisely where—­about two vessels, the one filled with blessings and the other with sorrow, which stand, says the poet, on the right and left hand of Jupiter’s throne, and from which he dispenses good and evil at his pleasure among men.  What word to use for these vessels has long posed the translators of Homer.  Pope, who loves to be fine, calls them urns.  Cowper, who loves to be coarse, calls them casks;—­a translation more improper than Pope’s; for a cask is, in our general understanding, a wooden vessel; and the Greek word means an earthen vessel.  There is a curious letter of Cowper’s to one of his female correspondents about this unfortunate word.  She begged that Jupiter might be allowed a more elegant piece of furniture for his throne than a cask.  But Cowper was peremptory.  I mentioned this incidentally when we were talking about translations.  This set Sotheby off.  “I,” said he, “have translated it vase.  I hope that meets your ideas.  Don’t you think vase will do?  Does it satisfy you?” I told him, sincerely enough, that it satisfied me; for I must be most unreasonable to be dissatisfied at anything that he chooses to put in a book which I never shall read.  Mackintosh was very agreeable; and, as usually happens when I meet him, I learned something from him. [Macaulay wrote to one of his nieces in September 1859:  “I am glad that Mackintosh’s Life interests you.  I knew him well; and a kind friend he was to me when I was a young fellow, fighting my way uphill.”]

The great topic now in London is not, as you perhaps fancy, Reform, but Cholera.  There is a great panic; as great a panic as I remember, particularly in the City.  Rice shakes his head, and says that this is the most serious thing that has happened in his time; and assuredly, if the disease were to rage in London as it has lately raged in Riga, it would be difficult to imagine anything more horrible.  I, however, feel no uneasiness.  In the first place I have a strong leaning towards the doctrines of the anti-contagionists.  In the next place I repose a great confidence in the excellent food and the cleanliness of the English.