Showing 2 results

Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Liked to think of Robert having seen 'dear Meta [Abel Smith]' at the home 'she so values'; thanks him for the news that Humphry is going to the Lake Hunt, and that Bessie's visit to the dentist will eventually benefit her. Sulla [eventual subject of a play by Robert] is 'indeed a great personage in the greatest of histories'. Has just finished the "Hellenica", after reading the "Anabasis"; considers it one of the 'great blessings' of his life that he kept Xenophon to read until he was a mature scholar. Has had a sharp and painful attack of illness, and is 'exceedingly weak'; hopes for Caroline's sake that he will manage to go to Washington, but 'age is really telling' on him at last. Notes in a postscript that he looked up Sulla in [Lemprière's ?] "Classical Dictionary", with 'sad interest' about his [lost] 'υπομνήματα' [memoirs].

Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Read Robert's [play] "Meleager" yesterday admired, enjoyed, and learned from it as he did not know the story; it recalled the 'strange thrill' with which he first read a line in Homer ["Iliad" 2.642], which he gives slightly misquoted. Then read the story in Smith's ["Dictionary of Greek and Roman] Antiquities" and in 'old Lemprière' [John Lemprière's "Classical Dictionary"]; Robert 'turned it powerfully, artfully, and unexpectedly'.