I have been reading in my Boat?Virgil, Juvenal, and Wesley?s Journal. Do you know the last? one of the most interesting Books, I think, in the Language. It is curious to think of his Diary extending over nearly the same time as Walpole?s Letters, which, you know, are a sort of Diary. What two different Lives, Pursuits, and Topics!
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald Print: Book
Byron to John Murray, 20 January 1813; 'In "Horace in London" I perceive some stanzas on Ld. E[lgin] - in which ... I heartily concur. - I wish I had the pleasure of Mr. S[mith]'s acquaintance ... What I have read of this work seems admirably done ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
Letter W 38 - Chamouni, 3/10/1863 - "I can't make out the run of some coal slates of the Col de Balme at their junction with what Saussure calls the 'poudingues de Valorsins'. Such a scramble as I've had after them today!"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
' ... [The Mysterious Mother (1768)] was read aloud by Mr Smelt and Frances Burney in November 1786. Burney was horrified ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney and Leonard Smelt Print: Book
"As ... [Hannah Mitchell's] love of books became known locally: 'I made free of such libraries as the neighbours possessed, which led to my reading some curious and unsuitable matter, old-fashioned theological works, early Methodist magazines, cookery books and queer tales of murder and robbery. One such, entitled 'The Castle of Otranto', haunted my dreams for many a night'."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
'If you like it try the "Castle of Otranto" by Horace Walpole. That is the best stilted romance style I know. "Well may the blood" says an expiring viscount to a peasant youth who has fallen in love with a countess and been recognised by a friar as his son, the friar thereupon proving himself a duke, and the detection of his son arising from a markt on the son's neck, which was being bared for execution, - "well may the blood which has so lately traced itself to its source boil over in the veins". (The boy had shown signs of annoyance.) I never saw anything like that before.The killing and stabbing and the wonderment produced as to why all the characters stay about the old castle, (most of them have no business there), when at least three quarters are searching for the blood of the other three quarters for monetary reasonsor for none! There are three discoveries, I think of long lost children and no end of supernaturalism; all produces a gorgeous effect.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book
'I have no enthusiasm-cui bono? I always ask myself. It would be irksome, & impossible, in this state of my sheet, to criticise the elegant and ingenious rather than powerful or philosophical narrative which Horace Benedict Saussure gives of his journeys in the Alps. I am in the third quarto-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'In conformity with ancient custom, I ought now to transmit you some account of my studies- But I have too much conscience to dilate upon this subject... On the same authority [a small Genevese], I inform you that Horace Benedict Saussure (whose beautiful voyages I have not yet finished) died 20 years ago; but Theodore, his son, is still living.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
[editor's narrative] 'A visit to Dresden was richly rewarded by the acquisition of six valuable fans to add to Lady Charlotte's collection, but it was a regret to have reached the end of the reading of Walpoliana and Pepys' Journal.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'Mr Brand' to Mary Berry, January 1798: 'Lady Ossory, to alleviate my confinement with a very bad cold, has treated me to Lord Orford's letters to her, tho' in a very mutilated transcript, and desired my opinion about their publication.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Brand Manuscript: Unknown
'I have held off reading Walpole's Correspondences till now. I am in the former series to Mann. At first, I was agreeably disappointed: but now my pain and disgust are growing fast. What a horrid spirit it is!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Mary Berry, Journal, 27 April 1791: 'Florence. -- Went to see the Laurentian Medicean Library [...] The librarian, a very civil Canonico Bandini, showed us the Virgil of the fourth century, which they call the oldest existing; it is very fairly written, but less easy to read than the one in the Vatican. We saw, too, the Horace that belonged to Petrarch, with some notes in it by his own hand. It is in large quarto, and not a beautiful manuscript from the number of notes and scoliastes interrupting and confusing the text.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Manuscript: Unknown
Harriet Martineau on school life: 'We learned Latin from the old Eton grammar [...] Cicero, Virgil, and a little Horace were our main reading then'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Pupils at Mr Perry's school Print: Book
'As my love of books became known, I was made free of such libraries as the neighbours possessed which led to me reading some curious and unsuitable matter, old-fashioned theological works, early Methodist magazines, cookery books and queer tales of murder and robbery. One such, entitled "The Castle of Otranto", haunted my dreams for many a night. Our nearest neighbour who was more of a scholar than his rough exterior and taciturn manner suggested, lent me a "History of England" which was a veritable godsend.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book
'Within these few days I could not have a book from the library because Mr E. had lent the "Castle of Otranto" to Miss Lowe [Love?], who happened to be there the afternoon when I was reading it; it was against the rules.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'Read Stanleys Life of Arneld, Twiss Life of Ld Eldon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I think I have already mentioned to you the Life of Ld Eldon by Horace Twiss. It is not badly done, and I think it would very much amuse Ld Grey as it is the history almost of his times. He seems (Lord Eldon) to have been a cunning canting old Rogue whose object was to make all the money he [could] by office at any expence of the public happiness'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'Read the "Castle of Otranto", which grievously disappointed my expectations...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Sir Horace Walpole's "Mysterious Mother". There is a gusto of antiquity...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Horace Walpole's "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard the 3d."--doubts, which he has in some measure transfused into my mind...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Looked over Horace Walpole's "Fugitive Pieces"...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read, if you have not read, all Horace Walpole's letters, wherever you can find them; - the best wit ever published in the shape of letters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ...; I forgot to mention a good deal of Horace Walpole ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'Teusday [sic] August 8th. Ill all day. I dream I see a ghost [this sentence inserted above
line]. Bathe. Read Castle of Otranto & Caleb Williams.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to James Martin, 10 December 1844:
'I am glad I have so much interesting matter to look forward to in the Eldon memoirs, as
Pincher's biography. I am only in the first volume. Are English chancellors really made of such
stuff? Pincher will help to reconcile me to the Law lords perhaps.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'[in a letter from Bury's correspondent [-]] I believe I told you I had been reading Horace Walpole's Letters over again, and also Madame du Deffand's Letters to him, and that I like them better. I hesitated for so long before reading them, because you disparaged them to me. I do not admire herself: she is a hard, unfeeling, misanthropical old sinner. But her mind is so laid open to me, that I pardon her faults and think she could not help them, as I do and think of my own. I have finished her letters to Horace, and am quite angry there is no account of her death. I am now reading her letters to Voltaire, which I cannot endure; they are full of nothing but fulsome flattery, which disgusts me. How much true affection dignifies every thing! but flattery when seen through, is odious. I like the portaits at the end of her book'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Affectation is never more tiresome and ridiculous than in a letter. Madame de Sevigne was the best letter-writer that ever existed. I would rank Swift and Lord Chesterfield next. Voltaire to me is charming; but then I suspect he studied his epistles, as Lord Orford certainly did, and so had little merit. Heloise wrote beautifully in the old time; but we are very poor, both in England and Scotland, as to such matters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Sharpe Print: Book
'I have a present of the poetical Register no 7 as a testimony of respect & therein I find [italics] Horace in London [end italics]. A friend has previously mentioned the work but in high terms that occurred [italics] too [end italics] often as I read, yet there is, (no Question), Ability & music in this Mock-bird, or rather these, for there are two I am told Messrs Smiths, Brothers & Authors of ye rejected Addresses where you & I & Mr Southey & I know not who shine in the eye of the public, & Wordsworth whom I read & laughed at till I caught a touch of his disease & now really like many of the Simplicities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Serial / periodical
'I have a present of the poetical Register no 7 as a testimony of respect & therein I find [italics] Horace in London [end italics]. A friend has previously mentioned the work but in high terms that occurred [italics] too [end italics] often as I read, yet there is, (no Question), Ability & music in this Mock-bird, or rather these, for there are two I am told Messrs Smiths, Brothers & Authors of ye rejected Addresses where you & I & Mr Southey & I know not who shine in the eye of the public, & Wordsworth whom I read & laughed at till I caught a touch of his disease & now really like many of the Simplicities'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Unknown
'How are you supplied with Books; I have some from Bath, but I begin to be weary of toil & Humour. yet Mr Reynolds was amusing: "not so Gayeties & Gravities" an affected work & here is the journal of a young Officer but not yet read: a pretty good Quarterly Review & John's Gentleman's Magazine'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Robert Trevelyan, 8 January 1941:
'I want to say how much we enjoyed your Epistle. In these days of confused bitterness its form and content were both refreshing. Your translations and the two conversations were equally or even more refreshing. By a curious coincidence I had been reading Horace's satires after an interval of I don't know how many years. I never read the classics except in bed before I get up in the morning and I nearly always read Greek. But the other day I thought I would begin Horace again and began the Satires. I liked it better than I had expected for I had recollections of being bored by Horace's hexameters. Your translations are extraordinarily satisfactory and satisfying.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1929) include section from Horace Walpole's letter of 13 November 1760 to George Montagu, describing the funeral of George II.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'My father said that he [...] received a good but not a regular classical education. At any rate he became an accurate scholar, the author "thoroughly drummed into" him being Horace; whom he disliked in proportion. He would lament, "[...] It was not till many years after boyhood that I could like Horace. Byron expressed what I felt. 'Then farewell Horace whom I hated so.' Indeed I was so over-dosed with Horace that I hardly do him justice even now that I am old."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
MS notes and dates of reading include: "Top of Beamerside while electioneering at Melrose, July 6th, 1868"; p.40: "Weybridge 1872. St. George's Hill, returning from taking Charley and Carry [son and wife] for a row on the Mole"; p.170: "In train to Wells with my father, May 22 1874." Titlepage verso: GO Trevelyan The companion of a lifetime which was never dull in Horace's company." Note in the hand of his son, Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan: "It was by his bedside when he died."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Lord Liverpool to John Wilson Croker, 23 August 1824:
'I am very much obliged to you for the specimen which you have sent me of Horace Walpole's
letters to Lord Hertford, which I return. I have been very much amused by it, but [...] I
believe Horace Walpole to have been as bad a man as ever lived; I cannot call him a violent
party man, he had not virtue enough to be so; he was the most sensuous and selfish of
mortals [comments further].'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Banks Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 11 December 1793: 'Let me turn to more chearful subjects. your verses were particularly good — & they have the additional merit of novelty in manner & metre. write more. fame is a very late consideration — but let us remember that Pope acquired independance by his Homer. let me say Horace that Popes abilities were not above comparison. undertake some great work. it will take up your attention certainly — you certainly have abilities for any work. chuse either epic or a metrical romance. & in the intervals exercise yourself in the lower ranks for with us lyrics are very subordinate.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 7 June 1794: 'In return for your ode to Indolence I know nothing better than these strains to her eldest born. they immortalize a man who is the ne plus ultra of folly.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
Sir Henry Ellis to John Wilson Croker, from the British Museum, 29 October 1829:
'I understand from Mr. Murray that you are engaged [as editor] upon a "Life of Dr. Johnson."
[...]
'Mr. Cary, the Assistant Keeper of our Printed Books, tells me a very old edition (I think 1504) of "Horace," belonging to the Burney Collection, has a few notes in Dr. Johnson's hand.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Poetry and shoemaking were part of the daily round [for the young Anne Isabella Milbanke]; a grander ambition was taking shape. Translations from Horace [...] Three lines and a half of English verse ... and then this phoenix sank for evermore amid its scanty ashes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'Helped marvellously finding Wedderburn's entry in Vol. 3 of Saussure, and his cloud lightning on Col du Fours before Franklin! Then, helped infinitely by Alciat's four emblems'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 12 August 1818:
'Yesterday evening Granville [husband], Hart [her brother, the Duke of Devonshire] and I
looked over books. A beautiful edition of Camoens, brown and gold, with D. and the coronet
inlaid in diamonds. It is like a book in a fairy tale. The Duchess of Devonshire's editions of
Horace's journey. The prints are from beautiful drawings, one by herself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Duke of Devonshire and Lord and Lady Granville (his brother-in-law and sister) Print: Book
Thursday, 1 March 1827:
'By the bye it is the anniversary of Bosworth field. In former days Richd. IIId. was always acted at London on this day [...] Walpole's Historic Doubts threw a mist about this Reign. It is very odd to see how his mind dwells upon [them] at first as the mere sport of imagination till at length they become such Dalilahs of his imagination that he deems it far worse than infidelity to doubt his Doubts.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 7 May 1828:
'I return, having read through, the first volume of "Horace Walpole's Letters to Mr. Mason" [discusses text further] [...] [These letters] are the least amusing of Walpole's. The reason is that he and Mason had at this time no [italics]common[end italics] acquaintance, and no [italics]common[end italics] topic, but Mason's "Life of Gray" [discusses further]."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
[between journal entries for 30 September and 10 October 1880]
'A visit to Dresden was richly rewarded by the acquisition of six valuable fans to add to Lady Charlotte's collection, but it was a regret to have reached the end of the reading of Walpoliana and Pepys' Journal.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles and Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'The Club then listened to a variety of readings from modern poets as follows:
A Rawlings Extracts from "The Art of Poetry"
T.C. Eliott from Chesterton's "Lepanto"
Mrs Evans some verses by Colin D. B. Ellis
R. H. Robson from J. C. Squires "Birds"
D. Brain from Noyes' "Torch Bearers"
C. I. Evans from Thos Hardy
G. Burrow poems by his brother
F. E. Pollard from Siegfried Sassoon
Mrs Pollard from W. Watson's "Lakeland"
C. E. Stansfield from Rupert Brooke
A. Rawlings from E. V. Lucas & Lang Jones'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 17 August 1764:]
'Pray has Mrs M. got one of Mr Walpole's Memoirs of Lord Herbert [of Cherbury]? So few copies are dispersed, that I know Lord Chesterfield was not able to get one, and it is so amusing I wish you had it to wear away a rainy evening.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 18 March 1768:]
'I fancy you were not greatly edified by the study of Mr Walpole's book. There is always some degree of entertainment in what he writes, but less I think in this than usual, and it is rather more peevish and flippant. It is a great pity he should ever write any thing but Castles of Otranto, in which species of composition he is so remarkably happy [comments further on Walpole as a history writer]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 18 March 1768:]
'I fancy you were not greatly edified by the study of Mr Walpole's book. There is always some degree of entertainment in what he writes, but less I think in this than usual, and it is rather more peevish and flippant. It is a great pity he should ever write any thing but Castles of Otranto, in which species of composition he is so remarkably happy [comments further on Walpole as a history writer]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
'The writer [Ford Madox Ford] never saw Conrad read any book of memoirs except those of Maxime Ducamp and the Correspondence of Flaubert; those we read daily together over a space of years. But somewhere in the past Conrad had read every imaginable and unimaginable volume of politician's memoirs, Mme de Campan, the Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier, Benjamin Constant, Karoline Bauer, Sir Horace Rumbold, Napoleon the Great, Napoleon III, Benjamin Franklin, Assheton Smith, Pitt, Chatham, Palmerston, Parnell,The late Queen Victoria, Dilke, Morley [...] There was no memoir of all these that he had missed or forgotten—down to "Il Principe" or the letters of Thomas Cromwell. He could sugddenly produce an incident from the life of Lord Shaftesbury and work it into "Nostromo" [...].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'There is no real objection to marrying a woman with a fortune but there is to marrying a fortune with a woman.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Parcels from home and Bess. Read "Letters from a Self Made Merchant to His Son" by George Horace Lorimer.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'...through the week I have read an excellent novel of Vachell's "The Paladin" which you have
probably read too.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
‘Last week I went to an excellent play, a really charming Comedy—Quinney’s,
by Vachell. Am now reading and book by Vachell "The Hill", a tale of Harrow,
and the hills on which I never lay, nor shall lie: heights of thought, heights of
friendship, heights of riches, heights of jinks … Lovely and melancholy reading
it is for me.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book