'During the last week I have also read the latter half of 'Maria Stuart' - some scenes of Alfieri - and a portion of 'Tacitus' (which by the way is the hardest Latin I ever saw) - when you devoted four hours of my day to the study of history, what did you mean should become of my Italian and my dear German?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Many MS notes, some of which are transcribed from those of Lord Macaulay in another edition: "Macaulay's notes and marginal lines (on the outside margins) are transferred from his Bipontine edition. His notes are marked with an "M"." Sir George's dates of reading include: "Florence Jan. 22 1901. The day of Queen Victoria's death"; Jam 25 1901 "On way from Florence to Rome, Edward the Seventh proclaimed yesterday"; June 22 1920; Aug 2 1924 "Read with unceasing zest and admiration. May I live to finish him! But I was 86 last month"; p.740: "a rare good writer. But a very difficult one to read, I must confess, as a student of very mature age (1924)"; Dec 24 1924 "With Herodotus and Thucydides, he appertains to the first three historians of the Ancient World. I am reading them all again, with Suetonius if indeed I can live to finish them. This is the 4th time in this century that I have read them all through"; Jan 17 1925. P.1629, Sir George writes: "The development of Nero is a marvellous story, marvellously told; - as Carlyle would have written it, had he been a Roman of the age of Tacitus. I read it as I read the "French Revolution" in the Trinity backs in the summer of 1858, when I ought to have been reading Pindar and Thucydides. That summer I read the French Revolution three times on end [underlined twice]; besides devouring the Third Volume of "Modern Painters" and "Men and Women". As far as a place in the classical Tripos was concerned I doubt if I could have been better employed." P.2750: "As fine history, and as much to my mind, as any I ever read. Tacitus was much the same age as Carlyle, when he wrote the French Revolution, - which I read as an undergraduate at Trinity; reading three times through one end, with no book between. I did very much the same by this volume of Tacitus in the course of this winter, at 87 years of age."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
