t then recollect what
it was that he meant when he wrote it, but that he knew it was
the finest thing he ever wrote, and they could not do better than
devote their lives to the discovery of its meaning.

September 7th, 1834 {p.130}

[Page Head: LORD MELBOURNE'S LITERARY CONVERSATION.]

At Holland House again; only Bobus Smith and Melbourne; these
two, with Allen, and Lord Holland agreeable enough. Melbourne's
excellent scholarship and universal information remarkably
display themselves in society, and he delivers himself with an
energy which shows how deeply his mind is impressed with literary
subjects.

After dinner there was much talk of the Church, and Allen spoke of
the early reformers, the Catharists, and how the early Christians
persecuted each other; Melbourne quoted Vigilantius's letter to
Jerome, and then asked Allen about the 11th of Henry IV., an Act
passed by the Commons against the Church, and referred to the
dialogue between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of
Ely at the beginning of Shakespeare's 'Henry V.,' which Lord
Holland sent for and read, Melbourne knowing it all by heart and
prompting all the time. Lingard says of this statute that the
Commons proposed to the King to commit an act of spoliation on the
clergy, but that the King sharply rebuked them and desired to hear
no more of the matter. About etymologies Melbourne quoted Tooke's
'Diversions of Purley,' which he seemed to have at his fingers'
ends. I forget what other topics were discussed, but after Lady
Holland and Melbourne and Allen went to bed, Lord Holland, Bobus,
and I sat down, and Lord Holland told us many anecdotes about the
great orators of his early days. Fox used to say Grey was the most
prudent man he knew, and this perhaps owing to his having got into
a scrape early in his Parliamentary life, by attacking Pitt, who
gave him a severe castigation; it was about his letter to the
Prince being sent by a servant during the Regency discussions. Fox
thought his own speech in 1804 on going to war with France the
best he ever made. Lord Holland believed that Pitt (the younger)
was not so eloquent as Chatham. Grattan said, 'He takes longer
flights, does not soar so high.' No power was ever equal to
Chatham's over a public assembly, much greater in the Commons than
it was afterwards in the Lords. When Sir Thomas Robinson had been
boring the House on some commercial question, and introduced the
word 'sugar' so often that th