where it
ends. If we three should discuss even the great question concerning the
existence of a Supreme Being by ourselves, we should not be restrained;
for that would be to put an end to all improvement. But if we should
discuss it in the presence of ten boarding-school girls, and as many
boys, I think the magistrate would do well to put us in the stocks, to
finish the debate there.'

'How false (said he,) is all this, to say that in ancient times learning
was not a disgrace to a Peer as it is now. In ancient times a Peer was
as ignorant as any one else. He would have been angry to have it thought
he could write his name. Men in ancient times dared to stand forth with
a degree of ignorance with which nobody would dare now to stand forth.
I am always angry when I hear ancient times praised at the expence of
modern times. There is now a great deal more learning in the world than
there was formerly; for it is universally diffused. You have, perhaps,
no man who knows as much Greek and Latin as Bentley; no man who knows as
much mathematicks as Newton: but you have many more men who know Greek
and Latin, and who know mathematicks.'

On Thursday, May 1, I visited him in the evening along with young Mr.
Burke. He said, 'It is strange that there should be so little reading in
the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read,
if they can have any thing else to amuse them. There must be an external
impulse; emulation, or vanity, or avarice. The progress which the
understanding makes through a book, has more pain than pleasure in it.
Language is scanty, and inadequate to express the nice gradations and
mixtures of our feelings. No man reads a book of science from pure
inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light
compositions, which contain a quick succession of events. However, I
have this year read all Virgil through. I read a book of the Aeneid
every night, so it was done in twelve nights, and I had great delight
in it. The Georgicks did not give me so much pleasure, except the fourth
book. The Eclogues I have almost all by heart. I do not think the story
of the Aeneid interesting. I like the story of the Odyssey much better;
and this not on account of the wonderful things which it contains;
for there are wonderful things enough in the Aeneid;--the ships of the
Trojans turned to sea-nymphs,--the tree at Polydorus's tomb dropping
blood. The story of the Odyssey is interesting, as a great