Saturday July 23.
Compagnons de l’exil, quoi! vous pleurez ma mort!
Vous pleurez! et deja dans la coupe sacrèe
J’ai bu l’oubli des maux, et mon ame enivrèe
Entre au celeste port.[1]
Those lines of Lamartine’s may be applied to her—
I have heard the boys read Greek today,—& feel more tranquil. Nay! I have read myself, a good part of the Enchiridion of Epictetus,—but I read the Bible before—& it was that that did me the good. Epictetus’s philosophy never could make a philosopher in sorrow: it approaches indeed wonderfully near to Christianity, but not near enough to catch the warmth, with the light. “Think”, he says, “that thy pitcher is a pitcher; & when it breaks thou wilt be calm: think that those whom thou lovest, are human, & when they die, thou wilt be calm.”[2] Cold philosophy! weak philosophy! vain philosophy! Thou wilt not be calm. Thou art human too!—
I had a letter from Mrs. Boyd today, & wrote two or three lines to her this morning, telling her the reason of my not being at the Malvern Bible meeting & at Ruby Cottage last Thursday as I had intended. She wishes me to spend next Monday or Tuesday at Malvern. If Thursday’s letter had not come, how happy I shd. have been in doing so! Miss Boyd[3] is to arrive on Wednesday; & Miss Gibbons[4] on Tuesday. No more happy quiet days with Mr. Boyd!—
1. The final lines of verse 4 of “Le Chrétien Mourant,” the 21st of Lamartine’s Méditations Poétiques (Paris, 1820), translated as: “Companions of my exile, mourn you this? / How! weep my death? when, from the sacred bowl, / I drink oblivion, and my ravish’d soul / Is ent’ring into bliss!” (J. C., Solitude, and other Poems, with Translations from … Lamartine, and from Metastasio, London [1830?], p. 115.)
2. LCL–EP, II, 486–487: “If you are fond of a jug, say, ‘I am fond of a jug’; for when it is broken you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your own child or wife, say to yourself that you are kissing a human being; for when it dies you will not be disturbed.”
3. H.S.B.’s only sister, about whom nothing has been ascertained beyond the details contained in this Diary.
4. One of the daughters of Sir John Gibbons, Bt., of Stanwell. As E.B.B. refers to her always as Miss Gibbons, without Christian name or initial, the custom of the period indicates that she was Eliza, the eldest of the three unmarried daughters. In a letter to her sisters, [1 October 1830], E.B.B. described Miss Gibbons as “a pleasing, Ladylike girl” (see BC, 2, 258–260.)
