Monday August 15.
Henrietta asked me yesterday if I would go to Malvern today. No! Tomorrow, it will be nearly a week, since I was there. How heroic I am,—& vindictive too!—
I wrote this morning, a note to Mr. Curzon; a letter to Miss Price, & a letter to Annie!— I am in doubt whether to begin to read Cebes[1] or Callimachus.[2] Philosophy wd. do me more good than poetry, just now, I think. Had I always studied philosophy exclusively of poetry, I wonder if I should have been differently & more happily constituted in some respects. I am afraid—no. I am afraid I resemble the student of Ossuna, mentioned in Don Quixote, who even if he had been educated at Salamanca, would have been nevertheless mad.[3] Well! tomorrow may—oh may tomorrow, remove one mad symptom. It is too painful.
Solved my doubts, & read half Cebes’s dialogue before I went to bed. It is rather a pleasing than a profound performance,—& on this account as well as on account of the extreme facility of the Greek, it can bear fast reading. Nearly the easiest Greek I ever read!—
1. Cebes of Cyzicus, 2nd century philosopher and contemporary of M. Aurelius Antoninus, known for his Tabula.
2. Callimachus of Cyrene (ca. 305–ca. 240 B.C.), cataloguer of the Library at Alexandria. E.B.B. later refers to reading his Hymns.
3. Don Quixote, Pt. II, Chap.1.
