Wednesday August 31st.
A note from Eliza, while we were at breakfast, speaking of our going, & of Miss Wall’s not going, to dine at Mathon on Friday. I wd. rather not. A discussion about it after breakfast—, & the nos had it. Bummy Arabel & I drove off with our refusal & my picture, to call on Mrs. Cliffe. Called in viâ on the Martins—& I had a french conversation with Mr. de Marizet. He seems to me—nay, he certainly is, an agreable & clever man!— An emphatic discription of his horreur yesterday in witnessing my temeritè.
Off to the Cliffes;—& got off the invitation. Rummaged Eliza’s room, & read some verses of Miss Walls, & some letters of her’s relating to us, & took a fancy to Goldoni’s back. Miss Wall’s letters are impertinent & heartless. Eliza ought not, strictly speaking, to have shown them to us,—but Arabel over-insisted.
Went down stairs. It was necessary as to courtesy to mention Mrs. Bests book to her:[1] it was necessary as to conscience, not to praise it warmly. I managed the “betwixt & between” very dexterously—I flatter myself. “Mrs. Best I was pleased both to procure yr. book & to read it”; which was the absolute fact, & civil besides. But Mrs. Best required no one to talk about her book except herself. She is evidently extremely satisfied with both parties. “I consult Lowth Horseley Scott & Whitby; but they always leave me wherever there is a difficultly, & then I have recourse to my studyings & references”.[2] So those great commentators (vulgarly called great) can be nobody to Mrs. Best!!— This degoutè—d me.
Got home at three. No letters. But Mr. Boyd’s Greek epigram in the paper.[3] Very glad of it. I am tired, & have been resting my body in my arm chair, & my mind in Goldoni. Read his Pamela, & Pamela Maritata.[4] The merit of the first, is Richardson’s,[5] & there is not much in the second, for anybody to claim!—
Tomorrow being the 1st. of September & a holiday, I will go to Malvern.
1. Mary Catherine Best, An Illustration of the Prophecy of Hosea (London, 1831).
2. William Lowth (1660–1732), Samuel Horsley (1733–1806), Thomas Scott (1747–1821) and Daniel Whitby (1638–1726) were all eminent theological writers and commentators.
3. The epigram appeared in The Times, 30 August 1831; we are indebted to the Rt. Hon. Quintin Hogg, Q.C., M.P., for the translation given below.
epigramma in —
Αι, αι, των αχεων, Τοριες γε τορως τορεουσιν.
‘Ως πηλος, Πηλος τριβεται ίλυοεις.
Woe, woe, for grief, the Tories pierce like a bore.
Filthy Peel is threshed about like mud.
4. Carlo Goldoni, Pamela, a comedy in three acts, first performed in 1750, and later retitled Pamela Nubile. Pamela Maritata, also a three-act comedy, was first performed in 1760.
5. [Samuel Richardson], Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded, 2 vols. (London, 1741). This inspired many derivative works, including Goldoni’s Pamela.
