[Scott.] ... All you say of Scott and Goethe is perfect; I haven't read the Fair Maid of Perth for many, many years, but the subject is splendid. A physical coward, born in such a time. Yes, Scott is by now amongst the assured Immortals and is beyond criticism - super grammaticum and one would as soon take out a magnifying glass to pry into the mountain one climbs - he is a mountain, with a forest up one side and rivers on another side, and a quarry here and a spring there, clouds and wildflowers, and the world below - and so is Dumas and either of them could roll up the little masters of style just now and lose them in their waistcoat-pocket - Scott is the most beautiful, and yet Dumas is more to my heart - only that I love Scott most. As to Goethe I salute, but pass on - yet, if for nothing else he deserves laurel for the bit in the second Faust when the devils complain that the angels stink so. Do you know the ship of Virgil's was not much good to him - there was a lady in Rome who left him somehow hanging in a blanket half way up her window, and when Rome woke up in the morning and passed by they said, "Oh, Virgil, we should never have thought it of you." ...