CHAPTER XXX.

THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS.

In the midst of his political and professional activity, Garfield never forgot his days of tranquil enjoyment at Hiram College, when he was devoted solely to the cultivation of his mind, and the extension of his knowledge.  He still cherished the same tastes, and so far as his leisure—­he had no leisure, save time snatched from the engrossing claims of politics—­so far, at any rate, as he could manage the time, he employed it for new acquisitions, or for the review of his earlier studies.

In January, 1874, he made a metrical version of the third ode of Horace’s first book.  I quote four stanzas: 

  “Guide thee, O ship, on thy journey, that owest
  To Africa’s shores Virgil trusted to thee. 
  I pray thee restore him, in safety restore him,
  And saving him, save me the half of my soul.

  “Stout oak and brass triple surrounded his bosom
  Who first to the waves of the merciless sea
  Committed his frail bark.  He feared not Africa’s
  Fierce battling the gales of the furious North.

  “Nor feared he the gloom of the rain-bearing Hyads
  Nor the rage of fierce Notus, a tyrant than whom
  No storm-god that rules o’er the broad Adriatic
  Is mightier its billows to rouse or to calm.

  “What form, or what pathway of death him affrighted
  Who faced with dry eyes monsters swimming the deep,
  Who gazed without fear on the storm-swollen billows,
  And the lightning-scarred rocks, grim with death on the shore?”

In reviewing the work of the year 1874, he writes:  “So far as individual work is concerned, I have done something to keep alive my tastes and habits.  For example, since I left you I have made a somewhat thorough study of Goethe and his epoch, and have sought to build up in my mind a picture of the state of literature and art in Europe, at the period when Goethe began to work, and the state when he died.  I have grouped the various poets into order, so as to preserve memoirs of the impression made upon my mind by the whole.  The sketch covers nearly sixty pages of manuscript.  I think some work of this kind, outside the track of one’s every-day work, is necessary to keep up real growth.”

In July, 1875, he gives a list of works that he had read recently.  Among these are several plays of Shakespeare, seven volumes of Froude’s England, and a portion of Green’s “History of the English People.”  He did not limit himself to English studies, but entered the realms of French and German literature, having made himself acquainted with both these languages.  He made large and constant use of the Library of Congress.  Probably none of his political associates made as much, with the exception of Charles Sumner.