This Is Conington’s translation, but it seems
to me to be a little flat.
“Years as they roll cut all
our pleasures short;
Our pleasant mirth, our loves,
our wine, our sport,
And then they stretch their
power, and crush at last
Even the power of singing
of the past.”
I think that I may say with truth that I rode hard
to my end.
“Vixi puellis nuper idoneus,
Et militavi non sine gloria;
Nunc arma defunctumque
bello
Barbiton hic paries
habebit.”
“I’ve lived about the
covert side,
I’ve ridden straight,
and ridden fast;
Now breeches, boots, and scarlet
pride
Are but mementoes of the past.”
“The way we live now”
And “The Prime minister”—Conclusion
In what I have said at the end of the last chapter
about my hunting, I have been carried a little in
advance of the date at which I had arrived. We
returned from Australia in the winter of 1872, and
early in 1873 I took a house in Montagu Square,—in
which I hope to live and hope to die. Our first
work in settling there was to place upon new shelves
the books which I had collected round myself at Waltham.
And this work, which was in itself great, entailed
also the labour of a new catalogue. As all who
use libraries know, a catalogue is nothing unless
it show the spot on which every book is to be found,—information
which every volume also ought to give as to itself.
Only those who have done it know how great is the
labour of moving and arranging a few thousand volumes.
At the present moment I own about 5000 volumes, and
they are dearer to me even than the horses which are
going, or than the wine in the cellar, which is very
apt to go, and upon which I also pride myself.
When this was done, and the new furniture had got
into its place, and my little book-room was settled
sufficiently for work, I began a novel, to the writing
of which I was instigated by what I conceived to be
the commercial profligacy of the age. Whether
the world does or does not become more wicked as years
go on, is a question which probably has disturbed
the minds of thinkers since the world began to think.
That men have become less cruel, less violent, less
selfish, less brutal, there can be no doubt;—but
have they become less honest? If so, can a world,
retrograding from day to day in honesty, be considered
to be in a state of progress? We know the opinion
on this subject of our philosopher Mr. Carlyle.
If he be right, we are all going straight away to darkness
and the dogs. But then we do not put very much
faith in Mr. Carlyle,—nor in Mr. Ruskin
and his other followers. The loudness and extravagance
of their lamentations, the wailing and gnashing of
teeth which comes from them, over a world which is
supposed to have gone altogether shoddy-wards, are
