’I like very much Vaughan’s work on the Epistle to the Romans.  That is the book to teach young students how to read their Greek Testament.  Accurate scholarship, no private notions imported into the Greek text.  I should like to hear Mr. Keble speak about the law underlying the superstitions of heathenism, the way to deal with the perversions of truth, &c.  Somehow I get to marvel at and love that first book of Hooker more and more.  It is wonderful.  It goes to the bottom of the matter; and then at times it gives one to see something of the Divine wisdom of the Bible as one never saw it before.

’But I fear that I seek too much after a knowledge and understanding of principles of action which are attainable by a scholar and man of real reasoning power, but which I am not able to make of practical use, having neither the brains nor the goodness.  This is what I really mean.

’May 20th.—­Any really good book on the New Testament, especially dealing critically with the Greek text, I certainly wish to have.  I feel that the great neglect of us clergy is the neglect of the continual study most critically and closely of the grammatical meaning of the Hebrew and Greek texts.  Oh! that in old days I had made myself a good scholar!  Oh! that I did really know Hebrew and Greek well!  What a blessing and delight it would be now!  I fear that I shall never be a good Hebrew scholar, I can’t make time for it; but a decent Greek scholar I hope to be.  I work away, but alas I for want of time, only by fits and starts, at grammars, and such a book as Vaughan’s “Epistle to the Romans,” an excellent specimen of the way to give legitimate help to the student.  Trench’s books I delight in.  The Revision by Five Clergymen is an assistance.  There was a review in the Quarterly the other day on the Greek Testament, very nearly an excellent one.  The ordinary use of folio commentaries I don’t wish to depreciate, but I think it far less valuable than the diligent study for oneself with the best grammatical aids of the original text.  I always assume an acquaintance with the true mind and spirit of the Church of England as a substratum of interpretation.  I like Westcott’s book on the “Introduction to the Study of the Gospels.”

’Oh! why, when I sat evening after evening with our dear Father, did I not ask him on all these points much more than I did?  He did talk of such things!  But I suppose it is partly the impulse given to such studies by the tendency of present religious thought.  Yet ought it not to have been always put forward at Eton and Oxford that the close study of the text of the Bible is the first duty of a Christian scholar.  I never really thought of it till I came out here, and then other occupations crowded upon me, and so it was too late to make myself a scholar.  Alas!

’Now I really think nothing is so great a relaxation tome as a good book by Trench, or Vaughan, or Ellicott, or Dr. Pusey, and I do enjoy it.  Not that I can keep up my attention for very long so as to make it profitable, but even then it is delightful, only I must go over it again, and so it is perhaps time wasted.