28 April 1873 – 4 May 1873

At Carlyle's house about 3. He spent about fifteen minutes in trying to clear the stem of a long clay pipe with a brass wire, and in the end did not succeed. The pipe was new, but somehow obstructed. At last he sent for another one and smoked, and we got out at last. (I never saw him smoke in public.) He said Emerson had called on him on Sunday, and he meant to visit E. to-day at his lodging in Down Street. We walked to Hyde Park by Queen's Gate, and west- ward along the broad walk next to the ride, with the Serpentine a field distant on the left hand. This was a favourite route of his. I was well content to have the expectation of seeing Emerson again, and, moreover, Emerson and Carlyle together. We spoke of Masson's Life of Milton^ a volume of which was on C.'s table. He said Masson's praise of Milton was exaggerated. ' Milton had a gift in poetry — of a particular kind. ' Paradise Lost is absurd ; I never could take to it at all, — though now and again clouds of splendour rolled in upon the scene ' ' But V Allegro and // Penseroso — you can find nothing better.' I quoted — Over some wide-water'd shore Swinging slow with sullen roar. C. — ' That is very good. He did not find that at Horton.' W. A. — ' At Cambridge, he might.' C— ' No, no ! ' W. A. — ' The bell over the levels ' C. — ' It's the sound of the sea.'' W. A. — ' The sound of a bell — the curfew.' ^C. — * No, no ! The sound of the sea, — that is what he is speaking of — Swinging slow with sullen roar.' We then discussed Emerson, whom C. described as * a mild, pure, gentle spirit.' Some one had said of Emerson that he spent his life in ' making sentences ' ; 'an unfriendly remark,' said C, ' yet with some truth in it.' But of whom may not unfriendly things be said with some truth in them .? And Emerson has made golden sentences, diamond sentences, sentences to be always grateful for. At Hyde Park Corner C. stopped and looked at the clock. ' You are going to Down St., sir ? ' ' No, it's too late.' * The place is close at hand.' ' No, no, it's half-past five.' So he headed for Knightsbridge, and soon after I helped him into a Chelsea omnibus, banning internally the clay pipe (value a half-penny farthing) through v^hich this chance (perhaps the last, for Emerson is going away soon) was lost. The chance never did come again.

Bright and mild. To Carlyle 3.15. We walk, Kensington Gardens. C. said, 'Here is May — poor May ! not forward with her work this time — Tyndall has not come near me lately ; I must touch him up. O yes, he's very fond of me — but perhaps he was vexed by an outburst of mine against Darwinism. I find no one who has the deep abhorrence of it that I have in my heart of hearts ! Science, falsely so called. Tyndall is Irish, but not an inaccurate Irishman. He is jocular, and not without a touch of blarney. Has Huxley indigestion .? — lucky not to have had experience of it sooner. Huxley attacks Herbert Spencer, with many polite bows and recogni- tions.' Kensington Gardens — we sit on felled trees, amid a strong odour of bark, which C. does not, I think, perceive. He praises Charles Norton : ' a serious man — he is attached to America, but sees well enough too the dreadful plague of money-worship there, and the manifold evils that are, and are to be, from that.'