15 March 1880 – 21 March 1880

Mary and Alick came to us in the evening — Professor Tyndall and Mrs. T. had called on Carlyle, who brightened up. They talked of the Fahr- benlehre. C. hoped that Tyndall would get something out of all the labour Goethe had given to this subject. The Professor said Goethe had many excellent observa- tions, but his theory was wrong. Tyndall said, aside, to Mary, ' Say what he will (of weakness), I never saw him looking grander.' Afril 19. — To Carlyle's about 2.30, found him on sofa, just awaked : Lecky by him. We got into the carriage, and were driven through Hyde Park and Regent's Park to Belsize Avenue, his most usual route ; 28; then turned, L. had met Renan and found him very agreeable. Renan reads English, but does not speak it. C. said, ' I am reading Shakespeare again. I read Othello yesterday all through, and it quite distressed me. O what a fellow that is — honest lago ! I was once at this Play at Drury Lane (it would be in Macready's time — but he did not do me any good in it), and when Emilia said — O the more angel she And you the blacker devil I a murmur swelled up from the whole audience into a passionate burst of approval, the voices of the men rising — in your imagination — like a red mountain, with the women's voices floating round it like blue vapour, you might say. I never heard the like of it.' (I thought this a curious remark — the interpretation of sound by colour in it.) Lecky recalled Macaulay's remark that an Italian audience would look on lago as a comic character ; adding, ' I have seen the play in Italy and found it was as Macaulay said. Tricking husbands is the habitual occupation of the Comic Man of the Italian stage.' I out in St. John's Wood, and call on George Eliot, She was looking well in a high cap and black silk dress. I told her of C. and Othello — ' the red mountain and blue vapour.' ' Like an imaginative child's description,' she said.