George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[177] the whole course of Sir Francis Head, as far as the United States are concerned. He had intended to ask Head to dine to-day, and as I expressed a good deal of regret that I had not seen him, he said he would invite him soon, and let me know when he would come; but seemed a little surprised that I should be pleased to meet one who had just been abusing my country so thoroughly, confessing, at last, that he had omitted him to-day, thinking I might be unwilling to meet him.

Lady Holland, I really think, made an effort to be agreeable, and she certainly has power to be so when she chooses; but I think I could never like her.

May 25.—Began the morning with a long and most agreeable visit from Sedgwick of Cambridge, one of those visits which are only made in England, I think, and there only when people take some liking to one another. . . . . Few men, anywhere, are so bright and active-minded as this most popular of the English professors.

Afterwards I went by appointment to see old Mr. Thomas Grenville, elder brother of the late Lord Grenville, and uncle of the present Duke of Buckingham. He was one of the negotiators of our treaty of 1783, and was first Lord of the Admiralty; but retired from affairs many years ago, on the ground that he preferred quietness and literary occupation to anything else. A few years ago he declined an addition of £ 10,000 a year to his large fortune, saying he had enough, and that he preferred ‘it should go on’—as he expressed it—to the next generation that would be entitled.

He is now nearly eighty-four years old, and lives in that old, aristocratic quarter, St. James's Square, next to Stafford House. He is admirably preserved for his age, and took apparent pleasure in showing me his library, about which Lord Spencer had written to him, asking him to show it to me.

It consists of twenty-two thousand volumes; but what is remarkable about it is, that not only is every book in rich, solid, tasteful binding, but it may almost be said that every book is in some way or other a rarity, if not by the small number of copies known to exist of it, at least by something peculiar in some other way. Such beautiful miniatures I never saw before in books, as in two or three that he showed me; and in individual cases, for instance Milton and Cervantes, his collection of the original editions is absolutely complete, which I have never seen elsewhere. Of course it is not to be compared to the library at Althorp, though even there it would frequently fill gaps; but take it altogether,—the library, its owner, and