Like many a painter who will go on improving and touching up his picture till he has destroyed the likeness, and the startling realistic nature of his subject, so would Sir Richard go on weakening his first copy by improvements, and then appeal to me to say which was the best. I was almost invariably obliged, in conscience, to induce him to stick to the first thought, which had grasped the whole meaning like a flash. These notes were made in a most curious way. He used to bring his Latin Catullus down to _table d'hôte_ with him, and he used to come and sit by me, but the moment he got a person on the other side, who did not interest him, he used to whisper to me, "Talk, that I may do my Catullus," and between the courses he wrote what I now give you. The public school-boy is taught that the Atys was unique in subject and metre, that it was the greatest and most remarkable poem in Latin literature, famous for the fiery vehemence of the Greek dithyramb, that it was the only specimen in Latin of the Galliambic measure, so called, because sung by the Gallæ--and I suspect that the school-boy now learns that there are half a dozen others, which you can doubtless name