Listings for Reader:
George Otto Trevelyan
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Juvenal :
I remember paying him [Macaulay] a visit in his rose-garden at Campden Hill [...] I was in a hurry to communicate to him my discovery of the magnificent verses in which Juvenal bids observe how the world's two mightiest orators [Cicero and Demosthenes] were brought by their genius and eloquence to a violent and tragic death.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers
Read for the fist time June 1865. Macaulay took this volume more than once on our Easter trips.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Conyers Middleton : The life and letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero
Copious MS notes, some correcting translation, others commenting on world affairs or noting events in Trevelyan's own life. MS dates of reading up to 1921 and list of 8 men selected for University Scholarship in 1850, incl. Trevelyan. Notes include: "August 18 1887" "Oct. 15. 1919" Page 573: "George's convoy have reached Udine [i.e. G.M. Trevelyan, his son]. How extraordinarily interesting the notes written during this crisis are!" P. 469: "Aug 16 1915 Warsaw has fallen. Rige in dire peril" P. 511: " Aug 16 1915 Runciman and Massingham visited us yesterday." "P. 560: "Aug 14 1889. Rain and no grouse, having spoiled the day's shooting".
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
John Poole : Little Pedlington and the Pedlingtonians
"This volume was being read by Sir George Trevelyan when his last illness overtook him. CPT" [i.e. Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan]. Under this "He died on August 19th 1928 at Wallington MKT" [i.e. Lady Mary Katharine Trevelyan]. Book also contains MS marginal corrections to text.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Elizabeth Von Arnim : Christopher and Columbus
"This volume was being read by Sir George Trevelyan when his last illness came on him": MS note in the hand of Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan, GOT's son.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Cicero : The treatises of M.T. Cicero
MS date of reading by G.O. Trevelyan: Sep 2 1922. Also: "The pencil notes in this volume, which are cut off partially in the re-binding of it, are by a previous possessor. I have rubbed these out as we went along".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Frances Trollope : The Laurringtons; or, superior people
Vol. III: "Sept 10 1922 A jolly book with all its faults and absurdities. The social manners and ways of three generations ago are illustrated cheerfully in its pages." "Read again, with the same amusement, in the winter of 1927-8". Vol.II p.137: "The whole novel is burlesque. It is to me, as it was to my mother, uncle [Lord Macaulay], and to my sister Margaret, supremely and singularly readable. Dec 5 1927 Welcombe"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Frances Trollope : The ward of Thorpe-Combe
"What an admirable and clear type this most readable book is printed in! June 18 1928". "Perhaps the last time this amazing, but most amusing, book has been read, and reread, by many Macaulays and Trevelyans. June 9 1928". With a note by this in the hand of Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan: "Only nine weeks before he died."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry Gunning : Reminiscences of the university, town and county of Cambridem from the year 1780
"Oct 23 1913 Excellent book. The best account of the great Tory re-action that I know, - except in Scotland, Cockburn's". Vol. II has date of reading: "June 29 1914". Volumes contain several marginal references to "Uncle Tom" [i.e. Lord Macaulay].
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Aulus Gellius : Noctes atticae
Many marginal notes include: "The marginal notes and lines are from Macaulay's Deux Ponts edition. NB I did not read through Aurus Gellius: but observed the contents of the chapter, glanced through the text if it excited my curiosity, and carefully read all, and all around, Macaulay's notes and marginal lines." "Wallington July 16 1918" "I am beginning to relish Aulus Gellius as much as my uncle did. (See the letter to Ellis of July 25 1836. Life and Letters Chapter VI)." "August 10 1918 George [G.M. Trevelyan] came to Wallington from Italy this morning." "August 13 1918 - Janet and the children left today - George yesterday". "August 12 1918 Wallington I say farewell to Aulus Gellius with regret; and am inclined to think I like him even as much as Macaulay. Perhaps a little better, because at 80 one is more of the age for trifles than at 35; and prettier trifling than the setting of the dialogues I hardly know."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Caius Velleius Paterculus : Works
"The marginal lines and notes are copied from Macaulay's Bipontine edition They are of high interest NB The notes in pencil are my notes, of difficult interpretations, to assist me when re-reading the book again." "Read Velleius again very carefully, as if for the Tripos .." Several MS dates of reading, indicated below, including September 29 1924 "Our 55th wedding anniversary".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Caius Suetonius Tranquillus : Opera omnia
"July 19 1909. Ah me. I was reading this soon after dear little Paul died." [Paul = grandson of George Otto Trevelyan.]. This after a section of Caligula "quorum dou infantes adhuc rapti, unus jam puerascens." "Dec 16th 1916 Lloyd George called on to form a government." Many marginal notes copied from Lord Macaulay's own copy of the book: "The marks on the outer margin, and the notes signed M, are copied from Macaulay's Bipontine edition. He does not seem to have regularly marked the Octavius."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Plato : Dialogues
Many MS dates of reading: "Feb 13 1907 Welcombe"; "Nov 10 1909 Rome (Read in one day)"; "June 1915 Welcombe"; "October 1921 Wallington Have read the Euthyphron 6 times in 15 years." Includes a MS list of "My personal favourites in the dialogues of Plato". MS. notes in ink copied from Macaulay's folio edition of this text; this edition also belonged to Macaulay.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan
Homer : Iliad
Many MS dates of reading incl. "Began reading the Odyssey in summer of 1902, continued it during summer of 1903."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Thucydides : De bello Pelloponesiaco
Copious MS notes and doodles throughout. First date "Trevelyan May 1852". One sketch is a drawing of "Alice [his sister] opening a box of soldiers. An anticipation of the holidays. What a child I was!" This vol. read by Sir George at prep school and Harrow "20 chap a day Wed. July 4th 1855" and in a later hand "when I worked so hard for the trials, and was so disappointed in coming out fourteenth. But the work won me the Gregory scholarship a year later on." I.i p.68: "These crosses in the text seem to represent the portion each boy was called on to translate." I.ii p.85 "I hate Harris"; "I detest Harris"; p.87: "I HATE HARRIS"; under this: "Poor little boy that I was; what a bad time I had with that able, and, (as I now know) not unkindly master". Many subsequent dates of reading, incl. Jan 20 1915 "sixty years after I was first reading it in the same volume at Harrow"; Sep 29 1922 "our wedding day"; March 14 1916 "Germans sent terms of peace to America through Colonel House: - and what terms!" "Finished this old book April 4 1916 Welcome. Almost everything reminds me of the most depressed and unsatisfactory period of my life, when I was the last boy in a form of 35, 63 years ago. What a mere child I was!"
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Herodotus : Works
Copious MS notes; multiple dates of reading , incl. "Sept 15 1915 Wallington"; "July 3 1922 A glorious winter"; "Finished Herodotus, all of him, once again this day Sept. 10 1925. He is a cordial in old age, and an anodyne in poor health. But I shall now pass willingly enough to Thucydides with a fine, clear legible type. My old copy was bought 73 years ago, at Harrow! I am reading, side by side with my two Greek historians, the Annals and the Histories of Tacitus. Macaulay found in the three of them "something he could find in no one else"; and my experience is the same as his. G.O. Trevelyan"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Martin Madan : A new and literal translation of Juvenal and Perseus
This book, originally owned and read by Lord Macaulay in June-Oct 1836, was given to his nephew who wrote on flyleaf: "Given me when at Harrow, by Macaulay to prepare for the examination for the Gregory Scholarship Summer 1856".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Demosthenes : Demosthenes With English notes by the Rev. Arthur Holmes
Copious MS notes in hand of George Otto Trevelyan. Dates of reading are: Oct 1902 (on a train in Italy); Sept 16 1905; May 12 1918 (at Welcombe). He notes the dates when Macaulay read his own copy of Demosthenes and says of the reading in 1837: "The last time in 2 days". In 1902: "Certainly Holmes is a marvellous scholar" but in 1918: "Holmes writes of oratory like a pedant, narrow, sceptical and critical, - who never heard a fine speech in his life."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Demosthenes : Orationes publicae; ed. by G.H. Heslop ... The Olynthiacs
Copious notes and dates of reading, incl. Dec 1918, Sept 1921. Trevelyan transcribes the dates when Macaulay also read Demosthenes (1836, 1837). Several references to the difficulty of the text, e.g.: "All the same, Demosthenes is tough reading: far more difficult to me than Herodotus and Plato, or the ordinary narrative of Thucydides, let alone Xenophon." On p.1: "The Olynthiacs were the first Demosthenes I read, in prefect room at Harrow, about 1853."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Demosthenes : in Midiam
Copious MS notes, incl.: "The Midas was the first oration of Demosthenes which Macaulay gave me, as a schoolboy, to read ...The marks on the outer margin are copied from his Dindorf edition." MS dates of reading: April 13 1917 and Jan 16 1923. "Finished --- on the 30th Jan 1923 - the day on which a more exulted culprit than Midias was brought to account. How these masterpieces grow upon one's appreciation at each reading! I am now just halfway between 84 and 85; - nearly 70 years since I read the Midias for the first time." P.125: "Macaulay gave the the Meidias to read while I was at Harrow. His choice of books which he lent me while at school is significant. The Meidias, the Gorgias, the Plutus of Aristophanes, Quintus Curtius, Dialogues of the Dead of Lucian. When I was preparing for the Gregory Scholarship examination he gave me Juvenal with a translation on the opposite side."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Xenophon : Anabasis; with an English translation by Carleton L. Brownson
Copious MS notes in the hand of Sir George Otto Trevelyan, including: "The marginal lines, and notes, are copied from Macaulay's Dindorf." Many MS dates of reading between 1926-7. "It is a curious circumstance that (considering the enormous amount of Greek that I have read) I should have read this wonderful book of Anabases for the first time at the age of 88 and a half!"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Horace : Works; ed by Macleane
MS notes and dates of reading include: "Top of Beamerside while electioneering at Melrose, July 6th, 1868"; p.40: "Weybridge 1872. St. George's Hill, returning from taking Charley and Carry [son and wife] for a row on the Mole"; p.170: "In train to Wells with my father, May 22 1874." Titlepage verso: GO Trevelyan The companion of a lifetime which was never dull in Horace's company." Note in the hand of his son, Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan: "It was by his bedside when he died."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
John Walker : Clavis Homerica
MS note on final flyleaf: "This book gets very poor towards the end. The omissions in the Shield of Achilles, - both in the key and the index, - are nothing less than disgraceful".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry James : Portraits of places
MS notes and marks throughout, including: "May 2 1919. Exquisite book! I seem to hear my dear friend [Henry James] talk, - oh so slowly - as we stroll arm in arm in the Warwickshire meadows which he loved so long and well - as I loved him, and he me". On t-p: "Trevelyan Welcombe"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Jules Michelet : Histoire de France
MS notes including various dates of reading from Feb 16, 1899 - March 25 1901. Final volume summarised as: "A fine, compact story; disfigured by a delight in the loathsome such as I have never known in any other great and grave writer. It amounts to monomania."
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Laurence Sterne : Tristram Shandy
Dates of reading given in MS as being between June 22 1897 "Jubilee Day" and July 7 1897.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Mark Twain : A tramp abroad
MS notes and marginalia throughout book, including the thoughts of Sir George Otto Trevelyan on visiting the grave who had died young while climbing p.425.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
George Bernard Shaw : Plays: pleasant and unpleasant
MS note at the end of "The man of destiny": "Dec 5 1926 Read aloud to C, [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] - as I once did to poor George Vanderbilt".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Sir Robert Thomas Wilson : Private diary of travels, personal services, and public events ...
Marginal marks show signs of George Otto Trevelyan's close reading, as of a proof - he corrects errors, e.g. where the text says "many would prefer expatriating themselves forever to America to serving under the Buonaparte dynasty", GOT crosses through "Buoanparte" and substitutes "Bourbon".
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Oliver Cromwell : Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches; with elucidations by Thomas Carlyle
Copious MS notes and marginal marks, including some showing signs of irritation: v.5 p.96 "Oh do have done!"; v.4: "Oh do shut up". Several dates of reading noted including: "Read aloud Nov 7 1904. Charles Dalrymple came this evening"; "Read aloud June 28 1923".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : The old wives' tale
Copious MS notes, including a chronology explaining the ages of the characters: "Samuel born 1833, 29 in 1862/ Constance born 1846, 16 in 1862/ Sophia born 1847, 15 in 1862 [etc.]". Dates of reading: "Read aloud Wallington Oct 13 1915"; "Finished Dec. 13 1922".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Arnold Bennett : These twain
MS notes including dates of reading, e.g.: "July 18 1916 Welcombe"; "March 29 1923 with Anna [i.e. Anna Philips, George Otto Trevelyan's sister-in-law]; "Read aloud to C [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] and most of it to her and Anna. Dec 23 1923 Welcombe".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Samuel Richardson : Clarissa
Marginalia and marginal lines. Includes dates and places of reading by George Otto Trevelyan: v.2: Oct 7 1891; v.3: Glasgow Oct 15 1891; v.4: Milan Oct 24 1891; v.5 Rome Oct 30 1891; vol.7: "On our homeward journey from Rome Dec. 2 1891".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Julius Stinde : The Bucholz family. Second Part. Sketches of Berlin life
Many marginal notes, including dates of reading: May 27, 1919 and June 22-July 1 1923. "Too much Hohanzollen. Without that family these Berliners might have been quiet, decent people enough." Also, on flyleaf: "Published 1886. See p. 145". Text on p. 145 has: "For fifteen years now we have enjoyed peace and all its blessings, and this we owe to German trustwowrthiness." George Otto Trevelyan writes beside this: "So it was 1886. Bismarck was born in 1815."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry James : The better sort
Various MS notes and marks including date of reading: June 23 1923 and a note on p.311 "The birthplace": "This was based on the story of Mr. Skipsey, told to Carry [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] by the Spence Watsons, and by her to Henry James."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry James : The reverberator
Marginal marks and MS notes. Dates of reading on final page and the note: "What was the year when we saw so much of the American family who so much reminded us of the Dossons? It could not be 1913; as we spent Christmas with them in Rome; and in 1913 Carry [i.e. Lady Caroline Trevelyan] never left her bed!"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry James : The Aspern Papers - Louisa Pallant - The modern warning
Various marginal marks and MS dates of reading including: "Welcombe. Read to C[Lady Caroline Trevelyan] and Anna [his sister-in-law]. Feb 14 1910"; "Feb 21 1924".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Anthony Hope : The Dolly dialogues
A note on endpaper by Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan: "This volume was among the books being read by Sir George Trevelyan when his last illness took him."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Percy Bysshe Shelley : The poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
This book has marginal marks and dried acanthus leaves, with the MS note: "Acanthus leaves from Shelley's grave. Rome. Nov 21 1886".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Henry James : The ambassadors
This book has copious notes and marginal marks, including many unrelated to the text written on pastedown and fly-leaf: "I used to note down sentences for my history, that had ocurred to me in the watches of the night, in the flyleaf of the novel which I had in hand at that time."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Mary Boykin Chesnut : A diary from Dixie
Marginal marks and MS notes throughout,including p.xiii: "[The author's husband] deeply disapproved of her pleasure-seeking ways at such a time [...] Her hospitality had in it a strong dah of sheer gluttony; and she was a reckless, and most ill-natured gossip." Also, very critical of the editing: "The editing is bad. Chapter X ought to end about page 143." Dates of reading: "Oct 25 1910 Uncle Tom's birthday [i.e. Lord Macaulay] - the battle of Agincourt"; August 8 1921; March 15 1925; Jan. 4 1924; July 4 1928.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Felix Bouvier : Bonaparte en Italie
Marginal marks and MS notes throughout, incl. v.2 giving Nov 12 1904 as the "second time of reading" and v.1 July 24, 1920: "3rd time of reading A most excellent military history; - I think, the best I ever read". V.II has a MS chronology on pastedown and endpaper, giving the dates of Bonaparte's movements in April and May 1796. Notes incl. translations of French words, and comments e.g., by a footnote on a letter published in Le Moniteur "dont l'authenticite nous pariat fort suspecte", he writes: "rather!"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
John Lothrop Motley : History of the United Netherlands
MS annotations and marginal marks incl. v.1 p.503, in reply to the author's comment "we must now throw a glance to the external", Sir George writes: "High time that you did. Seldom has so able a writer been so swamped and mastered by his materials." Describes ch. 6 as "Terribly lengthy. Such masses of extracts ... are out of place in such a book as this." V.4 p.530 in reply to the author's wish to have fostered through his work a "love of freedom of thought, of speech, and of life" Sir George writes "This is a true claim on the part of Motley, and is the prime merit of his history". "Motley on the whole has raised himself by this volume [2]. He has a fine enthusiasm for liberty and public right." "The fourth volume ... is deeply interesting, and, in some respects, better constructed and written than the other three. Welcombe. May 26. 1916". Dates of reading include: "Nov 3 1915 - Wallington" and "June 28 - with C[aroline] Wallington 1921."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
James Grant : British battles on land and sea
MS annotations incl. v.1 p.534: "A ludicrous map, palpably incorrect at every point. Malplaquet is on the wrong side of the French line, and the attack on the French left flank in the wood is not represented at all, though the chief feature of the day." P. 575 next to the text "the artifices and baseness of William III", Sir George writes: "Fool read thy Macaulay".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Charles James Fox : Memorials and correspondence of Charles James Fox
MS notes throughout, mainly taken for Sir George's own research into Charles James Fox. One reads (v.2.p.376): "I am glad he liked shooting as much as I do."
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
John Lothrop Motley : The rise of the Dutch republic: a history
MS notes and marginal marks throughout the book, in the hand of Sir George Otto Trevelyan. Dates of reading include "Sept. 21 1914 Aloud to C[aroline]"; "Dec 30 1920 with C". One note alludes to the First World War: when Motley writes of a "train of unforeseen transactions", Sir George comments: "We have enough of that just now. Aug . 31 1915".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Marcus Tullius Cicero : M. Tullii Ciceronis Opera
MS notes in all vol. other than I, XI and XVI. Some are copied from Macaulay's own copy of Cicero which he read between 1835-7: "transferred by me from his Bipontine edition [to] the outside margin of the Delpin"; "Macaulay's notes are marked with M". Sir George's dates of reading incude: 1899; 1903; "June 18 1904 Chamonix"; "Nov 17 1909 Rome A heavy day of rain & the break up of our long spell of fine weather"; "Wallington Oct 12 1916"; "Christmas Day 1918 Welcombe"; 1919; "June 21 1921 Wallington"; 1923. Sir George responds to Macaulay's comments: "I understand my uncle's feelings about it in India, and his reservations twenty years afterwards." V.3: "On the whole I agree with Macaulay about the comparative value of the Third Book [...]". Vol. 12 draws historical parallels: "It is strange to read these letters. Cicer's cruel anxiety about the course to be taken [...] were like out anxieties about America, the Balkans, and the Scandinavian States. Then, as now, the whole civilised world was in question" [written in 1915].
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Julius Caesar : Opera omnia
MS notes in vols. I and II, including some copied from Lord Macaulay's copy of the text. Dates of reading include: "May 28 1917 Welcombe The most interesting military story I ever read, as told by the hero of it. If Pharsalia had gone the other way the Kaiser and the Czar would now be called "Pompey". An anonymous piece has the MS note: "This is far and away the worst Latin I have ever read of the great Ciceronian age of prose. The text is mortally corrupt; but besides that, the style is detestable. And yet I read it with interest." In this Sir George echoes Macaulay's comment on the same piece: "It is dreadfully corrupt."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Cornelius Tacitus : Opera omnia
Many MS notes, some of which are transcribed from those of Lord Macaulay in another edition: "Macaulay's notes and marginal lines (on the outside margins) are transferred from his Bipontine edition. His notes are marked with an "M"." Sir George's dates of reading include: "Florence Jan. 22 1901. The day of Queen Victoria's death"; Jam 25 1901 "On way from Florence to Rome, Edward the Seventh proclaimed yesterday"; June 22 1920; Aug 2 1924 "Read with unceasing zest and admiration. May I live to finish him! But I was 86 last month"; p.740: "a rare good writer. But a very difficult one to read, I must confess, as a student of very mature age (1924)"; Dec 24 1924 "With Herodotus and Thucydides, he appertains to the first three historians of the Ancient World. I am reading them all again, with Suetonius if indeed I can live to finish them. This is the 4th time in this century that I have read them all through"; Jan 17 1925. P.1629, Sir George writes: "The development of Nero is a marvellous story, marvellously told; - as Carlyle would have written it, had he been a Roman of the age of Tacitus. I read it as I read the "French Revolution" in the Trinity backs in the summer of 1858, when I ought to have been reading Pindar and Thucydides. That summer I read the French Revolution three times on end [underlined twice]; besides devouring the Third Volume of "Modern Painters" and "Men and Women". As far as a place in the classical Tripos was concerned I doubt if I could have been better employed." P.2750: "As fine history, and as much to my mind, as any I ever read. Tacitus was much the same age as Carlyle, when he wrote the French Revolution, - which I read as an undergraduate at Trinity; reading three times through one end, with no book between. I did very much the same by this volume of Tacitus in the course of this winter, at 87 years of age."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Livy : Historiorum libri
Many MS notes, incl. some copied from Lord Macaulay's own copy of Livy: "I copied these marginal notes, and lines, from Macaulay's Bipontine edition in the winter of 1910 at Wallington. GOT." Sir George's dates of reading include 1914,1915,1917,1918, "read with C[aroline] Jan 14 1919"; 1927. At end of v.4: "I read this book in the same number of days as Macaulay. But he was likewise constructing the penal code, and establishing the Indian education system." Sir George's notes in Livy often comment on Macaulay's earlier observations, almost as if they are having a conversation, e.g. where in book XXVI ch 32 Macaulay writes: "The conduct of the Roman senate was on the whole honorable to them, the state of public opinion among the ancients considered", Trevelyan comments: "How differently the Reichstag is showing in the case of Belgium. On Jan 28 1915 he writes: " I have now, day for day kept up, through these five books, exactly the same pace as my uncle. Shall now ease off. My age is more than twice his; and he [underlined] was Macaulay. Would I could talk Livy over with him, and tell him about this [underlined] war! How he would have recognised the spirit and self-sacrifice of the country." 1918: "I have now finished my war-time reading of the whole of Livy." Sir George's notes draw parallels between Livy and current affairs: "very different from the actions of the Germans towards Pointcarre's property"; p.679: "I wish such a speech as this could be made in Russia today (Sep. 10 1917). P.2877: "Jan 17 1915. A beautiful winter Sunday. Colonel Charrington Smith and his party came to tea. They are going to take part in a greater war than Hannibal, Philip and Antiochus together." Throughout, he uses his book to comment on events in his own life, e.g. Feb 12 1915: "George [i.e. G.M. Trevelyan] returned from Serbia yesterday. God be thanked for it." At the end of the book: "I seldom have been more interested in any history. I read the account of the great battle of Antiochus in a translation of Livy when I was a little boy at Mr Seawell's and never since. Feb. 1 1915". Note on p.3034 gives the date of reading as July 30, 1928 i.e. 18 days before Sir George died.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book
Sallust : Opera omnia
MS notes, some evidently copied from Lord Macaulay's own marginalia in another volume. On p.145 Sir George writes: "I used to think this very fine at school. It now seems to me a very indifferent exercise in rhetoric." The date of reading is 1911.
