The Henson Journals

[6]

Friday, January 23rd, 1920.

We know only modern characters thoroughly. Men must have been dead some time for the whole truth to be told, & not long enough to fade into distance – say, about 500 years, from Dante or Petrarca to Carlyle. How many of these that belong to history will bear scrutiny? The better we get to know them from letters, diaries, table talk, etc., the worse, as a rule, they appear. It is very difficult for the most keen–sighted Diogenes to detect a really good man – for instance, in the Reformation, or Revolution. We have to conclude backwards, from experience in the known to the less known age: and so are not dazzled by the halo of Fabricius & Decius.

v. Lord Acton's Correspondence. p. 215.

Ella and Fearne went off to lunch & pay calls in the county. I worked at the Lectures, & then lunched with Riddell tête–à–tête. After lunch I walked with him to Bullinghope, & then he walked back with me to the Palace. Wynne–Willson came to do the letters. He will probably refuse Weston–under–Penyard, and resign his Rural Deanery. Arnold Thomas, the sectary at Bristol, sent me an 18th century pamphlet, issued in connexion with the Trinitarian controversy among the dissenters, in which Bishop Croft was mentioned with much respect. I sent him a copy of 'The Naked Truth'.

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