A big idea

Sunday, March 6th., Rue de Calais, Paris.

Edmund Gosse

The Davrays dined with me last night at the Hippodrome, and afterwards we went to the Grand Cafe. He gave me sundry particulars about the French dinner to Edmund Gosse, and said that Gosse's speech was simply admirable and was continually interrupted, at every sentence, by applause. Schwob's speech in English was also very good he said.

It appears that Gosse received the offer of his appointment to the Librarianship of the House of Lords on the very morning of the banquet. Davray saw the letter offering the appointment, from Sir Henry Loundes Graham, and said it was extraordinarily flattering.

I had great ideas this last day or two of a chart of English Literature, chronological; divided in coloured sections showing different groups such as poetry- history, drama etc. .... and showing the 'contemporaneousness' of authors and works exactly. Thus the years from 'Summer is y-cumen in' down to Wells would be marked perpendicularly and the contemporaneousness shown horizontally. It would be possible to see at a glance what poetry, history, theology etc. was being produced at the date, say, of "Tom Jones"; and how "Tom Jones" stood with "Clarissa", or "Hamlet" with "The Broken Heart". And also the ages of the authors at the dates of their various works would be automatically perceptible.

Such a chart would be extremely useful. A month's work with nothing but Chambers "Encyclopedia of English Literature" and the "Dictionary of National Biography" would suffice for it. I would try to include all the authors dealt with in the former. I sem to see myself doing it, for fun, after an illness, or when I was thoroughly exhausted with creative work