To be correct in familiar letters is not to charm.

A studied negligence is needed to make such work live to posterity--a grace of loose expression which may indeed have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the idle and unpractised writer.

His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of its own.

I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his grief.
APPENDICES TO VOLUME I.
APPENDIX A.
(_See_ ch.II., note [39]) _THE BATTLE OF THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT._ Homer, Iliad, lib.

xii, 200: [Greek: Hoi rh' eti mermerizon ephestaotes para taphroi.
Ornis gar sphin epelthe peresemenai memaosin, Aietos upsipetes ep' aristera laon eergon, Phoineenta drakonta pheron onuchessi peloron, Zoon et' aspaironta; kai oupo letheto charmes.
Kopse gar auton echonta kata stethos para deiren, Idnotheis opiso; ho d' apo ethen eke chamaze, Algesas oduneisi, mesoi d' eni kabbal' homiloi; Autos de klanxas peteto pnoeis anemoio.] Pope's translation of the passage, book xii, 231: "A signal omen stopp'd the passing host, The martial fury in their wonder lost.
Jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies; A bleeding serpent, of enormous size, His talons trussed; alive, and curling round, He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound.
Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey, In airy circles wings his painful way, Floats on the winds, and rends the heav'ns with cries.
Amid the host the fallen serpent lies.
They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd, And Jove's portent with beating hearts behold." Lord Derby's Iliad, book xii, 236: "For this I read the future, if indeed To us, about to cross, this sign from Heaven Was sent, to leftward of the astonished crowd: A soaring eagle, bearing in his claws A dragon huge of size, of blood-red hue, Alive; yet dropped him ere he reached his home, Nor to his nestlings bore the intended prey." Cicero's telling of the story: "Hic Jovis altisoni subito pinnata satelles, Arboris e trunco serpentis saucia morsu, Ipsa feris subigit transfigens unguibus anguem Semianimum, et varia graviter cervice micantem.
Quem se intorquentem lanians, rostroque cruentans, Jam satiata animum, jam duros ulta dolores, Abjicit efflantem, et laceratum affligit in unda; Seque obitu a solis nitidos convertit ad ortus." Voltaire's translation: "Tel on voit cet oiseau qui porte le tonnerre, Blesse par un serpent elance de la terre; Il s'envole, il entraine au sejour azure L'ennemi tortueux dont il est entoure.
Le sang tombe des airs.