Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/139

SCROPE BERDMORE DAVIES frequent mention of Scrope Davies both in his journals and in his private correspondence. They dined together at Versailles on 20 May 1835 and Raikes expected to see him on 26 May but instead received a despondent letter. "Lethargic days and sleepless nights" writes Scrope "have reduced me to a state of nervous irritability," and he quotes from Rasselas that "of all uncertainties the uncertain continuance of reason is the most dreadful.... I would much rather be accessory to my own death"—evidently the unhappy man is still thinking of throat-cutting"—— than to my own insanity. The dead are less to be deplored than the insane. . . . Babylon in all its desolation is a sight not so awful as that of the human mind in ruins. It is a firmament without a sun, a temple without a god. I have survived most of my friends: heaven forbid I should survive myself." Raikes wrote in reply recommending "quiet and calomel" and entered in his diary his fear that "the brandy-bottle has much to do with the excitement." Next day he called on Davies and found him "well and gone out."

In June 1837 Raikes and Davies passed two days in the pleasant town of Gisors. Raikes was then busy in composing the volume on Petersburg which was published in 1838 under the title of "The city of the Czar." He wanted some classical quotations for insertion in its pages. The average reader of those days, like the average country-gentleman in parliament, wanted his Latin tags. He wrote to Davies as a fellow of King's for help and the reply from Dunkerque (13 Dec. 1837) was "I have very few classical books here and no classical acquaintance; while my memory is as treacherous as a black-lead pencil."

Two months later Davies in a letter to Raikes from the same seaside resort, then the quietest of the resorts on that long line of dunes, challenged Ball Hughes—the name