The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 1 by Stephen Lucius Gwynn
page 82 of 719 (11%)
page 82 of 719 (11%)
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"Sir P. Sidney: _Arcadia_.
"Claude Adrien Helvetius: _Works_. "Victor Hugo: _Les Miserables_. "William Godwin: _Political Justice_." He notes also in the Memoir that the reading of Mill at this period marked the beginning of Mill's influence over him. This influence was a great factor in Dilke's life, and, when it passed into a personal relation, became almost one of discipleship. His taste for Victor Hugo led him to write in the _Athenaeum_ a long notice of _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ in 1866, when that romance appeared; but another article about the same period on international law indicates the main bent of his studies. As early as the Long Vacation of 1864, in the course of preparing his essay on forms of government, he had found himself tracing 'the future of the Anglo-Saxon race both in the United States and Australasia'; and he thus, without knowing it, laid the foundation lines of _Greater Britain_. Also, in 1865, 'I had already dreamt of visiting and writing upon Russia, a country which always had a great hold on my imagination.' Another project of these undergraduate years was less his own than his grandfather's. Old Mr. Dilke contemplated a universal catalogue of books, to be prepared by international action. This scheme was completely abandoned, yet it is interesting that the grandson entertained it. The scholar, not merely the lover, but the active servant, of learning, was always present in Charles Dilke's many-sided personality, though never dominant. We approach the central preoccupations of his mind with the _History of Prevalent Opinions in Politics_, towards which 'a great deal of work' was done by him in the winter of 1864-65. In 1866 the same |
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