156 Saad Zaghloul [1906 



of Finance, which will give him control of the budget, and Saad 

 Zaghloul, one of Mohammed Abdu's disciples whom I remember in 

 prison as an Arabist in 1883, has been named Minister of Public 

 Instruction." 



This mention of Saad Zaghloul has become of especial interest since 

 the first part of this book was published through the leadership he 

 has taken of the Egyptian Nationalist Party. He is an honest and 

 very capable man, the worthiest of all those who have been acknowl- 

 edged National Leaders during the British Occupation. I am glad 

 to remember that it was due to my intervention with Cromer, and 

 beyond Cromer with Gladstone, that I obtained his release from prison 

 in 1883. 



" The Denshawai Case is to be brought forward by Dillon next 

 week in Parliament. I feel that I have gained a notable success, 

 and am master now of native opinion in Egypt, and to a large extent 

 of Mohammedan opinion outside Egypt. 



" Auberon Herbert is dead, a man of original thought and high 

 integrity, slightly touched in his later years with eccentricity. I need 

 not describe his character here as I have said so much of it already 

 in these diaries. There was much in common between us in the view 

 we took of public things, but he was more of a doctrinaire than 

 ever I was, and he has had greater belief in the effective power of 

 appealing to principles of right and honour with Englishmen. In ap- 

 pearance he was the most refined of men, an ideal countenance, such 

 as Shelley might have had if he had lived to the age of seventy. 

 His place in politics will not be filled, for he was the last of the 

 uncompromising individualists of the Victorian age, the most consistent 

 and the ablest. 



" gth Nov. — George Wyndham came down in the evening and 

 Neville, to shoot with me, and we talked far into the night on litera- 

 ture, politics, and art. He is pleased with the success of his Ronsard 

 which is certainly good, though I am of opinion that it ought to 

 have been still better. With his talent of verse translation he might 

 very well have given us a hundred of Ronsard's Sonnets and Odes, 

 instead of only thirty. 



" 10th Nov. — Belloc joined us at dinner, and once more George's 

 tongue was loosed. Both he and Belloc are admirable talkers. 

 Belloc's best story was of an Italian brigand, who had regularly con- 

 fessed his sins every Saturday from his youth up in his own village, 

 but who was refused absolution at last at the age of eighty, as pro- 

 faning the sacrament of penance, by going on with his confessions 

 about women. ' E cosa impossible,' said the priest. 



" nth Nov. (Sunday). — I have got George to read my 'Atrocity' 

 pamphlet, and it has formed the text of a discussion which lasted 



