204 Lord Osborne Beauclerk [1908 



fame as a poet. Meynell thinks that I too shall be given a permanent 

 place as a poet twenty years hence, but I am doubtful. Certainly I 

 have no such place of any kind now. It will depend very much, I 

 think, upon how things go with the Eastern Nations. If, as I hope, 

 they achieve their independence of Europe, I shall be acknowledged 

 as a forerunner of their cause; if they fail, I shall fail. Anyhow my 

 work in the world is pretty near over. I shall fight and write no more. 



" 14M June (Sunday). — That 'wretched fellow' Morley has had a 

 new Press Law passed in India giving power to local authorities to 

 seize printing presses and confiscate without trial where sedition has 

 been published. It was this same John Morley of whom Lytton used 

 so bitterly to complain to me as his most violent attacker while in India, 

 notwithstanding their personal friendship, and on these very points, if I 

 remember rightly, of his Afghan campaign and his Press Law, which 

 is identical with this of Morley's to-day. Morley is adopting all the 

 methods used by Russia in its imperial dealings. 



" 21st June. — An odd visit this afternoon from a stranger (sent 

 to me by Cockerell), Lord Osborne Beauclerk, who had bicycled from 

 London. He is a pleasant young man who has travelled much in Asia, 

 and has ideas about horses, poetry and ethnology. He professed him- 

 self in a great hurry as it was late and he wanted to get on to Wake- 

 hurst for dinner, so he put me at once through a number of questions 

 on all these subjects. It was like being interviewed for the Press. I 

 showed him the stallions and gave him a copy of the ' Golden Odes.' 

 He says he will come again." [This was the beginning of a pleasant 

 and very constant friendship.] 



" 27th June. — Brailsford and his wife are here. A good book has 

 been sent me from America called ' Egypt and its Betrayal,' by one 

 Farman, who was Consul General for America in Egypt in Ismail's 

 time and till after the bombardment. It quite corroborates my ac- 

 count of the doings of the time. Things are going badly in Egypt. 

 They have been playing the fool and quarrelling with the Copts. The 

 Khedive has been in London the last few days, come over, Mark 

 Napier tells me, to raise money on mortgage. 



" Things in Persia also look badly. The Shah with the help of some 

 Russian officers lent him by the Russian Government, who have drilled 

 him a few hundred Cossacks, has effected a reactionary coup d'etat 

 at Teheran, breaking up the Mejliss, slaughtering the people and hang- 

 ing newspaper editors. This is the first fruits of Grey's treaty with 

 Russia and the King's visit to the Czar. Brailsford's opinion of Grey 

 is that it is more stupidity and ignorance with him than ill will. He 

 thinks he really believes in Russian promises. All the diplomacy is 

 done by Hardinge and the King, while Grey is their mouthpiece in the 

 House of Commons, having a fine presence and an impressive manner 



