it's hard not to be envious of su-lin sometimes - i mean, the girl gets to read nesbit - for work! i think, if i didn't want to be a medieval or renaissance person, i might think of going in for victorian, although it would be for the poetry and prose, not the novels. i like the - whole idea of - empire - both its gradual cosmopolitan influences on england, and the poignancy of the approaching end, setting suns and so on, and the sense of - anxiety and failure, culture and anarchy, crisis of faith, poetry vs science, doomed epic enterprise, elevation of personal relations. and i like the children's lit - girls' stories - very charming, although perhaps i would want to read them and not work with them? talking to su-lin got me reading treasure seekers for a good while before i rescued myself.


and i can't help wanting to appropriate this noel doggerel, after byron:


the assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
and the way he came down was awful, i'm told.
but it's nothing to the way my advisors will come down
if i don't write more pages but continue to clown.