評論
打印
My mind stirred with the stirring times, and the characters round which the life of two contending nations centred seemed to move right before me. I wondered more and more, while Burke's masterly speech rolled on in mighty surges of eloquence, how it was that King George and his ministers could have turned a deaf ear to his warning prophecy of our victory and their humiliation. Then I entered into the melancholy details of the relation in which the great statesman stood to his party and to the representatives of the people. I thought how strange it was that such precious seeds of truth and wisdom should have fallen among the tares of ignorance and corruption.
我心潮起伏，在我面前，兩個生活在共同屋檐下的敵對民族似乎在朝著和解的道路上邁進。令我越來越不解的是，面對伯克那激昂澎湃而富于雄辯的演講，喬治國王和他手下的眾臣怎么可能充耳不聞，置我們的勝利和他們的恥辱于不顧呢？對于這位大政治家所持的黨派立場和人民的立場之間的關系，我在隨后的研讀中進行了深入的思考。我覺得，像這樣一粒如此珍貴，蘊涵著真理和智慧的種子，竟然被湮沒在無知和腐敗的稗子中，這的確是一件很奇怪的事。
In a different way Macaulay's "Life of Samuel Johnson" was interesting. My heart went out to the lonely man who ate the bread of affliction in Grub Street, and yet, in the midst of toil and cruel suffering of body and soul, always had a kind word, and lent a helping hand to the poor and despised. I rejoiced over all his successes, I shut my eyes to his faults, and wondered, not that he had them, but that they had not crushed or dwarfed his soul. But in spite of Macaulay's brilliancy and his admirable faculty of making the commonplace seem fresh and picturesque, his positiveness wearied me at times, and his frequent sacrifices of truth to effect kept me in a questioning attitude very unlike the attitude of reverence in which I had listened to the Demosthenes of Great Britain.
無論從哪種角度來看，麥考雷寫的《塞繆爾·約翰遜的一生》都很吸引人。這位在克魯伯街上啃著面包的落魄男人令人同情，然而，即使在身體和靈魂遭受雙重磨難的情況下，他始終保持著一種友善的言行，還向貧窮無助的人伸出援手。我為他取得的成功而歡欣鼓舞，而對他的過失則視而不見——奇怪的是，盡管重壓纏身，但是種種壓力并沒有摧垮他的意志，那些瑕疵也無損于他的人格。麥考雷以其出色的文筆化腐朽為神奇，令生動的人物躍然紙上。他的信念偶爾也會讓我感到厭倦，但是他那為探尋真理而孜孜以求的精神，使我看待事物的態度變得更加理性了；同我聽到“大不列顛的狄摩西尼”雄辯演說后的敬畏之情相比，這是一種完全不同的感覺。
At the Cambridge school, for the first time in my life, I enjoyed the companionship of seeing and hearing girls of my own age.
在劍橋學習期間，我平生第一次沉浸在同學之間的友誼當中。當然，這些同學都是能看能聽，和我同齡的女孩子。
