Pessimise

The pessimising and desponding tone of the Tory Foreign Minister's correspondence, in the early part of 1859, can hardly be read without a shudder.

Glancing at the developments of individualities in memberdom, it may be said that Lord Elebo availed himself of the last appearance in the House of the Army Estimates to repeat the attacks on the physical condition of the men of the service which he had so elaborately made a week or two ago; and he pessimised on the subject, if possible, with the same exaggeration as before.

Certainly it was not in the interest of the Government to come forward and propose any additional taxation if they could, with consistency and with satisfaction to heir own consciences, have avoided it, and he did not think his two previous Budgets showed that it was in his nature to pessimise or to take desponding views.

Pessimists, no more than poets, love each other, and even when they work together it is one thing to pessimise congenially with an ancient and tried associate who is also a butt, and another to be pessimised over by an inexperienced junior, even though the latter's college career may have included more exhibitions—nay, even pot-huntings—than one's own.

Said very likely [...] the war means that the barbarian will gradually freeze out culture. Nor have we improved. Tom [James Joyce] & Saxon [Sydney-Turner] said the Greeks were more thoroughly civilised. The slave was not so much a slave as ours are. Clive also pessimised—saw the light going out gradually. So I flung some rather crazy theories into the air.