Read it through once

The _Diary_ contains a series of notes chiefly upon the appearance but also in a few cases upon the character of other ladies at Court. Her remarks on Lady Izumi Shikibu, one of the greatest poets whom Japan has produced, are of interest: ‘Izumi Shikibu is an amusing letter-writer; but there is something not very satisfactory about her. She has a gift for dashing off informal compositions in a careless running-hand; but in poetry she needs either an interesting subject or some classic model to imitate. Indeed it does not seem to me that in herself she is really a poet at all.