Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
We feel, my dear Sir the Want of your Society on sundays and hope
the Weather and Roads will soon bless us with it. Never at the Age of 18 when I was a
great Reader and Admirer of Tragedies did I take more pleasure in them, than I have
lately in Reading La Harps […]ent of Corneille Racine Voltaire Moliere La Fontaine
&c1 did not mean to express a Wish
that you should make a serious study of Greek & Italian at present: But Dr Kippis’s method of reading a few 185 Paragraphs every day, if it were only a Part of a Chapter in the New Testament would
keep alive what you have.2 Your
Professional Learning will soon come. I am delighted with your Experiments. hope you
will state them in Writing and communicate them to the Accademy.3 For myself I never was more busy. I am impatient
to read La Harp’s History of the Resurrection of Epicureanism in the 18 Cent.— Oh! how I
enjoyed his basting of Diderot.4
My Love to yours
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “J. Q. Adams Esq.” Some loss of text where the seal was removed.
Jean François de La Harpe offered critiques of the literature of
Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Voltaire, Molière, and Jean de La Fontaine in his Lycée; ou, Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne. He
devoted more than a volume to Voltaire’s tragedies and detailed analyses of Racine’s
tragedies to show that love was unfairly characterized as a weakness by Corneille.
JA’s translations of passages from Lycée
on Racine and Voltaire are in the Adams Papers (M/JA/9, APM Reel 188) (Andrew Hunwick, “La Harpe:
The Forgotten Critic,” The Modern Language Review,
67:287–288 [April 1972]).
That is, Rev. Andrew Kippis, whom the Adamses had known in London
(vol. 7:155, 156; JA, Papers
, 20:169).
JQA wrote to JA on 2 March (Adams Papers) stating his aspirations to gain “a familiar and intimate acquaintance” with Greek and Italian but noting that his time was “engrossed by the pursuit of professional learning.” JQA also wrote that he and members of the Society for the Study of Natural Philosophy were engaged in electrical experiments on positive-negative attraction. Those experiments took place weekly between February and May, and on 19 March JQA lectured “on the subject of the electrical spark” (D/JQA/24, 9, 12, 18 Feb., 5, 12, 19, 26 March, 2, 9, 23, 30 April, 7 May, APM Reel 27).
La Harpe, in his profiles of classical figures in the early
volumes of Lycée; ou, Cours de littérature ancienne et
moderne, criticized Denis Diderot’s treatment of Seneca as “pêle-mêle” and
lacking precision and exactitude (vol. 3, part 2, p. 161–167, 261–268, 303–309,
327–345). In the volumes on eighteenth-century philosophers that were published in
1804 and 1805, for which see
JA to JQA, [Feb.
1802], above, La Harpe questioned Diderot’s morals and blamed him in part
for the excesses of the French Revolution, dedicating more pages to him than to any
other philosopher (R. N. C. Coe, “The Fortunes of the Code de
la Nature between 1755 and 1848,” French Studies,
11:119, 120 [April 1957]).
JQA wrote to JA on 22 March, enclosing
a 12 Jan. letter from Rufus King to JA and accompanying documents that
discussed King’s negotiations regarding British depredations on U.S. shipping (both
Adams Papers). JQA wrote
again on 4 April (private owner, 2009), first letter, updating JA on his
accounts with Wilhem & Jan Willink and asking his father about his participation
in a 1777 maritime case in New Hampshire (JA, Legal Papers
, 2:378–395). JA
replied on 6 April 1802, confirming his participation (CSmH).