I find I have omitted a day. These two records must therefore be transposed in future readings.1 The weather was misty but no rain. I went to the Office, when it soon after began, and continued all day. My time was much taken up in paying off Accounts and settling my Affairs which I did pretty satisfactorily. I was also overlooking the Workmen in the House in the rear, this together with the finishing my Letter to my Father and copying it2 engrossed every part of my disposable time before dinner, so rapidly does it go. I do not know that I ought to blame myself but it does seem to me as if I could not employ all the time I ought to and yet bring about so little. I felt pretty well satisfied too, with this day, for little of the time had dropped through my hands.

Returned home and in the afternoon occupied myself in copying out my Essay with great alterations, though I feel now as if I should not print it but merely write for my own satisfaction, as an attempt to handle a subject in a continued manner. I had the afternoon and evening all to myself and continued busy in my Study, Abby having gone out, to pass the evening with Julia Gorham. I finished the Oedipe of Corneille and began reading Lord Kaimes.3 The Oedipe of Corneille is remarkable as displaying the contrast of the French character with that of the Greeks. The subject is handled by the latter in the stern spirit of ancient liberty, the former on the contrary, introduce the gallantries of love, and the courtly maxims which are the results of a spirit of haughty despotism. Voltaire did much to set this matter in it’s proper light subsequently, and by doing so damned this play, but after all the French are not proper subjects to understand the spirit with which the ancient Greeks wrote. Few of them are not something tainted with the radical foibles of the Nation. In commencing Lord Kaimes I am adding to my burdens, but I feel convinced that it is essential to me to read him.