Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1830-07-30
The morning opened with continued rain. This is the fifth day that we have not seen the Sun. A fact neither useful nor agreeable to us apparently. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Frothingham decided to go to town, so that I thought I would not. For some days back I have not felt very well from some cause or other which it is beyond me to divine and it did not seem to me altogether prudent to hazard the damp without a coat. Mr. Frothingham having today a use for his and I not possessing here any of my own.
I finished the Volume of Batteux upon Oratorical style, and the remarks upon Historical and Epistolary Style which are very good. The translation of the Oration for Archias though good in its way only explains the more clearly the deficiency of the French language and 291the fullness of the Latin.1 Cicero was a master, and I must sit down when I get home and read his works as I have all along intended. They are all worth study.
But my reading now has come to an end here at Medford, so that for the remainder of the day I was obliged to recur to the Edinburgh Review most of which I read. This number has nothing in it very remarkable. A criticism upon a wretched poem which never had any merit though a good deal of popularity.2 The evening was taken up in reading Mr. Stewart’s answer to Mr. Channing’s election Sermon.3 He is an orthodox writer upon a subject not over interesting, but he handles his pen powerfully enough to take with one.4
Charles Batteux, Oraison de Cicéron pour le poëte Archias (Latin and French), Paris, 1763.
Apparently, the reference is to the anti-American Vision of Judgment by Robert Southey which is discussed at some length and unfavorably in the course of a review of Southey’s new poem, Sir Thomas More; or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (Edinburgh Review, 50:528–565 [Jan. 1830]).
A week before there had been published A Letter to William E. Channing, D.D. on the Subject of Religious Liberty by Moses Stuart (Boston Patriot, 24 July, p. 3, col. 1). Stuart was a professor in the Andover Theological Seminary, and the pamphlet was part of the continuing attack emanating from the Seminary against the Unitarian wing of Boston Congregationalism of which Channing was a leader (Winsor, Memorial History of Boston
, 3:474).
Thus apparently in MS; the meaning may be “to take one with him.”