Fine morning but warm. Read for an hour Aristotle’s Poetics, which is a kind of original fountain supplying the ideas of the whole world upon a certain subject. To be such an Author is worth while. But the days are gone. Men spread their ideas more widely and less to the purpose. At the Office. Engaged nearly all my time in writing a second Number of my remarks upon Otis’s Oration. My father’s man Kirk called to let me know my father was in town, but owing to the length of his engagement and my going to the Athenaeum as well as for a few other things I did not see him.

Returned home and in the Afternoon read as usual a portion of the Letters to Lentulus. Among others a famous long one in which he endeavours to justify his reconciliation with the Triumvirate, and his defence of Vatinius. I detest the moral of this Letter. I believe it is all sophistry from beginning to end, and though done with great ability and ingenuity, it deserves no Quarter from a moral man.

Evening at home with my Wife. We had a slight shower. Sidney Brooks and his Wife came in late and passed an hour. They had just come from Nahant and are going back tomorrow. I read some of Grimm whose constant snarling I am tired of, and the Spectator.