I remained very quietly fixed at home today. Passed my morning which went off very rapidly in reading Schiller. I accomplished ten pages being the whole of the Account of the Execution of Counts Egmont and Horn. It is easy and very interesting. This seems like progress in my German. Read also the little volume of Horace Walpole’s Reminiscences,1 a pleasant little book which I have gone over several times with much gratification. Very desultory and perhaps for that reason more agreeable to me.

Afternoon, Edinburgh Review upon the state of French Literature.2 This and the Quarterly join in expressing their opinion of its unnatural state. The taste is for the horrible and the extravagant, for the unnatural and the infidel, for the disorganizing and levelling. Ovid, finished the first book of the Art of Love, and the first volume of my edition. Mr. Brooks dined in town. Quiet evening. Life of Mr. Jay.