Christmas day. A mild and cloudy day which ended in settled rain. I amused myself with Voltaire’s Correspondence. The letters to the Marquis d’Argental are particularly good. Then out. But as there was no fire made in the Office, I took a walk and then to the Athenaeum to take a look at the periodical literature of the time of which I have lately lost sight. Found nothing but some letters of Coleridge which only satisfy me more that he was not the great mind he tried to imagine himself. When a man is always complaining of the poverty of language in the face of Shakespeare who never had studied it, and of Milton who had, the inference is rather against himself than the object of his complaint.

Returned home and read Persius finishing the sixth Satire. I propose now to take up the prose writers, and as one of the principal, 292Livy’s History. This will be a luxury instead of the task. Juvenal and Persius are both hard authors not so much from the construction as the perpetual allusion to the local customs which require a thorough acquaintance with the economy of the people. Afternoon, at work upon my former undertaking of copying out passages from my Grandfather’s papers. This whole business goes on so very languidly I fear it will never be accomplished. I will resume the business of assorting and binding after New Year.

Evening, To the Play with my Wife. Massaniello. This part of the Fisherman by Mr. Wood. Princess Elvira, Mrs. Wood. Pietro, Mr. Brough. The music of this piece is prodigiously brilliant. The Choruses are very magnificent and were better executed to night than I have ever known them. But the female character is not one for display, and he though generally a better performer did not give the same effect to the last scene as Mr. Sinclair used to.1 The House was crowded. A ludicrous farce before the Opera—My fellow Clerk.