Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 8
1838-08-13
The air was clear and it was warm today but not oppressive. I went to town instead of my regular day, tomorrow, because the Probate Court proposes to meet at Quincy tomorrow and I wish to attend to poor Thomas Adams’s affairs. My time was taken up in a variety of Commissions which kept me going pretty steadily from the moment of arrival until that of departure. This was somewhat fatiguing as it involved the walk over a pretty large space of ground. Home.
Afternoon, Lucretius who writes vigorously upon a subject too 93crabbed for Poetry. Bayle, and the last volume of Lockhart which is interesting from it’s melancholy tone. The great charm of Scott is to be found in that of Terence’s line, “Homo sum; nihil humani alienum a me puto.”1 Evening, lady visitors but we spent an hour notwithstanding at the Mansion. Louisa seven years old this day. Heaven be praised.
That is, “I am a man, and nothing that is human is uninteresting to me.” The passage, slightly altered by CFA, is from Terence’s play Heautontimoroumenos, I, 1, 25. CFA, along with his brothers, had studied this and Terence’s five other comedies at school in England in 1816 and, at the same time, been the beneficiary of extensive notes on them in letters from JA. In 1834, on rereading the plays, he entered JA’s comments and translations of selected passages, including the present one as translated above, in his own copy of the London, 1825, edn. now in MQA. See vol. 5:xviii, 265–269.