Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 8
1839-04-10
Day fine. Time divided as usual. Evening Mr. Brooks.
I made another good morning’s work upon Burr today and begin to feel encouraged. There is nothing more curious in the world than the alternation of hope and fear in the labour of composition. While the mind is fresh and warm it is all hope, cooler moments make the defects glaring.
The Trachinians, the least pleasant of all the Tragedies of Sophocles which I have read. The character of Hercules is a mingled one of virtues and defects in which the latter too much predominate, and his death hardly produces sympathy because accompanied with so little heroism in dying.
Afternoon reading a Novel called Fielding by a man who has done better.1 He is over political and tory. Mr. Brooks spent an hour with us.
Robert Plumer Ward, Fielding, 3 vols., Phila., 1837. Ward’s earlier works included Tremaine, DeVere, and Sterling. However, CFA would seem to be alluding to his Historical Essay on the Revolution of 1688, 2 vols., London, 1838, and to his An Enquiry into the Foundation and History of the Law of Nations in Europe, 2 vols., Dublin, 1795. JQA’s copy of the latter is in MQA.