Heavy rain all day. Distribution as usual. Evening at home.

We had more rain today than we have experienced for a long time back. And it was acceptable both to the farmer and the citizen. I went on vigorously with my occupation and made great headway with Burr. The facility with which I write in the morning is among the curious things.

Home to Ajax which I began. In making a play out of the madness of a man who kills sheep while he thinks himself slaughtering men, Sophocles assumes for tragedy much the same basis which Cervantes takes for ridicule in Don Quixote.

After dinner, finished the first Dissertation of Spanheim de praestantia et usu numismatum veterum which is rather about the former than the latter.1 Continued Chevalier also, who treats more of France than America in his later letters. Evening at home reading one of Theodore Hook’s silly novels,2 and finished Mr. Ward’s Fielding which I think poor.