Windy and cool. At home all the morning. Afternoon, Ride. Evening at the Mansion.

Our season has been by no means an agreeable one. An alternation of rainy and cold and boisterously windy weather make the external pleasures of country life much less than usual. We had a slight frost this morning.

I finished the substitute of the old Sheet for Tucker and then went down to the other house for the purpose of examining old papers. I am now out of occupation and this will not do for me. Indeed I suspect it is already the secret of the reaction that I feel upon my health. My doubt now is whether I will undertake the proposed plan by my father or devote myself to something else. In the meantime I am endeavouring to get rid of a parcel of papers that are embarrassing while left unexamined.

Continued Lessing’s Treatise upon Fable. He is too acute a critic, it becomes tiresome. He finds fault with every author for defining fable imperfectly when after all an imperfect definition is not a serious evil for such a thing. A fable is the illustration by anecdote of some moral lesson. That’s enough. Nobody fails to understand what a fable is who ever read one. Your acute critics get to be over verbal disputants.

After dinner, Lucan 8. 330–616. This book which gives the fate of Pompey is perhaps the best for vigor and harmony. I took a long ride accompanied by my Wife and we enjoyed the country round Milton much. Evening at the Mansion.