Later Diplomatic Career

August 1809 - August 1817

page 299

page 300

9 October 1811
adams-john10 Neal Millikan Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory
299

9. We were highly favoured in the weather, for the removal of our furniture; the three days upon which we sent the boats having passed entirely without rain— This day there was a constant rain from noon untill our dining hour, which confined me altogether to the house— I employed it in putting up my books and arranging my papers— I scarcely wrote at all; but read more than usual— Finished the third Volume of the Bibliothéque des Philosophes— It contains a Dedication to the king by Dacier—a Discourse upon Plato; with some Account of the motives for the Translation— A Life of Plato— Dissertations upon the Doctrine—the Style and Method,—and the Interpreters and Commentators of Plato— The first Alcibiades, or concerning Human Nature; and the second Alcibiades, or upon Prayer— Voltaire says that Dacier was a mule loaded with all antiquity— There appears to be neither criticism nor philosophy in his own writings— I have not the means of judging of the merit of his translations; but they are in no high repute— It is strange that a man who had spent so much time and taken such pains to understand Plato himself, and to make him understood by others, should have caught so little of his Spirit himself— He has a profound Admiration both of Plato and of Socrates; but it is the admiration of a slave, or of an inferior being— His great anxiety seems to be, to make Saints of them— Yet I am under obligations to him for making me acquainted with Socrates and Plato;—whom I have either not Greek enough, or not leisure enough to read in the original— I read the first Alcibiades at Auteuil in 1784. or 1785. and it has been useful to me— The second Alcibiades might be called the Vanity of Human Wishes— It lays down the same principles, and uses the same Arguments as Juvenal and Dr Johnson have thrown into the poetical and satyrical form— The form of prayer recommended by Socrates is more comprehensive than that of Juvenal, and contains the substance of a part of the Lord’s prayer— The process of the Socratic reasoning is slow; sometimes too diffuse; and too uniform in the manner.— Cicero gives some importance to all the personages of his Dialogues— Plato has but one personage; all the rest are automata— I read also several Articles in the Edinburgh Review; and among the rest that upon the philosophical Essays of Dugald Stewart, published at Edinburgh in 1810— The whole Article is curious and highly interesting; but there is one part of it which gave me a mingled sensation of surprize, pleasure and mortification— It is a train of reasoning on the subject of etymology, and figurative language so similar to that of my Lectures 30. 31. and 32. that it would be difficult for a third person, reading both not to suspect one to be a plagiarism from the other—the whole page 198 of the Review (N. 33. for Novr: 1810) is so much like pages 274 and 275. of my second Volume that they seem almost copied from one another.— I was surprized to find opinions and even some of the forms of expression which I had thought entirely my own, belonging as much to another writer as to myself. 300I was pleased to find such a coincidence between my own Sentiments and those of so distinguished a writer as Dugald Stewart— And I was mortified to find myself not alone in what I considered as among the few original parts of my book, and upon which my Vanity has often flattered me as with a discovery— I was somewhat unwell this day.

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