Alexander. N. B. The Greek authors whom I consulted, I read in Greek. I likewise read the twenty-first book of the Iliad, v. 1-135, and finished the second part of May, Journal des Savans, and Mém. de Trevoux. The first contains a better extract of the Dissertation sur l'Ecriture Hiéroglyphique than the Mémoires had given. I now see that the new system is absolutely indefensible. The second speaks of Histoire du Siècle d'Alexandre, par M. Linguet: I suspect that they speak too slightly of the book. However that may be, the author is certainly a man of genius, whom I should like to know.

15th. I read only that most contemptible performance the Vie du Marechal Duc de Belleisle, par M. de C****.

16th. I read the 21st book of the Iliad, v. 136-611, the end. 18th. I did nothing but go to church. The lessons were the 12th of 2 Samuel, and the 5th of St. John's Gospel, both of which I read in Greek.

23rd.—I finished the third volume of Le Clerc's Bibliothèque Universelle, which concludes the year 1686. It contains Explication Historique de la Fable d'Adonis. He thinks that Adonis, or Osiris, was the son of Hammon or Cham, and grandson of Cinyras, or Noah ; and that the incest of Myrrha with her father, was the discovery of Noah's nakedness by his children. But this interpretation is very far-fetched, and can only suit the followers of Ephemerus.— Bibliothèque Universelle des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques, par Dupin. Curious and impartial.-Life of Hai Ebn Yokhdan. A fine, though irregular, production of Arabian genius and philosophy.-The Works of Dr. Barrow. Barrow was as much of a philosopher as a divine could well be.-Commentaire Philosophique. The most useful work Bayle ever wrote, and the least sceptical.-Puffendorfii Commentarius de Rebus Suecicis. Exact, heavy, and partial.

24th. In order to get a clear idea of those oracles so often mentioned by Homer, and so essential a part of the Grecian religion, I read three dissertations of M. Hardion, inserted in the third volume of the Memoirs of the Academy upon the Oracle of Delphi, p. 137 -191; and some observations of M. de Valois, tom. iii. historical part, p. 73-79; and, drawn away by the affinity of the subject, I likewise read two dissertations of the same M. de Valois, upon the Amphictyons, the guardians of this temple, tom. iii. p. 191—228, and tom. v. p. 405–415.

25th. I read the history which M. de Valois has given us of the two sacred wars, which the Amphictyons decreed to avenge the sacrileges committed at Delphi, tom. vii. p. 201-239; tom. ix. p. 97-113, and tom. xii. p. 177-204. Besides the light that these pieces throw on the Greek religion, they are valuable for the knowledge they give us of that civil and religious bond of union in the Hellenic body, which for some ages rendered it invincible.

28th. I read the articles of Jupiter and Juno, in Bayle's Dictionary. That of Jupiter is very superficial. Juno takes up seventeen pages; but great part of it, as usual, very foreign to the purpose. A long enquiry when horns began to be an emblem of cuckoldom;

numberless reflections, some original, and others very trivial; and a learning chiefly confined to the Latin writers. When he doubted if Juno was really worshipped at Carthage, why did not he quote Minucius Felix? V. octav. p. 259, edit. Gronov. Upon the whole, I believe that Bayle had more of a certain multifarious reading, than real erudition. Le Clerc, his great antagonist, was as superior to him in that respect, as inferior in every other. I reviewed the first two hundred lines of the twenty-first book of the Iliad. There is great dignity of sentiment, and a calm sternness, in the answer of Achilles to the moving prayers of the unfortunate Lycaon.

29th. I reviewed the remaining four hundred lines of the twentyfirst book of the Iliad. The combat of Achilles and the Scamander is finely described. If Homer, when he speaks of the gods, does not rise in his sentiments, at least he does in his language and poetry. I likewise read some very sensible and curious observations of the Abbé de Fonterne, sur le Culte des Divinités des Eaux Histoire de l'Académie des Belles Lettres, tom. xii. p. 27-49. 30th. I read the twenty-second book of the Iliad, v. 1—515, the end.

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August 1st.-I read the lessons at church in Greek, viz. the thirteenth chapter of the first book of Kings, and the twenty-first chapter of St. John's Gospel. How very free a version the Septuagint is! for I imagine ours is a very literal one.

2nd. I reviewed the whole twenty-second book of the Iliad, in which the whole interest of the preceding books is wound up, in the lives of Hector and Achilles. Notwithstanding the reasons given by Mr. Pope, every reader of taste must be disgusted with Hector's flight. The true grounds of courage were not well understood, and poetry had not learnt the art of raising an hero without debasing his enemies. The fears and lamentations of Hector's family are beautifully pathetic; but I think that Andromache is rather too much the mother, and too little the wife. As I am now entering upon the twenty-third book, which contains the funeral of Patroclus, I read the eight first chapters of the fourth book of Archbishop Potter's Grecian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 160-241, upon the Grecian Funerals. They contain a great fund of learning, without any useless digressions.

3rd.-I began M. de Burette's set of Dissertations in the Memoirs of the Academy, on the Gymnastics of the Ancients: they are learned and judicious, but too full of fruitless, and therefore frivolous, enquiries into the origin and etymology of every art. I read to-day only Observations générales sur la Gymnastique, Hist. tom. i. p. 89 -104; and first Mémoire sur la Danse, Mém. tom. i. p. 93-117. 4th. I read second Mémoire sur la Danse, tom. i. Mém. p. 117 -136; Mémoire sur la Sphoeristique, p. 137-153; and first Mémoire sur les Athlètes, p. 211-237.

5th. I read second and third Mémoires sur les Athlètes, p. 237 -291; and Mémoire sur la Lutte, tom. iii. Mém. p. 228-255. 6th. I read the several Mémoires of M. de Burette, sur le Pugilat, la Course, le Pentathle, et le Disque, tom. iii. Mém. p. 255

-343. Having finished these, I read three Dissertations of the Abbé Gedoyn, sur les Courses des Chevaux et des Chars, surtout aux Jeux Olympiques, tom. viii. p. 314-330; and 330-341; and tom. ix. Mém. p. 360-376; and a Mémoire of M. de la Barre, on the same subject; tom. ix. Mém. p. 376–397. Gedoyn is polite and curious, but somewhat pert and superficial. De la Barre is difficult to be understood, but is worth studying, for he is very ingenious as well as learned. There is a great dispute what was the length of the Olympic course for chariots. Burette makes it twentyfour stadia, or twelve revolutions of one stadium: Gedoyn, eight stadia, or one revolution of four stadia: De la Barre, forty-eight stadia, or six revolutions of four stadia: Mr. West, (v. West's Pindar, vol. ii. p. 135) forty-eight stadia, or twelve revolutions of two stadia. I have not room for their reasons; but I am of De la Barre's opinion. When one reads these Dissertations, one admires the active spirit of the Greeks, sensible to every species of entertainment and glory; who could at the same time, and with the same application, bring to perfection, dancing and philosophy, boxing and poetry.

7th.-I read the twenty-third book of the Iliad, v. 1—257.

8th. I read the twenty-third book of the Iliad, v. 257-897; and the articles of Lemnos, Hercules, and the greatest part of Helena, in Bayle. If Bayle wrote his dictionary to empty the various collections he had made, without any particular design, he could not have chosen a better plan. It permitted him everything, and obliged him to nothing. By the double freedom of a dictionary and of notes, he could pitch on what articles he pleased, and say what he pleased on those articles. When I consider all that Homer says of the isle of Lemnos, and the extensive trade it carried on, both with Phoenicia (Iliad, xxiii. v. 743) and with the Greek army before Troy (v. Iliad, lib. vii. v. 467-475, and lib. xxi. v. 40), I am amazed to see the more modern poets represent that habitation of the unfortunate Philoctetes, as an island totally desolate and uninhabited.

10th. I reviewed only the first hundred lines of the twenty-third book of the Iliad. The sullen grief into which Achilles sinks, is not less expressive of his character, than his violent rage in the preceding books. The apparition of Patroclus is the opening of a new world, of Homer's creation.

11th. I reviewed the next two hundred lines of the twenty-third book of the Iliad. This day I finished the Mémoires d'Anne d'Autriche, par Madame de Motteville, one of her greatest favourites. They are written in a natural, unaffected style; and it is a proof of the author's sincerity, that though she had a very high opinion of her mistress, the candour with which she relates facts, shows us Anne of Austria as she really was: a proud and silly woman, who abandoned herself to a favourite out of indolence, supported him through obstinacy, and began at last to hate him, when he began to affect an independence. There is perhaps no period of history for which we have better materials, than for the minority of Lewis XIV.

The fashion of memoir writing was very prevalent, and many of all ranks and all parties have left us accounts, both of those troubles and of their secret springs. The character of the French nation, neither soured by religion, nor constrained by slavery, appears with freedom and boldness; brave and inconstant; obsequious to the ladies; treating the greatest events with a careless gaiety; running into civil wars without principle, and supporting them without rancour or cruelty. None of these wars ever were founded on any settled plan of liberty; the princes and the noblesse made it only in hopes of obtaining (as they commonly did) advantageous conditions in the treaty of peace. The honest part of the parliament were affected only by present evils, and thought only of temporary reliefs. They inveighed against a new tax, and demanded the removal of a disagreeable minister. The only law of a durable kind which they ever planned, was in the nature of a habeas corpus bill: that every prisoner, in twenty-four hours after his confinement, should be interrogated, by the parliament, as to the nature of his crime. But they supported this salutary proposal very feebly; suffered the ministry to extend the term to six months, and at last neglected it so far, as not to have it ratified by the peace of Ruel. V. Mémoires, tom. ii. p. 139, 337, 363, and tom. iii. p. 51, &c. These Mémoires are printed at Amsterdam, 1723, in five volumes 12mo.

12th. I reviewed the remaining six hundred lines of the twentythird book of the Iliad. It is a fine picture of the manners of the heroic ages: the games celebrated at the funeral of Patroclus contain a great variety of both their civil and religious customs, related with a clearness and a circumstantialness very disagreeable to the taste of a true commentator. Indeed, the more I read the ancients, the more I am persuaded that the originals are our best commentators. In this article of ancient gymnastics (for instance), when I have read with care Homer, Pausanias, and some few more ancients, M. Burette has little to teach me, excepting perhaps what he may have picked up from some obscure passages of some obscure lexicographer. What I say is not, however, to proscribe the use, but to restrain the abuse, of modern critics. As to the poetical beauties of the twenty-third book, they are great and various. know of few better proofs of the fertility of Homer's invention, than the variety of natural incidents which he has introduced into the chariot-race. That of Menelaus and Antilochus is beautiful in the manners. I wish that I could say as much of the quarrel of Idomeneus and Ajax. I think, however, that the chariot-race bears no proportion to the rest, which indeed appears to a disadvantage, both by being placed after it and a little étranglé.

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13th. I read the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, v. 1–361. We returned to Beriton. I read the reign of King James I. in Hume's first volume of the Stuarts, with a view to Raleigh; and afterwards perused the sixth book of Virgil, and the system of Warburton upon it, in the first volume of his Divine Legation, and found many things to say, to explain the one, and destroy the other. 14th.—I think it was pretty well to read the twenty-fourth

book of the Iliad, v. 361-467, considering I was out from seven in the morning to ten at night.

15th. I read the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, v. 467-805, the end; and reviewed the first hundred and fifty lines of it. The saving Hector's body, and the appeasing Achilles' wrath, seems to be the great object both of heaven and earth, excepting of the implacable Juno. Indeed, the great attention of the gods towards Achilles, seems rather a fear of offending, than a desire of favouring him. The last sentiment would exalt the hero, the first would debase the gods, and be highly ridiculous even in the pagan mythology. I likewise read in Bayle the articles of Achillea, Achilles, Ajax Telamon, Ajax Oileus, Alcinoüs, Andromache, Amphitryon, and Alcmena; all, excepting Achilles, very short ones. Bayle is as exactly circumstantial in these important trifles, as Mezeriac himself. How could such a genius employ three or four pages, and a great apparatus of learning, to examine whether Achilles was fed with marrow only; whether it was the marrow of lions and stags, or that of lions only, &c.? Bayle does not, in my opinion, sufficiently esteem Homer.

16th. I reviewed the remaining six hundred lines of the twentyfourth and last book of the Iliad. The interview of Achilles and Priam is (in my opinion) superior to any part of the Iliad. It is at once the coup de théâtre and the tableau of Diderot. Nothing can be a more striking coup de théâtre than the unhappy monarch, who appears at once in the enemy's camp and at the feet of the murderer of his son. At the same time the various passions, and the fine philosophy that distinguishes the conversation between them, form a most beautiful tableau.

I have at last finished the Iliad. As I undertook it to improve myself in the Greek language, which I had totally neglected for some years past, and to which I never applied myself with a proper attention, I must give a reason why I begun with Homer, and that contrary to Le Clerc's advice. I had two, 1st, as Homer is the most ancient Greek author (excepting perhaps Hesiod) who is now extant; and as he was not only the poet, but the lawgiver, the theologian, the historian, and the philosopher, of the ancients, every succeeding writer is full of quotations from, or allusions to, his writings, which it would be difficult to understand without a previous knowledge of them. In this situation was it not natural to follow the ancients themselves, who always begun their studies by the perusal of Homer? 2ndly, No writer ever treated such a variety of subjects. As every part of civil, military, or economical life is introduced into his poems, and as the simplicity of his age allowed him to call every thing by its proper name, almost the whole compass of the Greek tongue is comprised in Homer. I have so far met with the success I hoped for, that I have acquired a great facility in reading the language, and treasured up a very great stock of words. What I have rather neglected is, the grammatical construction of them, and especially the many various inflections of the verbs. In order to acquire that dry but