Thursday. Sept. 1.
Th’o today is the 1st. of September & a holiday,[1] I do not go to Malvern, for it rains most past-bearingly. If I had my own way quite, I wd. go, rain or shine: but, as it is, .. I will comfort myself with Goldoni & Greek. Will there be a letter today? There may—& with an account of my dear Sam,—for the arrival of the packet was in yesterday’s paper.[2] I am uncomfortably presentimental about the letters today: & feel the more angry with the rain, as something may prevent my visiting my dear friend tomorrow. I feel as if it may.
I dreamt last night that I was married, just married; & in an agony to procure a dissolution of the engagement. Scarcely ever considered my single state with more satisfaction than when I awoke!— I never will marry: but if I ever were to do such a foolish thing, I hope I may not feel as I did last night!—“Of such STUFF
My dreams are made!—”[3]
Oh! I HOPE there may be no letters today!!--
No letters: & no paper also. What can be the cause of that? I am in a μαντι κακων[4] humour. In an idle one besides: for I have been lounging over Goldoni half the day— I looked over l’avventuriere onorato, & il vero amico, & la vedova scaltra.[5] They are all very artificial, & defective in interest & unity: & do not show much digging in the Attic salt mines.[6] I have been, besides, wearing “my brains upon my sleeve
For Dawes to peck at.”[7]
& transcribing some of his emendations into my Homer, not my Homer the great, but Heyne’s Homer, which I value so much because Mr. Boyd gave it to me on his birthday. Kidd has certainly managed his notes very badly, in a straggling Barker-like way,[8] and Dawes does not write in an interesting manner on the digamma subject. Therefore I wont teaze myself anymore with it. I will take the book back to Mr. Boyd tomorrow, & say my say, & beg him to say his. By the bye, shall I go tomorrow? Will it rain or not?— Oh I hope not!--
I wrote to Papa this morning before breakfast; & my letter was an accompaniment to two brace of partridges.
Hœc hactenus!--[9]
By the bye I hate those words. I quoted them once before---.
1. As this was not a family birthday, the holiday was presumably owing to 1 September being the opening of the partridge shooting season.
2. The Times, 30 August 1831, announced the arrival at Falmouth, on 26 August, of the packet Cygnet with mails; she had sailed from Jamaica on 21 July.
3. Tempest IV.i.156–158.
4. “Prophesying ill.”
5. Three of Goldoni’s comedies, first performed in 1751, 1750. and 1748 respectively.
6. Attic salt: elegant and delicate wit (RE).
7. Following her struggles with Dawes’s Miscellanea Critica, a play on: “But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at” (Othello I.i.65–66).
8. i.e., in the manner of Boyd’s friend, Edmund Henry Barker.
9. “Enough of this.” (Cicero, “Epistularum ad Atticum,” XVI, 6, LCL–C, III, 390–391.)
