Friday. Jany 20
Finished the Eumenides. The choruses are in Æschylus’s best manner: but the conception of Orestes’ trial, is more Lucianic than sublime.[1] So Arabel is not coming home. A bore. I dont know what in the world to do without her,—& the most provoking part of the business is, that I dare say she wd. at least as soon be here as there. Daisy & Sette to the Bartons, for pigeon shooting. The most cowardly mean-spirited, no-spirited amusement possible. If it had been a tiger hunt!--
Henry dined there, & rode back by himself at twelve o clock at night. Minny in a flustration, which was a frustration. Nonsense.
No letter from Papa!—
I have now read thro’, regularly thro’, every play of Æschylus. He is a wonderful writer; & no one ever thought like him, or expressed his thoughts like him, from the beginning of the creation until this 1832—
By the bye, Papa’s not writing is almost as wonderful, as Æschylus.
Read two Olympic odes,—& one, not a short one.
1. Lucian (ca. A.D. 120–200), Greek satirist and humorist. Orestes was acquitted of murder by the deciding vote of Athena, as the jury of ten cast equal votes for and against him (LCL-A, II, 322–347, lines 566–777).