John Adams to John Quincy Adams, February 1802
John Adams to John Quincy Adams
[February 1802]1
Dear Sir
I have been confined, with a cold for three Weeks and the family have been generally affected in the same Way: We have not heard from yours for Some time. I long to see you all: but the Weather and the roads will keep Us, at a distance I fear for Some days if not weeks. I have read Seven Volumes of De la Harpe in course, and the last seven I have run through and Searched but cannot find what I chiefly wanted, His Philosophy of the 18 Century from the Beginning to the End—that revival of the ineffable Nonsense of Epicurus as related by Lucretius not as explained by himself in his Letter in Diogenes Laertius.2 I am in love with La Harpe. I knew not there was Such a Man left.— If I had read this Work at 20 years of Age, it would have had, I know not what effect.— If it had not made me a Poet or Philosopher it certainly would not have permitted me, to be a public Man. I never read any Writer in my Life, with whom I so universally agreed in Poetry, Oratory History, Philosophy, Morality and Religion. I find him too perfectly persuaded as I have been for forty years, that Greece & Italy are our Masters in all Things and that Greek & Italian are the most important Languages to study— My Love to L. & G. your / affectionate and respectful Father
John Adams
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “J. Q. A.”
1. The dating of this letter is based on JQA’s 2 March reply, for which see JA to JQA, 8 March, and note 3, below.
2. In 1799 Jean François de La Harpe began publishing his sweeping sixteen-volume work of literary criticism, Lycée; ou, Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne. In vol. 1:vi he noted that eighteenth-century philosophers would be the focus of later volumes, drawing from lectures he delivered on the subject in 1797. Those volumes, numbered 15 and 16, were published in 1804 and 1805, respectively. Three of Epicurus’ letters are preserved in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, but his ideas were also propagated by Lucretius in his didactic poem De rerum natura, two English translations of which are in JA’s library at MB, dated 1714 and 1743 (Andrew Hunwick, “La Harpe: The Forgotten Critic,” The Modern Language Review, 67:283 [April 1972]; Daniel Brewer, “Political Culture and Literary History: La Harpe’s Lycée,” Modern Language Quarterly, 57:179–180 [June 1997]; ; ).