24th.
No reciting, for any of the Classes, on Fridays, for the whole, Day. I wrote some Problems out of Ward1 to carry to Mr. Williams, next Monday Morning. After Prayers, I declaim’d, as it is term’d. Two Students every evening Speak from Memory, any Piece they chuse, if it be approved by the President. It was this Evening my turn, with the 2d. Abbot, and I spoke, from As you like it. All the world’s a stage &c. When I came to the description of the Justice, in fair round Belly with good Capon lined, Tutors and scholars, all laugh’d, as I myself, truly represented the Character. But the President did not move a feature of his face. And indeed I believe, it is no small matter, that shall extort a smile from him when he is before the College. This Afternoon I took from the Library, Montesquieu’s Reflections on the rise and fall of the Romans, and an Anacreon.2 The two elder Classes have a right, every second friday to take from the Library, each person three volumes, which he must return at the End of a fort’night.
1. John Ward, The Young Mathematician’s Guide. Being a Plain and Easie Introduction to the Mathematicks... with an Appendix of Practical Gauging, London, 1719, and other editions (, p. 92).
2. Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence, Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1759; Works of Anacreon, transl., with the original Greek, by Joseph Addison, London, 1735, and other editions (A Catalogue of the Library of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, 1830; , p. 12).