12 August 1748 – 18 August 1748

In riding to Newcastle, I finished the tenth Iliad of Homer. What an amazing genius had this man! To write with such strength of thought and beauty of expression when he had none to go before him! And what a vein of piety runs through his whole work, in spite of his pagan prejudices! Yet one cannot but observe such improprieties intermixed as are shocking to the last degree.