10 February 1772 – 16 February 1772

I casually took a volume of what is called, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Sentimental! what is that? It is not English: he might as well say continental. It is not sense. It conveys no determinate idea, yet one fool makes many. And this nonsensical word (who would believe it?) has becomes a fashionable onel However, the book agrees full well with the title; for one is as queer as the other. For oddity, uncouthness, and unlikeness to all the world beside, I suppose, the writer is without a rival.

In returning, I read a very different book, published by an honest Quaker, on that execrable sum of all villanies, commonly called the slave trade. I read of nothing like it in the heathen world, whether ancient or modern; and it infinitely exceeds, in every instance of barbarity, whatever Christian slaves suffer in Mohammedan countries.

I began to execute a design, which had long been in my thoughts, to print as accurate an edition of my works, as a bookseller would do. Surely I ought to be as exact for God's sake, as he would be for money.