'Nov. 27. Advent Sunday. I considered that this day, being the beginning
of the ecclesiastical year, was a proper time for a new course of
life. I began to read the Greek Testament regularly at 160 verses every
Sunday. This day I began the Acts.
'In this week I read Virgil's Pastorals. I learned to repeat the Pollio
and Gallus. I read carelessly the first Georgick.'
Such evidences of his unceasing ardour, both for 'divine and human
lore,' when advanced into his sixty-fifth year, and notwithstanding his
many disturbances from disease, must make us at once honour his spirit,
and lament that it should be so grievously clogged by its material
tegument.