Diary of John Quincy Adams, volume 2
The weather was pleasant. Townsend rode, this day. I pass'd the evening with him: and found Miss Knight at Mrs. Hooper's. After having dismiss'd two or three inconstant suitors, she is 381now address'd by a Mr. Gregory from Boston, to whom she will probably soon be united.
Such a character may be esteemed; it may likewise be beloved, for she has had more than one Lover; but their unsteadiness may possibly derive some excuse from this very disposition of her's: for my own part, I never could conceive such sentiments with respect to her, as would enable me to be inconstant.
This stanza and the one recorded in the entry for 8 April (below) were later incorporated in “A Vision.” This work, begun as early as 30 Jan. 1787 but not completed until June 1790, became a satirical sketch of nine young women whom JQA knew during his years in Newburyport. It remained unpublished until Dec. 1839, when Brother Jonathan, the weekly edition of the New York Evening Tattler, printed it from an MS copy. Later the poem was published in JQA's Poems of Religion and Society, Auburn and Buffalo, N.Y., 1853, and Currier's Newburyport
, 2:541–547. The only known MS copy of the work in JQA's hand is in M/JQA/28, Adams Papers, Microfilms, Reel No. 223. Upon rereading the printed version in 1839, JQA regarded it as an unequaled effort. “As a Poet I have never surpassed it,” he wrote; “My summit level as a Statesman, Orator, Philosopher and Proser is of about the same elevation” (William Cranch to JQA, 10 June 1790, Adams Papers; JQA, Diary, 25, 28 Dec. 1839,
Memoirs
, 10:176–177).
I received two or three Letters for Little, and after finishing the day at the office, I went and delivered them. He went with me and pass'd the evening with Townsend: Mr. Morland came in to wait on Miss Knight home; but she preferr'd staying a day or two longer where she was. Mr. Cutler was an hour or two with us. Sometime after ten I came home.