28th September 1824

Wrote another chapter of my Life read a little in Grays Letters great favourites of mine they're the best letters I have seen & I consider Burns very inferior to all the collections I have met with tho they have gaind great praise they appear to me when I read them as the letters of a man who was looking further than his correspondent & straining after somthing fine till he forgets both his boast of independence is so often dwelt upon till it becomes tiresome & seems more like the despair of a dissapointed man than the content of a happy one