1726 July 5 (Tuesday). I was about various Concerns but I was very faint and incapable of Business. I was at Mather Byles’s[1] and he show’d me (at my Request) his Poem to Mr. Dowding on his Verses of Eternity, Sent in a Letter to Sir Byles. This Poem was published in the Courant No. _____.[2] He repeated his own and Mr. Adams’s[3] Poems on Captain Winslow[4] deceas’d with all which I was very well pleas’d. I was at various places but I was not well in Either. I was very much afflicted with the Oppressions at my Stomach. I was with Dr. [Louis] Dalhonde.
[1]Mather Byles (Harvard 1725), poet, humorist, minister of the Hollis St. Church, Boston, 1732-1776. Sibley, VII, 464-493. For information on Byles’ poetry see the Introduction by C. Lennart Carlson in the 1940 facsimile edition of Byles’ Poems on Several Occasions (Boston, 1744).
[2]The New England Courant, No. 237, published in Boston. Dowding may have been Joseph, b. 1702.
[3]John Adams (Harvard 1721), poet, minister and classmate of Parkman. Sibley, VI, 424-427.
[4]Captain Josiah Winslow (Harvard 1721) was the commander of a fort on St. George’s River in Maine, and was killed in an Indian engagement April 30, 1724. Sibley, VI, 587-589. Byles’ poem was printed in his Poems on Several Occasions (Boston, 1744), and Adams’ in his Poems on Several Occasions (Boston, 1745).