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The author perceives nuances of Abigail Adams' character in the occasional errors she makes in readily quoting John Milton. Rather than giving the observer a reason to quibble, they are evidence that she had absorbed Milton's works enough to feel comfortable quoting them from memory.
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intellect
openness
perception
perspective
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David McCullough |
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Many of them were familiar from childhood with the fables of La Fontaine. Or they had read Voltaire or Racine or Moliere in English translations. But that was about the sum of any familiarity they had with French literature. And none, of course, could have known in advance that the 1830s and '40s in Paris were to mark the beginning of the great era of Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand, and Baudelaire, not to say anything of Delacroix in pain..
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David McCullough |
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2a962ec
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Paris was a place where one wanted to walk, where to walk--flaner, as the French said--was practically a way of life. ("Ah! To wander over Paris!" wrote Honore de Balzac. "What an adorable and delectable existence is that! Flanerie is a form of science, it is the gastronomy of the eye."
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David McCullough |
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b7ee90a
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But let us not forget, too, that it was John Adams who nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. It was John Adams who insisted that Jefferson be the one to write the Declaration of Independence. And it was President John Adams who made John Marshall chief justice of the Supreme Court. As a casting director alone, he was brilliant. Abigail
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David McCullough |
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a385344
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Remember all men would be tyrants if they could - from a poem by Daniel Defoe, as written by Abigail to John Adams
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David McCullough |