Philip Hone

A diarist of the early-19th-century American era, cited in James Traub’s biography John Quincy Adams as a contemporary witness to Adams’s intellect and reputation. Hone’s diary supplies two of the book’s vivid character sketches of Adams. On Adams’s encyclopedic mind, Hone wrote that he “has probed deeply into the arcana of all sciences, understands and can explain all subjects, from the solar system down to the construction of a tooth-pick. He has the Holy Scripture at his fingertips, knows every line of Shakespeare, can recite Homer in the original Greek.”

His other quoted passage is a more balanced eulogy: “Thus has ‘a great man fallen in Israel’ — in many respects the most wonderful man of the age… perfect in knowledge, but deficient in practical results.” Hone judged Adams “pure and incorruptible, but too irascible to lead men’s judgment” — admired and instructive when he spoke, yet making “no converts to his opinion,” his presidential desire to avoid party influence ultimately costing him the favor of all parties.

Context: Philip Hone (1780–1851) was a wealthy New York merchant and one-term mayor of New York City (1826–1827) whose detailed diary, kept from 1828 until his death, is a celebrated primary source on the social, political, and cultural life of the early American republic.

Where this appears

• John Quincy Adams — quoted as a contemporary diarist for two character portraits of Adams: his encyclopedic learning and a balanced posthumous assessment (“perfect in knowledge, but deficient in practical results”)