Prayers and Meditations.
��To-morrow To Mrs. Thrale To write to Hector. To Dr. Taylor.
2,1. I went to Mrs. Thrale. Mr. Cox * and Paradise met me at the door and went with me in the coach. Paradise's loss 2 . In the evening wrote to Hector 3 . At night there were eleven visitants. Conversation with Mr. Cox. When I waked I saw the penthouses covered with snow.
22. I spent the time idly. Mens turbata. In the afternoon it snowed. At night I wrote to Taylor about the pot 4 , and to Hamilton about the Fcedera 5 .
23. I came home, and found that Desmoulins 6 had while
��even affected me. I was talking to Lady Charlotte Lindsay, the daughter of Lord North, about the apartments, when she said with a good deal of emotion, " This is an interesting visit to me. I have never been in this house for fifty years. It was here that I was born ; I left it a child when my father fell from power in 1782 ; and I have never crossed the threshold since.'" Trevelyan's Macaulay, ed. 1877, i. 299.
1 Mr. Cox was a solicitor. It was at his house in Southampton Build ings, Chancery Lane, that Burke and Johnson had argued with too much warmth over the management of the defence of Baretti on his trial for murder. ' Burke and I,' said Johnson, ' should have been of one opinion if we had had no audience.' Life, iv. 324. It was at the same house about thirteen years earlier that had taken place Jeremy Bentham's
- first conference with Dr. Markham,'
the Headmaster of Westminster, afterwards Archbishop of York. ' It was,' said Bentham, ' an awful meet ing with three reverend doctors of divinity at once, in a large room, to whom a trembling lad was introduced, who had been talked of as a prodigy.' Bentham's Works, x. 27. See also ib., p. 29, for the disquiet caused the
��boy by ' a tip ' (to use his own word) of five guineas from Cox.
2 ' John Paradise was born at Salo- nichi, brought up at Padua, and by far the greatest part of his life resided at London ; was passionately fond of learned men, and opened his house to all descriptions of them.' Annual Register, 1795, ii. 49. See Life t iv. 364. A very large estate belonging to him in America ' had been attached by an order of the United States, who had threatened its confiscation unless the owner appeared in person to claim it.' Jones, the Orientalist, was on the point of sailing with him to America as his legal adviser, but the voyage was abandoned through Paradise's irresolution. Teignmouth's Jones, p. 247 ; Johnstone's Parr, i. 84-6.
3 Life, iv. 147.
4 This letter is not in print. On July 8 he wrote to Taylor : ' Have you settled about the silver coffee pot ? is it mine or Mrs. Fletcher's ? I arn yet afraid of liking it too well.' Letters, ii. 262.
5 William Gerard Hamilton. The Foedera was no doubt the copy of Rymer's work, which Johnson ' sold on the 28th for Davies.' Davies had failed as a bookseller. Life, iii. 223.
6 Ante, p. 88.
I was
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