dress, which, by an odd series of accidents, has fallen into your possession. The chambers I then occupied, (for I changed my local situation in the College not long afterwards,) were upon the two pair of stair's floor, on the further corner of the inner quadrangle, on the right hand as you enter into it from the outer door. I was dressing to go down to dinner in the hall, at half an hour after 12, in those days the hour in that, and most of the other Colleges, though in some it was as early as eleven, when I heard a rap at my door, went to it, opened it, and to my no small confusion, (for my dress was scarcely adjusted, and my discarded shirt lay sprawling upon the floor,) when in came a grave and important-looking personage in a Master-of-Arts gown, ushering in a smart and sprightly lady. The lady, who had never as yet seen my father, became afterwards his second wife. She was the widow of a Rev. Mr. Abbot, who, having been a Fellow of Baliol College, Oxford, had, in the spiritual routine of preferment, migrated from a fellowship in that College, to a College-living at Colchester. She was then his widow.

Biographers are not disinclined to receive and insert digressions: no, nor digression upon digression to any number of removes, any more than at the age of garrulity, old men to furnish them. At this moment I am dictating, while

dis-robing for bed. In 1814, Mr. Mill and I, (Mill, the historian of British India,) passed through Oxford in our way to Bath. I showed him the chambers, in which I had been resident for two or three years, after descending to them from the above-mentioned and above-situated. These second ones were on the ground-floor, on the right hand of the staircase next on the left hand, as you go from the outer quadrangle to the stair-case, that leads to the former ones. Three motives concurred in producing this transition : a sum of two guineas, my aversion to solitude, and my fear of ghosts. In this season of boyhood, and indeed down to 1792, in which year my father died, my finances were extremely scanty. A system of maxims in the aggregate, peculiar to my father, concurred in keeping them so. This migration, in consideration of the two guineas, that accompanied it, I kept from my father with as much solicitude, as some persons would have felt for the concealment of a crime. Though a very affectionate father, he was, by a variety of infirmities, a very troublesome one, being but too fond of looking out for occasions, and even pretences for giving exercise to paternal authority in the way of reproof. My fear of ghosts had been implanted in my mind from earliest infancy, by the too customary cultivators of that most noxious weed, domestic servants. The above was the

first time of my seeing Mr. Forster. The second time was in the company, and at the house of Mr. Lind. Forster was at that time Rector of a Baliol-College-living, at Colchester. He had another and very different occupation, that of manufacturer of an Index to several Volumes of the Houseof Commons Journals, for which service, his remuneration, if I do not misrecollect, amounted to £3,000. His acquaintance with Lind was produced by an obvious cause, residence in the same society, in the season of youth; his intimacy, by conformity of opinion on the most important subjects. Forster was a man of a strong will, strong intellect, bold temperament, and excellent moral character in every walk of private life; happy in wife and children, and by his own behaviour towards them, well deserving so to be. At this time, the topic of subscription to the 39 Articles being upon the carpet in Parliament and elsewhere, he had written and published a pamphlet, in support of that institution.* This advocate for orthodoxy was at the same time a much too open professor of atheism; this was the only failing I ever saw in him. It could not but have operated as a bar to that advancement, which otherwise his talents might have insured. I had

[This pamphlet seems to have been a Sermon, of which mention will be made hereafter. E. H. B.]

+ [Dr. Forster had a very metaphysical mind, and was a

not many times seen him at Mr. Lind's, when, in compliance with an invitation from him, I visited Colchester, and passed a week or two at his house.

What passed at that visit, nothing determinate dwells on my recollection except the circumstance, that this was the first time of my ever seeing Dr. Parr. His situation at that time, was that of Master to the Grammar-School in that Town. Mr. Forster took me with him one day to pay him a short visit, place not recollected, except that no boys were visible at it. It served as the foundation of the acquaintance, which afterwards took place between us, and this is all that I remember about it, except it be, that one day we were conversing upon terms of intimacy and freedom, he brought it to my memory, saying, that at that time, he little expected to find in me the sort of person he now beheld in me; for that, in my dress, there was something, which bespoke a young man, who would have been glad to be a fop, had he been able. I do not think I ever saw him at Lind's. I must have seen him, I think, more than once at Romilly's, and thence afterwards at my own house. He was anxious to introduce me to the late Mr. Fox; but as I did not hear that Mr. Fox had anything particular to say to me, and I knew

man of free opinions; and by the freedom of his opinions, Mr. Bentham might imbibe the idea, however mistaken, that he was a disbeliever in the truth of Christianity. E. H. B.]

I had nothing in particular to say to Mr. Fox, this state of things was with me, in that instance, as at all times it has been in every other, a sufficient reason for declining it. It was in the summer of, I think, the year 1804, that, in pursuance of a kind invitation from him, I went upon a little excursion, and passed a very agreeable week or thereabouts, at his Parsonage. Mr. Koe, at present an eminent Barrister at the ChanceryBar, then living with me as an amanuensis, accompanied me. We there found the Doctor, his first wife, and a very agreeable and intelligent young lady, his daughter, then unmarried; the other was not there, having for some time been married to Mr. Wynne. In the behaviour of the Dr. and Mrs. Parr, one towards another, I observed nothing but what might have been expected, as between man and wife: between breakfast and dinner, his place of abode was indeed, not in the library, which was within the house, behind the dining-parlour, but in a little out-house, behind it, and at some little distance from it. But this distance had, as it seemed, no other cause than the desire of more perfect security against all interruption. Afterwards, in a visit of his to me in London, I heard from him, with not less surprise than regret, that their mode of living together, was such, cohabiting in one sense and no longer in another, as, had it been