244. ¹ B.M. II: 178–179. Autograph.

Addressed: 'Mr. Bentham / at his Majesty's Dock Yard / near Rochester.' Postmark: '27 AP'.

Bentham has used the other side of a letter directed to Samuel at Lincoln's Inn. This letter is dated 'Portsmth. Saturday morn', and also bears the postmark '27 AP'. It is signed by initials, perhaps 'J.P.' and states the writer's expenses in travelling from Westminster to Kingston. It asks Samuel to try to get 'them' to reimburse the money. He mentions that the King will be at Portsmouth for a week from next Saturday. Bentham has combined the forwarding of this letter with writing to Samuel himself.

² Bentham's Yorkshire friend Macaulay was evidently (see letter 293) a son of the Aulay Macaulay who wrote The new shorthand, or art of swift writing. With a large specimen thereof, containing the morning and evening prayers, as made use of in Churches etc., Manchester, [1760?] and of another similar work. Nothing much further is known of him. His travels and his friendship with the Dutch merchant Strachan (see letter 322, n. 1) suggests that he was a merchant. Possibly he was a brother of the Kenneth Macaulay, a Scotch minister, whom Dr Johnson and Boswell met on their tour of the Hebrides, and whose father (likewise a minister) was an Aulay Macaulay (1673–1758), but this is doubtful.

³ This merchant is mentioned several times in the correspondence. When Samuel went on his travels he carried a letter of introduction from Mair to Francis Melville Esq. of Amsterdam (B.M. XXI: 4). Mair had a house in Cloak Lane, Dowgate-Hill (see letter 365). He may perhaps be identified with Christian Paul Meyer (d. 1790) of Old London Street, partner in Grote and Company, Hamburg merchants (Gentleman's Magazine lx, 378).