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278 Dogget, the player. Windham, being bred at Eton, is a great swimmer and rower, and necessarily much interested in the contest. We sat for an hour in a boat under one of the arches of Westminster Bridge awaiting the contending parties, who no sooner appeared than he dashed in among a hundred boats, shouting, splashing, and pulling about to keep pace for a moment with the rivals. Afterwards, while crossing to Vauxhall, we found one of the defeated men, overcome by the event, sitting with his head upon his knees in an agony of tears. He was from Bankside, where Shakspeare’s plays used to be acted, and his name was Still, the same as that of the author of the first English comedy ever written—so was doubly interesting to me. We gave him half-crowns—all the comfort we could. It was delightful to see what interest W(indham) took in the sport, to prevent obstruction or interference with the boats engaged, totally regardless of the safety of his own.”

Toward the end of the year he again became affected with intense burning pain in the nerves of the arm, shoulder, and side. His eyes were giving way to labours upon old and minute penmanship; and sleep had nearly deserted him. These ills he believed were caught in work; that is, in profuse perspirations caused by long walks to Stationers’ Hall to copy their books in rooms not often aired or tenanted. But he made light of all personal ills, as usual, to his sister. Convalescence came in about two or three months; and then he tells of his visitors, Lord Cowper, Luttrell, Metcalf, Windham, Dr. Burney and his son Charles, Bindley, Caldwell,