The Archbishop and myself went to Hammersmith, to visit Sir Samuel Morland, who was entirely blind; a very mortifying sight. He showed us his invention of writing, which was very ingenious; also his wooden calendar, which instructed him all by feeling; and other pretty and useful inventions of mills, pumps, etc., and the pump he had erected that serves water to his garden, and to passengers, with an inscription, and[Pg 334] brings from a filthy part of the Thames near it a most perfect and pure water. He had newly buried £200 worth of music books six feet under ground, being, as he said, love songs and vanity. He plays himself psalms and religious hymns on the theorbo. Very mild weather the whole of October.
LONDON