Tuesday July the 3d 1781.
Din’d at home, after dinner Mr. Searle and Major Jackson came here. At about nine o’clock a thunder Storm came up, and lasted till about eleven, it Struck a Windmill, and burnt it to the ground, and would probably have communicated itself to another which was near it, if a very heavy shower of rain had not hinder’d it.
From Waller’s works. Chap. 12th. Of The Fear of God. In two Cantoes.1
1. Here follows, on three and one-half pages in the Diary, the first canto (64 lines) from Edmund Waller’s poem, “Of the Fear of God. In Two Cantoes.” Possibly JQA transcribed it from his own copy of Works of Edmund Waller, Esq. in Verse and Prose . . ., London, 1772, p. 147–149, which, according to his bookplate, he purchased sometime in 1781 (MQA).