2. For Blagden’s visit to Paris see Joseph Banks to BF, May 28. According to his journal, the June 26 dinner included WTF, John Jay, Mme Helvétius, and Mrs. Barclay. Blagden commented of BF: “He is become very reserved & cautious. eyed me much.” Jay, he wrote, was “evidently not quiet.” WTF was “much more like his father than his grandfather: voice wonderfully like.” BF asked Blagden to procure the volumes of Phil. Trans. due him, which the latter promised to do: Charles Blagden’s Journal, entry of June 26, 1783 (Yale University Library). When writing to Banks on July 1, Blagden observed that although BF had “neglected Science for politics” and was not as well-informed as others on “new discoveries,” he “still retains the same soundness of understanding”: Neil Chambers, ed., Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks (6 vols., London, 2007), II, 98.

BF had tried at least twice before to obtain his copies of Phil. Trans. In May, 1779, he asked Ingenhousz to apply for them, and the Royal Society approved the measure: XXIX, 428, 544. A letter from Edward Bridgen, undated as to year but which we now realize belongs to 1779, indicates that BF made the same request of John Paradise around the same time. Bridgen claimed that Paradise had requested the volumes but that they had been delivered to Magellan, who in turn gave them to one of the secretaries of the Spanish embassy in London for delivery to Passy: Bridgen to BF, June 18, [1779], APS.