To Thomas Jefferson from “A——X,” [26 February 1802]
From “A—X”
[26 Feb. 1802]
“Read this
“And then to dinner
you may”
You are in danger a dreadful plot is forming against you— p—n. the method
—Julius Cæsar was cautioned for the Ides of March—I caution you for the last of April
A—X
NB. a curly headed
one legged
man head
RC (DLC); undated; addressed: “Thomas Jefferson President of Ud. Ss. Aa. City of Washington”; franked; postmarked New York, 26 Feb.; endorsed by TJ as received 3 Mch. and “assassination” and so recorded in SJL.
With what appetite you may: a quotation popularized by the English poet Alexander Pope: “from thence (as Shakespear has it) To dinner with what appetite they may” (Letters of Mr. Pope, and Several Eminent Persons, From the Year 1705, to 1711, 2 vols. [Dublin, 1735], 1:176). Pope’s source, and possibly that of the author above, was William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, act 3, scene 2, in which an angry King Henry presents incriminating papers to Cardinal Wolsey with the command to “Read o’er this; And after this: and then to breakfast with what appetite you have.”