fe. He said that Mackintosh was not very deeply read in
theology. Melbourne, on the contrary, is, and being a very good
Greek scholar (which Mackintosh was not), has compared the
Evidences and all modern theological works with the writings of
the Fathers. He did not believe that Melbourne entertained _any
doubts_, or that his mind was at all distracted and perplexed
with much thinking and much reading on the subject, but that his
studies and reflections have led him to a perfect _conviction_ of
unbelief.[4] He thought if Mackintosh had lived much with
Christians he would have been one too. We talked of Middleton,
and Allen said that he believed he really died a Christian, but
that he was rapidly ceasing to be one, and if he had lived would
probably have continued the argument of his free enquiry up to
the Apostles themselves. He urged me to read Lardner; said he had
never read Paley nor the more recent Evidences, the materials of
all of which are, however, taken from Lardner's work. Luttrell
was talking of Moore and Rogers--the poetry of the former so
licentious, that of the latter so pure; much of its popularity
owing to its being so carefully weeded of everything approaching
to indelicacy; and the contrast between the _lives_ and the
_works_ of the two men--the former a pattern of conjugal and
domestic regularity, the latter of all the men he had ever known
the greatest sensualist.

[4] [John Allen was himself so fierce an unbeliever, and so
bitter an enemy to the Christian religion, that he was
very fond of asserting that other men believed as
little as himself. It was almost always Allen who gave
an irreligious turn to the conversation at Holland
House when these subjects were discussed there.]

Yesterday Lyndhurst and Brougham both came to the Council Office
to hear the first application for the renewal of a patent, and
though there was no opposition, they scrutinised the petition and
evidence with the utmost jealousy, which they did in order to
intimate that the granting a prolongation of the patent, even
when unopposed, was not to be a matter of course. It was a
pianoforte invention, and the instrument was introduced into the
Council Chamber, and played upon by Madame Duelcken for the
edification of their Lordships.

December 18th, 1835 {p.325}

Melbourne told me (the other night at Sefton's) that he had been
down to Oatlands to consult F. and H. ab