ftances, may be dated from the time the DUKE of BOLTON was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland, in the year laft mentioned. The Duke infifted on quartering upon him a friend of one WEBSTER, whom he had made his fecretary and a privy counfellor. This was either an infult or an injury, and with lofty fpirits the diftinction is rarely admitted, which BUDGELL refented with afperity, and was therefore deprived of his place of accountant. He then came to England, contrary to the advice of ADDISON, and probably of every other friend, and farther irritated his powerful enemies by publishing his cafe. This irritation was the more keen, as they were unprepared to defend their treatment of a man who had been a moft faithful and useful fervant to the public. In 1719 he made another enemy in the EARL of SUNDERLAND, by publishing a very popular pamphlet against the famous peerage-bill; but his declenfion was chiefly haftened by the lofs of twenty thousand pounds, which he had embarked in the South-fea-fcheme, and by his subsequent difappointment in not being able to accompany the DUKE of PORTLAND, who was appointed governor of Jamaica, as his Grace's fecretary. He had made arrangements for this new office, and was about to fail, when a fecretary of ftate was fent to the Duke, to acquaint him, "that he might take any man in England for his fecretary, excepting Mr. BUDGEll, but that he must not take him *."

After this event, his life appears to have been wafted in a fruitlefs ftruggle to regain confequence, and recruit his finances. Among other expedients, the DUCHESS of MARLBOROUGH endeavoured to procure him a feat in parliament, where the hoped his disappointments would render him an useful oppofition member, but this did not fucceed. About

VOL. I.

* Biog. Brit. new edit. vol. ii. 1780.

c

the year 1732, on the death of Dr. MATTHEW TINDAL, a bequest to BUDGELL appeared in his will, accompanied by circumftances fo fufpicious, that in confequence of a legal inquiry the will was set aside. His fuppofed fhare in this tranfaction is alluded to by POPE.

"Let BUDGELL charge low Grub-street on my quill,
"And write whate'er he please, except my will."

Yet BUDGELL's fituation at this time must have been low, for the fum to which he thus facrificed his peace and his character did not much exceed two thousand pounds.

From this unhappy period his mind appears to have been abforbed in gloomy reflections on the lofs of reputation, friends, and fortune, until it contracted at laft that inexplicable delirium which presents to a difordered imagination the advantages of fuicide. On May 4, 1737, he drowned himself in the Thames, by jumping out of a boat at London bridge, and had evidently made deliberate preparations for this catastrophe: befides intimating to his fervant, when he went out, that he should return no more, his pockets were filled with ftones, and in his efcritoire was a fhort fcrap of a will, written a day or two before, importing that he left all his personal estate to his natural daughter, ANNE BUDGELL, then about eleven years of age. This laft circumftance is not very confiftent with the report, that he had previ-. oufly endeavoured to perfuade his daughter to accompany him. He left alfo on his bureau a flip of paper, on which was written,

"What CATO did, and ADDISON approved,
"Cannot be wrong-"

* This daughter afterwards became an actress: in 1743 we find her on the stage with GARRICK and Mrs. CIBBER, in the tragedy of Tancred and Sigifmunda. DAVIES, the bio

A conclufion which it would be unfair to draw from the circumstances of Cato's scenic death. Why this unhappy man, who, according to his biographers, had shown many fymptoms of mental derangement, fhould not have been more carefully watched, is needless to inquire, fince, in many fimilar cafes, it is a question to which even the courts of justice cannot extort an answer.

BUDGELL'S character appears to have been a compound of great vanity and ungovernable paffions; failings which in profperity are not always hurtful, because they may be gratified by applause and submiffion, but which, on a reverse of fortune, generally undermine all moral principle, and bring the ftrongest minds to a level with the weakeft. In his civil employments, he was not only indefatigable, but confcientious in a very high degree *, and a sense of the fervices he had rendered to the public may have no doubt aggravated the infult which he received from the miniftry, and which certainly cannot be palliated.

His first appearance as an author is faid by CIBBER (or rather SHIELLS) to have been in the TATLER, but no inquiry has been able to trace his pen in that work. In the SPECTATOR, he wrote twentyeight papers, with the fignature letter X, which

grapher of GARRICK, adds, that she was an actress of confiderable powers, and died at Bath about the year 1755.

66

* His conduct in the embarkation of the troops, &c. to be fent from Ireland to Scotland, during the rebellion in 1715, was fingularly difinterested; for he took no extraordinary fervice-money, and would not receive any gratuity or fees for the commiffions which paffed through his office for the colonels and officers of militia then raising in Ireland. The lords juftices were defirous that a handsome present should be made him for his diftinguished zeal and labour in this affair, but he generoufly and firmly refused to draw up a warrant for that purpose. Biog. Brit. new edit.

† No. 232 was marked X in the folio edit. but Z in the

he used, it is faid, inftead of the initials of his name to mark upon his linen. Of these papers, few rise above mediocrity; he had talents that enabled him to affift in a work of this kind, but there is no reafon to believe that he could have acted as a principal. His beft papers are Nos. 307, 313, 337, and 353, on education: they contain many useful remarks, illuftrated by appofite examples and authorities. The only papers diftinguishable for wit, are Nos. 365, and 395, on the effects of the month of May on the female conftitution; in these the ftyle of ADDISON is imitated with great felicity; but I know not what praise we can affign to them, if what Dr. JOHNSON reports, from traditional authority be true, that "ADDISON wrote BUDGELL's papers, at least mended them so much, that he made them almost his

own

Befides these twenty-eight papers attributed to him in confequence of the fignature, he is, in the opinion of the annotators on the SPECTATOR, the prefumptive author of a fhort letter, figned Euftace, in No. 539, and of Nos. 591, 602, 605, and 628, the last of which contains a Latin tranflation of Cato's foliloquy, formerly faid to be the production of ATTERBURY, but which Mr. NICHOLS has difcovered to have been written by Dr. HENRY BLAND, head master of Eton school. These last-mentioned papers occur in the eighth volume of the common editions of the SPECTATOR, which is faid to have been conducted by ADDISON and BUDGELL.

The annotators on the GUARDIAN have affigned

first 8vo; the annotators think it was the compofition of Mr. H. MARTYN, but more probably the alteration of the fignature was a typographical error. The fignature is omitted in the first 12mo. a very correct edition, and in all the subsequent

ones.

*BOSWELL's Life of JOHNSON.

+ Spectator, vol. viii. p. 351, note, figned J. N.

to him Nos. 25, and 31, but if their authority was the notice in the Preface, that "those which are marked with a ftar were composed by Mr. BUDGELL," they seem to have committed an error. The 24th is marked with a ftar in the folio and first octavo editions, but not the 25th.

No. 31, his laft contribution, cannot be read without regret that the author fhould have departed from his own principles in all the critical periods of his life. A fimilar reflection will occur in reading his Spectator, No. 389, on Infidelity, to which he certainly verged in the latter part of his life, and which, there is every reason to think, was occafioned by his connexion with TINDALL*.

The next contributor, of perhaps more value, was Mr. JOHN HUGHES. He was the fon of a citizen of London, and was born at Marlborough, July 29, 1677. He received his education at a diffenting academy, under the care of Mr. THOMAS ROWE, where, at the fame time, the afterwards celebrated Dr. ISAAC WATTS was a ftudent, whofe piety and friendship for Mr. HUGHES induced him to regret that he employed any part of his talents in writing for the stage.

It does not appear for what profeffion he was originally intended. He was early distinguished for

* BUDGELL published a tranflation of the characters of Theophraftus, a history of the family of the Boyles, and some political pamphlets. He alfo compiled a periodical work, called the BEE, chiefly from the newspapers, in the form of a magazine, but in confequence of quarrelling with the bookfellers, and filling the pamphlet with his own difputes and concerns, he was obliged to drop the undertaking. Four volumes of this work are now before me. It exhibits little more than the ruins of a mind. He was attacked on all fides by contemporary writers refpecting the affair of Tindall's will, and he endeavours by long, wild, and incoherent rhapsodies, to regain the good opinion of the public, which, however, he had for ever forfeited by that tranfaction.