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it the most of all his poems, even more than his Campaign.—The same.

BUDGELL.

;

Addison used to speak very slightingly of Budgell: "One that calls me cousin the man stamped himself into my acquaintance," &c.-The same. [When Mr. Addison was first in town, and in lodgings, Budgell lodged in the room over his. He walked much, and was troublesome to him. One night Addison was so tired with the noise, that he invited him to sup with him; and that began their acquaintance.]

When somebody was speaking to Mr. Addison of Budgell's Epilogue to the Distressed Mother, and said they wondered how so silly a fellow could blunder upon so good a thing, Addison said, "O, sir, 'twas quite another thing when first it was brought to me."-The same.

PHILIPS.

An audience was laid for the Distressed -Mother; and, when they found it would

do, it was practised again yet more successfully for Cato*. Lord Bolingbroke's carrying his friends to the house, and presenting Booth with a purse of guineas, for so well representing the character of a person who rather chose to die than to see a general for life, was an incidental piece of good luck, and carried the success of the play much beyond what they ever expected. The same.

ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE.

Browne is an excellent copyistt; and those who take it ill of him ‡ are very much They are very strongly

in the wrong.

*This should rather have been under Addison.—M.

† In his Imitations on Tobacco.

Mr. Thomson did so; and, soon after they were printed, published a warm copy of verses against Mr. Browne, in one of the magazines or newspapers.

Dost thou confound the poets in thy ire, Thou man of mighty smoke, but little fire? was one of the distichs in it.—Dr. Armstrong.

mannered, and perhaps could not write so well if they were not so; but still 'tis a fault that deserves the being pointed out. -Mr. Pope.

SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.

Sannazarius's Arcadia is written in prose, interspersed with verses, and might probably have given the hint to our Sir Philip Sydney.-Lockier.

BACON.

Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any other country, ever produced.-Mr. Pope.

Lord Bacon, in his Novum Organum, has laid down the whole method that Descartes afterwards followed.-Lord Bolingbroke.

NEWTON.

Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said, "I don't know what I may seem to the world; but as to myself, I seem to

have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."— Ramsay.

'Tis not at all improbable that Sir Isaac Newton, though so great a man, might have had a hankering after the French prophets. There was a time, I can assure you, when he was possessed with the old fooleries of astrology; and another when he was so far gone in chemistry as to be upon the hunt after the philosopher's stone. -Lockier.

The pursuits of the greatest trifles may sometimes have a very good effect. The search after the philosopher's stone has preserved chemistry; and the following astrology so much in former ages has been the cause of astronomy's being so much advanced in ours. Sir Isaac Newton himself has owned that he began with studying judicial astrology, and that it was his pur

suits of that idle and vain study which led him into the beauties and love of astronomy. -Cocchi.

When I asked Sir Isaac how the study of the mathematics flourished in England, he said, "Not so much as it has done here; but more than it does in any other country." -The same.

Sir Isaac Newton, though so deep in algebra and fluxions, could not readily make up a common account; and, whilst he was Master of the Mint, used to get somebody to make up the accounts for him.-Mr. Pope.

LOCKE.

Mr. Locke spent a good part of his first years at the university in reading romances, from his aversion to the disputation way then in fashion there. He told Costi so, and gave that reason for it to him.-Cocchi. Cudworth in theological metaphysics, Locke in proper metaphysics, and Nelson in physics, are read as the first books

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