FullReads

SIR,

Your most Obedient
Humble Servant,

J. GRAHAM.

[Footnote 1: Eustace Budgell, the contributor of this and of about three dozen other papers to the Spectator, was, in 1711, twenty-six years old, and by the death of his father, Gilbert Budgell, D.D., obtained, in this year, encumbered by some debt, an income of L950. He was first cousin to Addison, their mothers being two daughters of Dr. Nathaniel Gulstone, and sisters to Dr. Gulstone, bishop of Bristol. He had been sent in 1700 to Christ Church, Oxford, where he spent several years. When, in 1709, Addison went to Dublin as secretary to Lord Wharton, in his Irish administration, he took with him his cousin Budgell as a private secretary. During Addison’s first stay in Ireland Budgell lived with him, and paid careful attention to his duties. To this relationship and friendship Budgell was indebted for the insertion of papers of his in the Spectator. Addison not only gratified his literary ambition, but helped him to advancement in his service of the government. On the accession of George I, Budgell was appointed Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland and Deputy Clerk of the Council; was chosen also Honorary Bencher of the Dublin Inns of Court and obtained a seat in the Irish Parliament. In 1717, when Addison became Secretary of State for Ireland, he appointed Eustace Budgell to the post of Accountant and Comptroller-General of the Irish Revenue, which was worth nearly L400 a-year. In 1718, anger at being passed over in an appointment caused Budgell to charge the Duke of Bolton, the newly-arrived Lord-Lieutenant, with folly and imbecility. For this he was removed from his Irish appointments. He then ruined his hope of patronage in England, lost three-fourths of his fortune in the South Sea Bubble, and spent the other fourth in a fruitless attempt to get into Parliament. While struggling to earn bread as a writer, he took part in the publication of Dr. Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation, and when, in 1733, Tindal died, a Will was found which, to the exclusion of a favourite nephew, left L2100 (nearly all the property) to Budgell. The authenticity of the Will was successfully contested, and thereby Budgell disgraced. He retorted on Pope for some criticism upon this which he attributed to him, and Pope wrote in the prologue to his Satires,

Let Budgell charge low Grub-street on my quill,
And write whate’er he please,–except my Will.

At last, in May, 1737, Eustace Budgell filled his pockets with stones, hired a boat, and drowned himself by jumping from it as it passed under London Bridge. There was left on his writing-table at home a slip of paper upon which he had written,

‘What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong.’]

[Footnote 2: The Dialogue ‘Of Dancing’ between Lucian and Crato is here quoted from a translation then just published in four volumes,

‘of the Works of Lucian, translated from the Greek by several Eminent Hands, 1711.’

The dialogue is in Vol. III, pp. 402–432, translated ‘by Mr. Savage of the Middle Temple.’]

[Footnote 3: ‘Moll Peatley’ was a popular and vigorous dance, dating, at least, from 1622.]

[Footnote 4: In his scheme of a College and School, published in 1661, as ‘a Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy,’ among the ideas for training boys in the school is this, that

‘in foul weather it would not be amiss for them to learn to Dance, that is, to learn just so much (for all beyond is superfluous, if not worse) as may give them a graceful comportment of their bodies.’ ]