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[ There occurred here originally the following lax stanza:—
Can sins of moment claim the rod
Of everlasting fires?]
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[ And that offend great nature's God, Which nature's self inspires.—See Boswell's 'Johnson.']
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[ This gentleman was of Scotland, and bred at the university of Utrecht, with the Earl of Mar. He served in Spain under Earl Rivers. After the peace, he was made one of the Commissioners of the Customs in Scotland, and then of Taxes in England, in which having shewn himself for twenty years diligent, punctual, and incorruptible, though without any other assistance of fortune, he was suddenly displaced by the minister in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and died two months after, in 1741.—P.]
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[ Giles Jacob's Lives of Poets, vol. ii. in his Life.]
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[ Dennis's Reflections on the Essay on Criticism.]