[117] Sir Robert Howard had been appointed auditor of the Exchequer in 1673, and held that office till his death.
[118] The celebrated watchmaker, who was originally a jacksmith. Malone.
[119] They were at this time at Rome.
[120] The Eclogues of Virgil had been published in the first Miscellany. Dryden probably corrected them with a pen in Lady Elizabeth’s copy of the printed book, and sent it to the bookseller, as what is technically called copy.
[121] This person, in the last age, was frequently called “the learned tradesman.” “Sir Andrew Fountaine (says Swift, in his Journal, October 6, 1710,) came this morning, and caught me writing in bed. I went into the city with him, and we dined at the Chop-house, with Will Pate, the learned woollen-draper; then we sauntered at china shops and booksellers; went to the tavern, and drank two pints of white wine,” &c. Mr William Pate was educated at Trinity Hall in Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.C.L. He died in 1746, and was buried at Lee, in Kent.
Mr Malone, who mentions these particulars, transcribes Mr Pate’s epitaph, the moral of which is:—
Nervos atque artus esse sapientiœ,
Non Temere Credere.
It would seem, from Dryden’s letter, that this learned tradesman understood the mercantile, as well as the literary use of the apothegm.
[122] A Roman Catholic.
[123] At Denham Court, in Buckinghamshire. Sir William Bowyer married a kinswoman of Lady Elizabeth Dryden; Frances, daughter of Charles, Lord Cranbourne, eldest son of William, the second Earl of Salisbury. Malone.