From the three Chairs in the Piazza, Covent-Garden.
May 16, 1711.
Sir
'As you are Spectator, I think we, who make it our Business to exhibit any thing to publick View, ought to apply our selves to you for your Approbation. I have travelled Europe to furnish out a Show for you, and have brought with me what has been admired in every Country through which I passed. You have declared in many Papers, that your greatest Delights are those of the Eye, which I do not doubt but I shall gratifie with as Beautiful Objects as yours ever beheld. If Castles, Forests, Ruins, Fine Women, and Graceful Men, can please you, I dare promise you much Satisfaction, if you will Appear at my Auction on Friday next. A Sight is, I suppose, as grateful to a Spectator, as a Treat to another Person, and therefore I hope you will pardon this Invitation from,
Sir,
Your most Obedient
Humble Servant,
J. Graham.
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 £950. 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 £400 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 £2100 (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,