If to these lines your approbation's join'd,
Something I'm sure from nothing has been coin'd.
This gentleman died unmarried, a little after his brother Eustace, at Exeter; having lived in a very disreputable manner for some time, and having degenerated into such excessive indolence, that he usually picked up some boy in the streets, and carried him into the coffee-house to read the news-papers to him. He had taken deacon's orders some years before his death, but had always been averse to that kind of life; and therefore became it very ill, and could never be prevailed upon to be a priest.
The third brother William, fellow of New-College in Oxford, died (as I mentioned before) one of the clerks in the Irish secretary of state's office, very young. He had been deputy accomptant general, both to his brother and his successor; and likewise deputy to Mr. Addison, as keeper of the records in Birmingham-Tower. Had he lived, 'tis probable he would have made a considerable figure, being a man of sound sense and learning, with great prudence and honour. His cousin Dr. Downes, then bishop of London-Derry, was his zealous friend, and Dr. Lavington the present bishop of Exeter, his fellow-collegian, was his intimate correspondent. Of the two sisters, the eldest married captain Graves of Thanks, near Saltash in Cornwall, a sea-officer, and died in 1738, leaving some children behind her; and the other is still alive, unmarried. The father Dr. Gilbert Budgell, was esteemed a sensible man, and has published a discourse upon Prayer, and some Sermons[6].
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Budgell's Letter to Cleomenes. Appendix p. 79.
[2] See The Bee, vol. ii. p. 854.
[3] 'Till then it was usual to discontinue an epilogue after the sixth night. But this was called for by the audience, and continued for the whole run of this play: Budgell did not scruple to sit in the it, and call for it himself.
[4] Vide Bee, Vol. II. page 1105.
[5] Alluding to Cato's destroying himself.
[6] There is an Epigram of our author's, which I don't remember to have seen published any where, written upon the death of a very fine young lady.