rt. To this circumstance we owe his works,
animated by all the powers of scepticism.

Sir William Davenant finished his poem of Gondibert during his
confinement by the rebels in Carisbrook Castle. George Withers dedicates
his "Shepherds Hunting," "To his friends, my visitants in the
Marshalsea:" these "eclogues" having been printed in his
imprisonment.[20]

De Foe, confined in Newgate for a political pamphlet, began his
"Review;" a periodical paper, which was extended to nine thick volumes
in quarto, and it has been supposed served as the model of the
celebrated papers of Steele.

Wicquefort's curious work "on Ambassadors" is dated from his prison,
where he had been confined for state affairs. He softened the rigour of
those heavy hours by several historical works.

One of the most interesting facts of this kind is the fate of an Italian
scholar, of the name of Maggi. Early addicted to the study of the
sciences, and particularly to the mathematics, and military
architecture, he successfully defended Famagusta, besieged by the
Turks, by inventing machines which destroyed their works. When that city
was taken in 1571, they pillaged his library and carried him away in
chains. Now a slave, after his daily labours he amused a great part of
his nights by literary compositions; _De Tintinnabulis_, on Bells, a
treatise still read by the curious, was actually composed by him when a
slave in Turkey, without any other resource than the erudition of his
own memory, and the genius of which adversity could not deprive him.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: Withers, throughout these unique eclogues, which are
supposed to narrate the discourses of "friendly shepherds" who visit
him--

"--pent
Within the jaws of strict imprisonment;
A forlorn shepherd void of all the means,
Whereon man's common hope in danger leads"

--is still upheld by the same consciousness of rectitude which inspired
Sir Richard Lovelace in his better-known address "To Althea from
Prison." Withers' poem was published before Lovelace was born. A few
lines from Withers will display this similarity. Speaking of his
enemies, he says:--

"They may do much, but when they have done all,
Only my body they may bring in thrall.
And 'tis not that, my Willy; 'tis my mind,
My mind's more precious freedom I so weigh,
A thousand ways they may my body bind,
In thousand thralls, but ne'er my mind betray: