in; he was haunted all his days with a notion that he was
persecuted by envy, and much undervalued in the world; the sad
consolation of the secondary and third-rate authors, who often die
persuaded of the existence of ideal enemies. To be enabled to publish
his Homer at an enormous charge, he wrote a poem, the design of which
is to prove that Solomon was the author of the Iliad; and it has been
said that this was done to interest his wife, who had some property,
to lend her aid towards the publication of so divine a work. This
happy pun was applied for his epitaph:--

JOSHUA BARNES,
Felicis memoriae, judicium expectans.
_Here lieth_
JOSHUA BARNES,
Of happy memory, awaiting judgment!

The year before he died he addressed the following letter to the Earl
of Oxford, which I transcribe from the original. It is curious to
observe how the veteran and unhappy scribbler, after his vows of
retirement from the world of letters, thoroughly disgusted with "all
human learning," gently hints to his patron, that he has ready for the
press, a singular variety of contrasted works; yet even then he did
not venture to disclose one-tenth part of his concealed treasures!

"TO THE EARL OF OXFORD.

_Oct. 16, 1711._

"MY HON. LORD,

"This, not in any doubt of your goodness and high respect to
learning, for I have fresh instances of it every day; but because
I am prevented in my design of waiting personally on you, being
called away by my business for Cambridge, to read Greek lectures
this term; and my circumstances are pressing, being, through the
combination of booksellers, and the meaner arts of others, too
much prejudiced in the sale. I am not neither sufficiently
ascertained whether my Homer and letters came to your honour;
surely the vast charges of that edition has almost broke my
courage, there being much more trouble in putting off the
impression, and contending with a subtle and unkind world, than
in all the study and management of the press.

"Others, my lord, are younger, and their hopes and helps are
fresher; I have done as much in the way of learning as any man
living, but have received less encouragement than any, having
nothing but my Greek professorship, which is but forty pounds per
annum, that I can call my own, and more than half of that is taken
up by my expenses of lodging and diet in terme time at Cambridge.

"I