njoyed more
true liberty, more happy leisure, and more solid repose in six months
here, than in thrice the same number of years before. Evil is the
condition of that historian who undertakes to write the lives of
others before he knows how to live himself. Yet I have no just reason
to be angry with the world; I never stood in need of its assistance in
my life, but I found it always very liberal of its advice; for which I
am so much the more beholden to it, by how much the more I did always
in my judgment give the possession of wisdom the preference to that of
riches."[128]

Poor Ockley, always a student, and rarely what is called a man of the
world, once encountered a literary calamity which frequently occurs
when an author finds himself among the vapid triflers and the polished
cynics of the fashionable circle. Something like a patron he found in
Harley, the Earl of Oxford, and once had the unlucky honour of dining
at the table of my Lord Treasurer. It is probable that Ockley, from
retired habits and severe studies, was not at all accomplished in the
_suaviter in modo_, of which greater geniuses than Ockley have so
surlily despaired. How he behaved I cannot narrate: probably he
delivered himself with as great simplicity at the table of the Lord
Treasurer as on the wrong side of Cambridge Castle gate. The
embarrassment this simplicity drew him into is very fully stated in
the following copious apology he addressed to the Earl of Oxford,
which I have transcribed from the original; perhaps it may be a useful
memorial to some men of letters as little polished as the learned
Ockley:--

"_Cambridge, July 15, 1714._

"MY LORD,--I was so struck with horror and amazement two days ago,
that I cannot possibly express it. A friend of mine showed me a
letter, part of the contents of which were, 'That Professor Ockley
had given such extreme offence by some uncourtly answers to some
gentlemen at my Lord Treasurer's table that it would be in vain to
make any further application to him.'

"My Lord, it is impossible for me to recollect, at this distance
of time. All that I can say is this: that, as on the one side for
a man to come to his patron's table with a design to affront
either him or his friends supposes him a perfect natural, a mere
idiot; so on the other side it would be extreme severe, if a
person whose education was far distant from the politeness of a
court, should, upon the account of an u