haracter
from any person that had a good one of his own_.

"I am, with all submission, My Lord,
"Your Lordship's most obedient, &c.,
"SIMON OCKLEY."

To the honour of the Earl of Oxford, this unlucky piece of awkwardness
at table, in giving "uncourtly answers," did not interrupt his regard
for the poor oriental student; for several years afterwards the
correspondence of Ockley was still acceptable to the Earl.

If the letters of the widows and children of many of our eminent
authors were collected, they would demonstrate the great fact, that
the man who is a husband or a father ought not to be an author. They
might weary with a monotonous cry, and usually would be dated from the
gaol or the garret. I have seen an original letter from the widow of
Ockley to the Earl of Oxford, in which she lays before him the
deplorable situation of her affairs; the debts of the Professor being
beyond what his effects amounted to, the severity of the creditors
would not even suffer the executor to make the best of his effects;
the widow remained destitute of necessaries, incapable of assisting
her children.[129]

Thus students have devoted their days to studies worthy of a student.
They are public benefactors, yet find no friend in the public, who
cannot yet appreciate their value--Ministers of State know it, though
they have rarely protected them. Ockley, by letters I have seen, was
frequently employed by Bolingbroke to translate letters from the
Sovereign of Morocco to our court; yet all the debts for which he was
imprisoned in Cambridge Castle did not exceed two hundred pounds. The
public interest is concerned in stimulating such enthusiasts; they are
men who cannot be salaried, who cannot be created by letters-patent;
for they are men who infuse their soul into their studies, and breathe
their fondness for them in their last agonies. Yet such are doomed to
feel their life pass away like a painful dream!

Those who know the value of LIGHTFOOT'S Hebraic studies, may be
startled at the impediments which seem to have annihilated them. In
the following effusion he confides his secret agitation to his friend
Buxtorf: "A few years since I prepared a little commentary on the
First Epistle to the Corinthians, in the same style and manner as I
had done that on Matthew. But it laid by me two years or more, nor can
I now publish it, but at my own charges, and to my great damage, which
I felt enough and too much in the