ng's dispersed works have fortunately been collected by
Mr. Nichols, with ample illustrations, in three vols. 8vo,
1776. The "Useful Transactions in Philosophy and other sorts
of Learning," form a collection of ludicrous dissertations
of Antiquarianism, Natural Philosophy, Criticism, &c., where
his own peculiar humour combines with his curious reading. [In
this he burlesqued the proceedings of the Royal and
Antiquarian Societies with some degree of spirit and humour.
By turning vulgar lines into Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon,
a learned air is given to some papers on childish subjects.
One learned doctor communicates to another "an Essay proving,
by arguments philosophical, that millers, falsely so reputed,
are not thieves, with an interesting argument that taylors
likewise are not so." A Welsh schoolmaster sends some
"natural observations" made in Wales, in direct imitation of
the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1707, and with humorous
love for genealogy, reckons that in his school, "since the
flood, there have been 466, and I am the 467th master: before
the flood, they living long, there were but two--Rice ap Evan
Dha the good, and Davie ap Shones Gonnah the naught, in
whose time the flood came." The first paper of the collection
is an evident jest on John Bagford and his gatherings for
the history of printing, now preserved among the manuscripts
of the British Museum. It purports to be "an Essay on the
invention of samplers, communicated by Mrs. Judith Bagford,
with an account of her collections for the same:" and
written in burlesque of a paper in the "Philosophical
Transactions" for April, 1697. It is a most elaborate
performance, deducing with mock-seriousness the origin of
samplers from the ancient tales of Arachne, who "set forth
the whole story of her wrongs in needlework, and sent it to
her sister;" and our author adds, with much humour, "it is
very remarkable that the memory of this story does at present
continue, for there are no samplers, which proceed in any
measure beyond the first rudiments, but have a tree and a
nightingale sitting on it." Such were the jests of the day
against the Royal philosophers.] He also invented _s