quires a steady application, free from the
cares and avocations incident to all persons obliged to seek for
their maintenance. I have had the misfortune to be in the case of
those persons, and am now reduced to a pension on the Irish
establishment, which, deducting the tax of four shillings in the
pound, and other charges, brings me in about 40_l._ a year of our
English money.[15] This pension was granted to me in 1710, and I owe
it chiefly to the friendship of Mr. Addison, who was then secretary
to the Earl of Wharton, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1711, 12, and
14, I was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Lottery by the
interest of Lord Halifax.

And this is all I ever received from the Government, though I had
some claim to the royal favour; for in 1710, when the enemies to our
constitution were contriving its ruin, I wrote a pamphlet entitled
"Lethe," which was published in Holland, and afterwards translated
into English, and twice printed in London; and being reprinted in
Dublin, proved so offensive to the ministry in Ireland, that it was
burnt by the hands of the hangman. But so it is, that after having
showed on all occasions my zeal for the royal family, and endeavoured
to make myself serviceable to the public by several books published;
after forty years' stay in England, and in an advanced age, I find
myself and family destitute of a sufficient livelihood, and suffering
from complaints in the head and impaired sight by constant
application to my studies.

I am confident, my lord, he adds, that if the queen, to whom I was
made known on occasion of Thuanus's French translation, were
acquainted with my present distress, she would be pleased to afford
me some relief.[16]

Among the confidential literary friends of Des Maizeaux, he had the
honour of ranking Anthony Collins, a great lover of literature, and a
man of fine genius, and who, in a continued correspondence with our Des
Maizeaux, treated him as his friend, and employed him as his agent in
his literary concerns. These, in the formation of an extensive library,
were in a state of perpetual activity, and Collins was such a true lover
of his books, that he drew up the catalogue with his own pen.[17]
Anthony Collins wrote several well-known works without prefixing his
name; but having pushed too far his curious inquiries on some obscure
and polemical points, he incurred