Accordingly within a few days after the loss of his great cause, and his estates being decreed for the satisfaction of his creditors, in the year 1736 he took boat at Somerset-Stairs (after filling his pockets with stones upon the beach) ordered the waterman to shoot the bridge, and whilst the boat was going under it threw himself over-board.  Several days before he had been visibly distracted in his mind, and almost mad, which makes such an action the less wonderful.

He was never married, but left one natural daughter behind him, who afterwards took his name, and was lately an actress at Drury-Lane.

It has been said, Mr. Budgell was of opinion, that when life becomes uneasy to support, and is overwhelmed with clouds, and sorrows, that a man has a natural right to take it away, as it is better not to live, than live in pain.  The morning before he carried his notion of self-murder into execution, he endeavoured to persuade his daughter to accompany him, which she very wisely refused.  His argument to induce her was; life is not worth the holding.—­Upon Mr. Budgell’s beauroe was found a slip of paper; in which were written these words.

  What Cato did, and Addison approv’d[5],
  Cannot be wrong.—­

Mr. Budgell had undoubtedly strong natural parts, an excellent education, and set out in life with every advantage that a man could wish, being settled in very great and profitable employments, at a very early age, by Mr. Addison:  But by excessive vanity and indiscretion, proceeding from a false estimation of his own weight and consequence, he over-stretched himself, and ruined his interest at court, and by the succeeding loss of his fortune in the South-Sea, was reduced too low to make any other head against his enemies.  The unjustifiable and dishonourable law-suits he kept alive, in the remaining part of his life, seem to be intirely owing to the same disposition, which could never submit to the living beneath what he had once done, and from that principle he kept a chariot and house in London to the very last.

His end was like that of many other people of spirit, reduced to great streights; for some of the greatest, as well as some of the most infamous men have laid violent hands upon themselves.  As an author where he does not speak of himself, and does not give a loose to his vanity, he is a very agreeable and deserving writer; not argumentative or deep, but very ingenious and entertaining, and his stile is peculiarly elegant, so as to deserve being ranked in that respect with Addison’s, and is superior to most of the other English writers.  His Memoirs of the Orrery Family and the Boyle’s, is the most indifferent of his performances; though the translations of Phalaris’s Epistles in that work are done with great spirit and beauty.

As to his brothers, the second, Gilbert, was thought a man of deeper learning and better judgment when he was young than our author, but was certainly inferior to him in his appearance in life; and, ’tis thought, greatly inferior to him in every respect.  He was author of a pretty Copy of Verses in the VIIIth Vol. of the Spectators, Numb, 591, which begins thus,