The learned Selden, committed to prison for his attacks on the divine right of tithes and the king's prerogative, prepared during his confinement his "History of Eadmer," enriched by his notes. Cardinal Polignac formed the design of refuting the arguments of the sceptics which Bayle had been renewing in his dictionary; but his public occupations hindered him. Two exiles at length fortunately gave him the leisure; and the Anti-Lucretius is the fruit of the court disgraces of its author. Freret, when imprisoned in the Bastile, was permitted only to have Bayle for his companion. His dictionary was always before him, and his principles were got by heart. To this circumstance we owe his works, animated by all the powers of scepticism. Sir William Davenant finished his poem of Gondibert during his confinement by the rebels in Carisbrook Castle. George Withers dedicates his "Shepherds Hunting," "To his friends, my visitants in the Marshalsea:" these "eclogues" having been printed in his imprisonment.[20] De Foe, confined in Newgate for a political pamphlet, began his "Review;" a periodical paper, which was extended to nine thick volumes in quarto, and it has been supposed served as the model of the celebrated papers of Steele. Wicquefort's curious work "on Ambassadors" is dated from his prison, where he had been confined for state affairs. He softened the rigour of those heavy hours by several historical works. One of the most interesting facts of this kind is the fate of an Italian scholar, of the name of Maggi. Early addicted to the study of the sciences, and particularly to the mathematics, and military architecture, he successfully defended Famagusta, besieged by the Turks, by inventing machines which destroyed their works. When that city was taken in 1571, they pillaged his library and carried him away in chains. Now a slave, after his daily labours he amused a great part of his nights by literary compositions; _De Tintinnabulis_, on Bells, a treatise still read by the curious, was actually composed by him when a slave in Turkey, without any other resource than the erudition of his own memory, and the genius of which adversity could not deprive him. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 20: Withers, throughout these unique eclogues, which are supposed to narrate the discourses of "friendly shepherds" who visit him-- "--pent Within the jaws of strict imprisonment; A forlorn shepherd void of all the means, Whereon man's common hope in danger leads" --is still upheld by the same consciousness of rectitude which inspired Sir Richard Lovelace in his better-known address "To Althea from Prison." Withers' poem was published before Lovelace was born. A few lines from Withers will display this similarity. Speaking of his enemies, he says:--