Phillips, "the day of inspiration has gone by. Everything I ever said which was worth remembering, my de bene esses, my white horses, as I call them, were all carefully prepared.") That the Essay on Man, according to Lord Bathurst, "was originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke, in prose, and Pope did no more than to put it into verse." That those brilliant wits and prolific dramatists, Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, the associates of Shakespeare, to whom the great dramatist was so much indebted, were all wretched and unsuccessful,--the first dying in utter want, the second of excessive pickled herring, at the point nearly of starvation, the third being stabbed in the head in a drunken brawl at a tavern by his own dagger in his own hand. That Shakespeare married at eighteen, had three children at twenty, removed to London at twenty-three, begun writing plays at twenty-seven, and, a little more than twenty years after, returned to his native town, rich and immortal. That but a few signatures--differently spelled--is all of his handwriting that has been preserved. That so many critics should believe, and some ingenious books have been printed to prove, that the authorship of the plays of Shakespeare belongs to Bacon--the only man then living, they claim, who knew enough to write them. That the great Bacon was unable to grasp the great discoveries of his time--rejecting the Copernican system to the last, and treating not only with incredulity, but with the most arrogant contempt, the important discoveries of Gilbert about the magnet. That Apuleius, author of the Metamorphosis of the Golden Ass (a paraphrase, according to Bayle, of what he had taken from Lucian, as Lucian had taken it from Lucius, one of the episodes of which--Psyche--furnished Moliere with matter for one of his dramas, and La Fontaine materials for a romance), who did not, to use his own language, "make the least scruple of expending his whole fortune in acquiring what he believed to be more valuable, a contempt of it," married a woman more than twice his own age, thirteen years a widow, to procure for himself, as he acknowledged, "a large settlement, and an easy condition of life." That Pythagoras, the first of the ancient sages who took the name of philosopher; who made himself so illustrious by his learning and virtue; who proved so useful in reforming and instructing the world; whose eloquence moved the inhabitants of a great city, plunged in debauchery, to avoid luxury and good cheer, and to live according to the rules of virtue; who prevailed upon the ladies to part with their fine clothes, and all their ornaments, and to make a sacrifice of them to the chief deity of the place; who engaged his disciples to practice the most difficult things, making them undergo a novitiate of silence for at least two years, and extending it to five years for those whom he knew to be more inclined to speak,--peremptorily ordered his disciples to abstain from eating beans,