"Further, when his lordship understood that my printed books consisted chiefly of personal history, he desired catalogues of them also: which I drew out, and he had several large parcels of the most scarce and curious amongst them, in the two years following; for which, though I never received more than five guineas, not the fourth part of their value, yet his friendly deportment towards me increased my attachment and zeal to oblige him. This friendship he further exerted, in the {530} assistance he afforded me out of his own library, and procured of his friends, towards completing my _Life of Sir Walter Raleigh_; and his opinion of the further encouragement I therein deserved may appear in the letters he honoured me with upon that occasion. But as to money, the five guineas more he gave me upon my presenting him with the _Life_, and the _History of the World_ annexed to it, in 1736, was all that I ever received from him in five years. In the latter end of the year 1737 I published my _British Librarian_; and when his lordship understood how unproportionate the advantages it produced were to the time and labour bestowed upon it, he said he would find me employment better worth my while. Also, when he heard that I was making interest with Sir Robert Walpole, through the means of Commissioner Hill, to present him with an abstract of some ancient deeds I had relating to his ancestors, and which I have still, his lordship induced me to decline that application, saying, though he could not do as grand things as Sir Robert, he would do that which might be as agreeable to me, if I would disengage myself from all other persons and pursuits. I had then also had, for several years, some dependence upon a nobleman, who might have served me in the government, and had, upon certain motives, settled an annuity upon me of twenty pounds a year. This I resigned to the said nobleman for an incompetent consideration, and signed a general release to him, in May, 1738, that I might be wholly independent, and absolutely at my Lord Oxford's command. I was likewise then under an engagement with the undertakers of the _Supplement to Bayle's Dictionary_. I refused to digest the materials I then had for this work under an hundred pounds a year, till it was finished; but complied to take forty shillings a sheet for what I should write, at such intervals as my business would permit: for this clause I was obliged to insert, in the articles then executed between them and myself, in March the year aforesaid whereby I reserved myself free for his lordship's service. And though I proposed, their said offer would be more profitable to me than my own, yet my lord's employment of me, from that time, grew so constant, that I never finished above three or four lives for that work, to the time of his death. All these