Note 44 — Library of London.

“This grand work was attended with most injurious consequences to the learned author; it cost him the assiduous labour of seventeen years, and ruined both his health and fortune.

“Some passages in his dedication to Charles II. most affectingly represent the calamities he had endured; and which he appears to have borne with most exemplary resignation. His library, household furniture, and three hundred copies of the Lexicon perished in the fire of London. ‘Magna pars Bibliothecæ meæ, cum multâ supellectile et trecenis Lexici Heptaglotti exemplaribus, in flammis periit Londinensibus.’ To this misfortune were added several private accidents, ‘membrorum confractiones, luxationes, contusiones;’ and from incessant study an almost total blindness, ‘oculorum lumen, perpetuis atque indefessis vigiliis tantum non ademptum.’ The publication of his work procured him no compensation for his large expenses, and his indefatigable diligence. At the time of his death, in 1685, about five hundred copies were unsold; these were placed by Mrs. Crisp, his niece and executrix, in a room of one of her tenants’ houses in Surrey; where for many years they lay at the mercy of the rats, who made such havoc among them, that when they came into the possession of this lady’s executors, scarcely one complete volume could be found out of the remainder, and the whole load of learned rags only fetched seven pounds.”—Clarke, Rep. Bibl. pp. 33, 34.