Tarantula to Dr. Freind, such as was there usually told to strangers, but which more accurate investigation has since discovered to contain much of imposition and exaggeration. He passed through Calabria to Sicily, which latter country he examined with so much attention as to collect materials for a new natural history of it; but which were unfortunately lost in his voyage to Naples. The loss the world has sustained by this accident may be estimated from the interesting description of the island of Inarime, now called Ischia, in a letter to Pope, dated 22nd October, 1771, published in Pope's works; and from another letter from Naples, addressed to Dr. Arbuthnot, giving an account of an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. On his way homeward, as he stopped at Lyons, he drew up a curious tract, "De Motu," which was inserted in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, which had proposed the subject, and which he afterwards printed on his arrival in London in 1721. The nation was at this time in great agitation and distress from the failure of the famous South Sea scheme, which induced him to publish in the same year "An Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain."
He now found access to the best company in the metropolis. By Mr. Pope he was introduced to Lord Burlington, and by his lordship recommended to the Duke of Grafton, who being lord-lieutenant of Ireland, took him over in 1721 as one of his chaplains, and in November the same year he had both the degrees of bachelor and doctor in divinity conferred upon him. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1776, however, denies that he ever went to Ireland as chaplain to any lord-lieutenant, and asserts that his degree of D. D. was given by his college, in 1717, when he was in Italy. In 1792 he had a very unexpected increase of fortune from Mrs. Vanhomrigh, the celebrated Vanessa, to whom he had been introduced by Swift. This lady, who had so long entertained a romantic passion for the Dean, and had intended
