p Doctor, and
once attracted to his oratory an audience of shoemakers by announcing
that he would teach a new and short way of making shoes; his way being
to cut off the tops of boots. He died in 1756.]

[Footnote 2: Percy suggests very doubtfully that this may mean Thomas
Woolston, who was bom in 1669, educated at Sidney College, Cambridge,
published, in 1705, The Old Apology for the Truth against the Jews and
Gentiles revived, and afterwards was imprisoned and fined for levity in
discussing sacred subjects. The text points to a medical theory of
intermarriage. There was a Thomas Winston, of Clare Hall, Cambridge, who
travelled over the continent, took degrees at Basle and Padua, returned
to take his M.D. at Cambridge, and settled in London in 1607.]

[Footnote 3: William Whiston, born 1667, educated at Tamworth School and
Clare Hall, Cambridge, became a Fellow in 1693, and then Chaplain to
Bishop Moore. In 1696 he published his New Theory of the Earth, which
divided attention with Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth already
mentioned. In 1700 Whiston was invited to Cambridge, to act as deputy to
Sir Isaac Newton, whom he succeeded in 1703 as Lucasian Professor. For
holding some unorthodox opinions as to the doctrines of the early
Christians, he was, in 1710, deprived of his Professorship, and banished
from the University. He was a pious and learned man, who, although he
was denied the Sacrament, did not suffer himself to be driven out of the
Church of England till 1747. At last he established a small congregation
in his own house in accordance with his own notion of primitive
Christianity. He lived till 1752.]

[Footnote 4: No L--y of that time has written plays that are remembered.
The John Lacy whom Charles II. admired so much that he had his picture
painted in three of his characters, died in 1681, leaving four comedies
and an alteration of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. He was a
handsome man: first dancing-master, then quarter-master, then an admired
comedian. Henley would hardly have used a blank in referring to a
well-known writer who died thirty years before. There was another John
Lacy advertising in the Post Boy, Aug. 3, 1714, The Steeleids, or the
Trial of Wits, a Poem in three cantos, with a motto:

Then will I say, swelled with poetic rage,
That I, John Lacy, have reformed the age.]

* * * * *

No. 397. Thursday, June 5, 1712.