Budgell, Eustace (1686–1737)

English essayist. He contributed to the Tatler and the Spectator. He lost £20,000 in the South Sea Bubble, was attacked in writing by the satirical poet Alexander Pope, and eventually drowned himself in the Thames.

Budgell was born in St Thomas, near Exeter, Devon, and educated at Oxford. He was a cousin of the writer Joseph Addison, who procured for Budgell the post of accountant and comptroller general in Ireland 1717; but the next year, after publishing a lampoon directed against the duke of Bolton and his secretary, Budgell lost his position. He attacked Robert Walpole's government, but was himself attacked by Pope in the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot and the Dunciad.