Steele, who, when the rage of party did not misguide him, seems to have been a man of boundless benevolence.

Hughes had hitherto suffered the mortifications of a narrow fortune; but in 1717 the Lord Chancellor Cowper set him at ease, by making him secretary to the commissions of the peace; in which he afterwards, by a particular request, desired his successor Lord Parker to continue him. He had now affluence; but such is human life, that he had it when his declining health could neither allow him long possession nor quick enjoyment.

66

His last work was his tragedy, The Siege of Damascus, after which a Siege" became a popular title. This play, which still continues on the stage, and of which it is unnecessary to add a private voice to such continuance of approbation, is not acted or printed according to the author's original draught, or his settled intention. He had made Phocyas apostatise from his religion; after which the abhorrence of Eudocia would have been reasonable, his misery would have been just, and the horrors of his repentance exemplary. The players, however, required that the guilt of Phocyas should terminate in desertion to the enemy; and Hughes, unwilling that his relations should lose the benefit of his work, complied with the alteration.

He was now weak with a lingering consumption, and not able to attend the rehearsal; yet was so vigorous in his faculties, that only ten days before his death he wrote the dedication to his patron, Lord Cowper. On February 17, 1719-20, the play was represented and the author died. He lived to hear that it was well received; but paid no regard to the intelligence, being then wholly employed in the meditations of a departing Christian.

A man of his character was undoubtedly regretted; and Steele devoted an essay, in a paper called The Theatre, to the memory of his virtues. His life is written in the Biographia with some degree of favourable partiality; and an account of him is prefixed to his works by his relation the late Mr. Duncombe, a man whose blameless elegance deserved the same respect.

The character of his genius I shall transcribe from the correspondence of Swift and Pope.

"A month ago," says Swift, ". were sent me over, by a friend of mine, the works of John Hughes, Esq. They are in prose and verse. I never heard of the man in my life, yet I find your name as a subscriber. He is too grave a poet for me; and I think among the mediocrists in prose as well as verse."

To this Pope returns: "To answer your question as to Mr. Hughes, what he wanted in genius he made up as an honest man; but he was of the class you think him."*

In Spence's collection, Pope is made to speak of him with still less respect, as having no claim to poetical reputation but from his tragedy.

"This," says Warton, "is a very unjust censure.

Can the author of such a tragedy as the Siege of Damascus be one of the mediocrities? Swift and Pope seem not to recollect the value and rank of an author who could write such a tragedy."

The life of Dr. Parnell is a task which I should very willingly decline, since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do best that which he was doing; a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness.

What such an author has told, who would tell again? I have made an abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification from my attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of Goldsmith.

Thomas Parnell was the son of a commonwealthsman of the same name, who at the Restoration left Congleton, in Cheshire, where the family had been established for several centuries, and, settling in Ireland, purchased an estate, which, with his lands in Cheshire, descended to the poet, who was born at Dublin in 1679; and, after the usual education at a grammar-school, was, at the age of thirteen,

* Johnson.

admitted into the college, where, in 1700, he became master of arts, and was the same year ordained a deacon, though under the canonical age, by a dispensation from the Bishop of Derry.

About three years afterwards he was made a priest; and in 1705, Dr. Ashe, the Bishop of Clogher, conferred upon him the archdeaconry of Clogher. About the same year he married Mrs. Anne Minchin, an amiable lady, by whom he had two sons, who died young, and a daughter, who long survived him.

At the ejection of the Whigs, in the end of Queen Anne's reign, Parnell was persuaded to change his party, not without much censure from those whom he forsook; and was received by the new ministry as a valuable reinforcement. When the Earl of Oxford was told that Dr. Parnell waited among the crowd in the outer room, he went by the persuasion of Swift, with his treasurer's staff in his hand, to inquire for him, and to bid him welcome; and, as may be inferred from Pope's dedication, admitted him as a favourite companion to his convivial hours, but, as it seems often to have happened in those times to the favourites of the great, without attention to his fortune, which, however, was in no great need of improvement.

Parnell, who did not want ambition or vanity, was desirous to make himself conspicuous, and to show how worthy he was of high preferment. As he thought himself qualified to become a popular preacher, he displayed his elocution with great success in the pulpits of London; but the queen's death putting an end to his expectations, abated his diligence; and Pope represents him as falling from that time into intemperance of wine. That in his latter life he was too much a lover of the bottle, is not denied ; but I have heard it imputed to a cause more likely to obtain forgiveness from mankind, the untimely death of a darling son; or, as others tell, the loss of his wife, who died (1712) in the midst of his expectations.

He was now to derive every future addition to his preferments from his personal interest with his private friends; and he was not long unregarded. He was warmly recommended by Swift to Archbishop King, who gave him a prebend in 1713; and in May 1716 presented him to the vicarage of Finglass in the diocese of Dublin, worth four hundred pounds a year. Such notice from such a man inclines me to believe that the vice of which he has been accused was not gross or not notorious.

But his prosperity did not last long. His end, whatever was its cause, was now approaching. He enjoyed his preferment little more than a year; for in July 1718, in his thirty-ninth year, he died at Chester, on his way to Ireland.

He seems to have been one of those poets who take delight in writing. He contributed to the papers of that time, and probably published more than he owned. He left many compositions behind him, of which Pope selected those which he thought best, and dedicated them to the Earl of Oxford. Of these Goldsmith has given an opinion, and his criticism it is seldom safe to contradict. He bestows just praise upon The Rise of Women, The Fairy Tale, and The Pervigilium Veneris; but has very properly remarked, that in The Battle of Mice and Frogs the Greek names have not in English their original

effect.

He tells us, that The Book-Worm is borrowed from Beza; but he should have added with modern applications: and, when he discovers that Gay Bacchus is translated from Augurellus, he ought to have remarked that the latter part is purely Parnell's. Another poem, When Spring comes on, is, he says, taken from the French. I would add, that the description of barrenness, in his verses to Pope, was borrowed from Secundus; but lately searching for the passage, which I had formerly read, I could not find it. The Night-piece on Death is indirectly preferred by Goldsmith to Gray's Churchyard; but, in my opinion, Gray has the advantage of dignity, variety, and originality of sentiment. He observes, that the story of the Hermit is in More's dialogues and Howell's letters, and supposes it to have been originally Arabian.

Goldsmith has not taken any notice of the Elegy to the old Beauty, which is perhaps the meanest; nor of the Allegory on Man, the happiest of Parnell's performances. The hint of the Hymn to Contentment I suspect to have been borrowed from Cleveland.

The general character of Parnell is not great extent of comprehension, or fertility of mind. Of the little that appears still less is his own. His praise must be derived from the easy sweetness of his diction in his verses there is more happiness than pains; he is sprightly without effort, and always delights, though he never ravishes; every thing is proper, yet every thing seems casual. If there is some appearance of elaboration in the Hermit, the narrative, as it is less airy, is less pleasing. Of his other compositions, it is impossible to say whether they are the productions of nature, so excellent as not to want the help of art, or of art so refined as to resemble

nature.

This criticism relates only to the pieces published by Pope. Of the large appendages which I find in the last edition, I can only say that I know not whence they came, nor have ever inquired whither they are going. They stand upon the faith of the compilers.

WILLIAM HAMILTON.

(Circa 1680-1751.)

William Hamilton, of Gilbertfield, was the son of Hamilton of Lady Lands. At an early period of life he embraced the profession of a soldier; but a lieutenancy seems to have been the highest preferment which he obtained. During his latter years he resided at Letterick, in the county of Lanark, where he died in 1751, at a very advanced age. He was a contributor to Watson's Choice Collection of Scots Poems, and one of the poetical correspondents of Allan Ramsay; three of his epistles occurring in the common editions of Ramsay's works. He published a modernised abridgment of Henry the Minstrel's Wallace (1722), an injudicious and futile work; but we have

Ramsay's decided testimony in favour of his Scottish poetry. His Elegy on the Death of his Dog is also celebrated by John Wilson, a more recent poet.

WILLIAM BROOME.*

(Circa 1680-1745.)

William Broome was born in Cheshire, as is said, of very mean parents. Of the place of his birth, or the first part of his life, I have not been able to gain any intelligence. He was educated upon the foundation at Eton, and was captain of the school a whole year, without any vacancy, by which he might have obtained a scholarship at King's College; being by this delay, such as is said to have happened very rarely, superannuated, he was sent to St. John's College by the contributions of his friends, where he obtained a small exhi

bition.

At his college he lived for some time in the same chamber with the well-known Ford, by whom I have formerly heard him described as a contracted scholar and a mere versifier, unacquainted with life, and unskilful in conversation. His addiction to metre was then such, that his companions familiarly called him Poet. When he had opportunities of mingling with mankind, he cleared himself, as Ford likewise owned, from great part of his scholastic rust.

He appeared early in the world as a translator of the Iliads into prose, in conjunction with Ozell and Oldisworth. How their several parts were distributed is not known. This is the translation of which Ozell boasted as superior, in Toland's opinion, to that of Pope: it has long since vanished, and is now in no danger from the critics.

He was introduced to Mr. Pope, who was then visiting Sir John Cotton, at Madingley, near Cambridge; and gained so much of his esteem, that he was employed, I believe, to make extracts from Eustathius for the notes to the translation of the Iliad; and in the volumes of poetry published by Lintot, commonly called Pope's Miscellanies, many of his early pieces were inserted.

Pope and Broome were to be yet more closely connected. When the success of the Iliad gave encouragement to a version of the Odyssey, Pope, weary of the toil, called Fenton and Broome to his assistance; and, taking only half the work upon himself, divided the other half between his partners, giving four books to Fenton, and eight to Broome. Fenton's books I have enumerated in his life; to the lot of Broome fell the second, sixth, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-third, together with the burden of writing all the notes.

As this translation is a very important event in poetical history, the reader has a right to know upon what grounds I establish my narration. That the version was not wholly Pope's, was always

* Johnson.