perhaps no writer can easily be found that has borrowed fo little, or that in all his excellencies and all his defects has fo well maintained his claim to be confidered as original.

BROOM E.

WILLIAM BROOME was born in

Cheshire, as is faid 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 Eaton, 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, fuch as is faid to have happened very rarely, fuperannuated, he was fent to St. John's College by the contributions of his friends, where he obtained a small exhibition.

At his College he lived for fome time in the fame chamber with the well-known Ford, by whom I have formerly heard him described as a contracted fcholar and a mere verfifier, unacquainted with life, and unfkilful in converfation. His addiction to metre was then fuch,

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fuch, that his companions familiarly called him Poet. When he had opportunities of mingling with mankind, he cleared himself, as Ford likewife owned, from great part of his fcholaftick ruft.

He appeared early in the world as a tranflator of the "Iliads" into profe, in conjunction with Ozell and Oldifworth. How their feveral parts were diftributed is not known. This is the translation of which Ozell boasted as fuperiour, in Toland's opinion, to that of Pope: it has long fince vanished, and is now in no danger from the criticks.

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

Pope and Broome were to be yet more clofely connected. When the fuccefs of the "Iliad" gave encouragement to a verfion of the "Odyffey," Pope, weary of the toil, called Fenton and Broome to his affistance; 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, fixth, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, fixteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-third, together with the burthen of writing all the notes.

As this tranflation is a very important event in poetical hiftory, the reader has a right to know upon what grounds I establish my narration. That the verfion was not wholly Pope's, was always known; he had mentioned the affiftance of two friends in his propofals, and at the end of the work some account is given by Broome of their different parts, which however mentions only five books as written by the co-adjutors; the fourth and twentieth by Fenton; the fixth, the eleventh, and eighteenth, by himself; though Pope, in an advertisement prefixed afterwards to a new volume of his works, claimed only twelve. A natural curiosity, after the real conduct of fo great an undertaking, incited me once to inquire of Dr. Warburton, who told me, in his warm language, that he thought the relation given in

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the note "a lie;" but that he was not able to ascertain the feveral fhares. The intelligence which Dr. Warburton could not afford me, I obtained from Mr. Langton, to whom Mr. Spence had imparted it.

The price at which Pope purchased this affiftance was three hundred pounds paid to Fenton, and five hundred to Broome, with as many copies as he wanted for his friends, which amounted to one hundred more. The payment made to Fenton I know not but by hearsay; Broome's is very diftinctly told by Pope, in the notes to the Dunciad.

It is evident, that, according to Pope's own estimate, Broome was unkindly treated. If four books could merit three hundred pounds, eight and all the notes, equivalent at leaft to four, had certainly a right to more than fix.

Broome probably confidered himself as injured, and there was for fome time more than coldness between him and his employer. He always spoke of Pope as too much a lover of money, and Pope pursued him with avowed hoftility; for he not only named him disrespectfully in the " Dunciad," but quoted him more than once in the "Bathos," as a