to the Spectator. With respect to his personal character, he is faid to have been a man of gay converfation, at least a temperate lover of wine and company, and in his domestick relations without cenfurę. HAMMOND. HAMM ON D. F Mr. HAMMOND, though he be well OF 、 remembered as a man efteemed and careffed by the elegant and great, I was at firft able to obtain no other memorials than fuch as are fupplied by a book called Cibber's Lives of the Poets; of which I take this opportunity to testify that it was not written, nor, I believe, ever feen, by either of the Cibbers; but was the work of Robert Shiels, a native of Scotland, a man of very acute understanding, though with little fcholaftick education, who, not long after the publication of his work, died in London of a consumption. His life was virtuous, and his end was pious. Theophilus Cibber, then a prifoner for debt, imparted, as I was told, his name for ten guineas. The manufcript of Shiels is now in my poffeffion. I have fince found that Mr. Shiels, though he was no negligent enquirer, has been misled by false accounts; for he relates that James Hammond, the author of the following Elegies, was the fon of a Turkey merchant, and had fome office at the prince of Wales's court, till love of a lady, whose name was Dashwood, for a time difordered his understanding. He was unextinguishably amorous, and his mistress inexorably cruel. Of this narrative, part is true, and part falfe. He was the fecond fon of Anthony Hammond, a man of note among the wits, poets, and parliamentary orators in the beginning of this century, who was allied to Sir Robert Walpole by marrying his fifter. He was born about 1710, and educated at Westminfter-school; but it does not appear that he was of any university. He was equerry to the prince of Wales, and feems to have come very early into publick notice, and to have been distinguished by those whose patronage and friendship prejudiced mankind at that time in favour of thofe on whom they were bestowed; for he was the companion of Cobham, Lyttelton, and Chesterfield. He is faid |