to have divided his life between pleasure and books; in his retirement forgetting the town, and in his gaiety losing the student. Of his literary hours all the effects are here exhibited, of which the Elegies were written very early, and the Prologue not long before his death. In 1741, he was chofen into parliament for Truro in Cornwall, probably one of those who were elected by the Prince's influence; and died next year in June at Stowe, the famous feat of the lord Cobham. His mistress long outlived him, and in 1779 died unmarried. The character which her lover bequeathed her was, indeed, not likely to attract courtship. The Elegies were published after his death; and while the writer's name was remembered with fondness, they were read with a refolution to admire them. The recommendatory preface of the editor, who was then believed, and is now affirmed by Dr. Maty, to be the earl of Chesterfield, raised strong prejudices in their favour. But the ners. But of the prefacer, whoever he was, it may be reasonably fufpected that he never read poems; for he profeffes to value them for a very high fpecies of excellence, and recommends them as the genuine effufions of the mind, which exprefs a real paffion in the language of nature. But the truth is, these elegies have neither paffion, nature, nor manWhere there is fiction, there is no paffion; he that defcribes himself as a fhepherd, and his Neæra or Delia as a fhepherdess, and talks of goats and lambs, feels no paffion. He that courts his mistress with Roman ima→ gery deferves to lofe her; for the may with good reafon fufpect his fincerity. Hammond has few fentiments drawn from nature, and few images from modern life. He produces nothing but frigid pedantry. It would be hard to find in all his productions three ftanzas that deferve to be remembered. Like other lovers, he threatens the lady with dying; and what then shall follow? Wilt thou in tears thy lover's confe attend; To footh the hovering foul be thine the care, With plaintive cries to lead the mournful band, In fable weeds the golden vafe to bear, And cull my ashes with thy trembling hand: Panchaia's odours be their coftly feast, And all the pride of Afia's fragrant year, Give them the treasures of the fartheft East, And, what is still more precious, give thy tear. Surely no blame can fall upon the nymph who rejected a swain of fo little meaning. His verfes are not rugged, but they have no sweetness; they never glide in a stream of melody. Why Hammond or other writers have thought the quatrain of ten fyllables elegiac, it is difficult to tell. The character of the Elegy is gentleness and tenuity, but this ftanza has been pronounced by Dryden, whofe knowledge of English metre was not inconfiderable, to be the most magnificent of all the measures which our language affords. SOMER |