1710-1742. HIS ELEGIES. 331 In 1741 he was chosen into Parliament for Truro in Cornwall, probably one of those who were elected by the Prince's influence; and died next year in June [7th June, 1742] at Stowe, the famous seat 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 resolution 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 of the prefacer, whoever he was, it may be reasonably suspected that he never read the poems; for he professes to value them for a very high species of excellence, and recommends them as the genuine effusions of the mind, which expresses a real passion in the language of nature. But the truth is, these elegies have neither passion, nature, nor manners. Where there is fiction, there is no passion; he that describes himself as a shepherd, and his Neæra or Delia as a shepherdess, and talks of goats and lambs, feels no passion. He that courts his mistress with Roman imagery deserves to lose her; for she may with good reason suspect his sincerity. Hammond has few sentiments 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 stanzas that deserve to be remembered. 7 By his will, a very short and informal one, dated Paris, 5th Feb. 1729-30, he leaves Erasmus Lewis, of Cork Street, his sole executor, in trust for his mother, Jane Hammond. Lewis refused to act, and the mother administered. Two administrations were made after the mother's death-the last in 1755 by George Dowdeswell, Esq. He directs his body to be buried where he died. In the administration he is described as of St. George's, Hanover Square. Nicholas Hammond, Esq., who died Oct. 13, 1733, left him 400l. a year. -Gent.'s Mag. for 1781, p. 318. 8 'Love Elegies,' written in the year 1732. Virginibus puerisque canto. London: printed for G, Hawkins, &c., fol., 1745. 9 Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.-JOHNSON of Lycidas: Life of Milton. Like other lovers, he threatens the lady with dying; and what then shall follow? "Wilt thou in tears thy lover's corse attend; And cull my ashes with thy trembling hand: And all the pride of Asia's fragrant year, Give them the treasures of the farthest East, And what is still more precious, give thy tear." 10 Surely no blame can fall upon a nymph who rejected a swain of so little meaning? His verses 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 syllables elegiac, it is difficult to tell. The character of the Elegy is gentleness and tenuity; but this stanza has been pronounced by Dryden,11 whose knowledge of English metre was not inconsiderable, to be the most magnificent of all the measures which our language affords. 10 I have Johnson's own copy of Hammond, in which these stanzas are marked by Johnson with one of those "red lines" to which he alludes in his letter to Reynolds, returning Crabbe's MS. of 'The Village.' I may add that the volume-a small duodecimo, printed by the Foulis in 1771-contains also the Poems of Collins, and has this inscription, in Boswell's own handwriting: "To Samuel Johnson, LL.D., from his most affectionate and grateful friend, James Boswell." 11 Account of Annus Mirabilis, in a letter to Sir Robert Howard, 1667. Sure Hammond has no right to the least inventive merit. I do not think that there is a single thought in his Elegies' of any eminence that is not literally translated. I am astonished he could content himself with being so little an original. I question whether he had taken without the interest of his genteel acquaintance, or indeed if the author had not died precedently.-SHENSTONE: Letters. There is as much nature in the amatory effusions of Southey's Abel Shufflebottom' as in the whole of Hammond's Elegies.' All that Hammond has done was to new heat the cold meats of antiquity. Yet he is praised (Pope's Works, ii. 283) by Joseph Warton, no mean judge. ( 335 ) SOMERVILE. 1692-1742. Born at Edston, in Warwickshire Educated at Winchester and Oxford - His 'Chace' and other Poems Death and Burial at Wotton, in Warwickshire - Works and Character. OF Mr. Somervile's life I am not able to say any thing that can satisfy curiosity. He was a gentleman whose estate was in Warwickshire; his house, where he was born in 1692,' is called Edston, a seat inherited from a long line of ancestors; for he was said to be of the first family in his county. He tells of himself, that he was born near the Avon's banks. He was bred at Winchesterschool, and was elected Fellow of New College. It does not appear that in the places of his education he exhibited any He must have been born before 1692, if there is any truth in song, for among his poems is an Epistle to Aikman, the painter, "On his painting a full-length portrait of the author in the decline of life carrying him back by another portrait to his youthful days,” wherein he says that he is then passed youth, and All the poor comfort that I now can share Is the soft blessing of an elbow chair, which, if he was born in 1692, must have been said of himself when thirtyeight, for Aikman was dead early in 1731. Shenstone, moreover (as the reader will see), imputes his foibles to age. If he was born in 1692, he was only fifty at his death in 1742. Since this was written, I have received the following account of Somervile from my friend the Rev. Thomas Chaffers, Vice-Principal of Brasenose College: "William Somervile was admitted as Founder's kin to Winchester School in 1690, and was then said to have been thirteen years old last Michaelmas. He succeeded one Thomas Hawkins as Fellow of New College, 12th August, 1690, and resigned on succeeding to his patrimonial property in 1704; making a vacancy for his younger brother Edward, who entered into holy orders, and was presented by the College to the living of Adderbury, in Oxfordshire, 1721." |