LIFE OF HAMMOND.

JAMES HAMMOND, son of Anthony Hammond, the brother-in-law of Sir Robert Walpole, and a man of note among the wits and parliamentary orators, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was born about the year 1710. He received all his education at Westminster School; for it does not appear, that he ever went to either university. He became a man of some eminence; but the stages of his promotion have never been ascertained. The Prince of Wales made him his equerry; and he enjoyed the society of Littleton, Cobham, and Chesterfield. In 1741, he was sent to parliament from Truro, in Cornwall; but he died in June, of the next year.

Hammond's poems were given to the world under the auspices of Lord Chesterfield: both he and Dr. Johnson consider him as no more than an imitator of Tibullus; and it remained for one of our own countrymen to show us, that, in too many instances, he imitates Tibullus, as Dryden imitated Virgil, and Pope, Homer.* Take, as an example, the 5th Elegy of Hammond, as compared with the 2d, book 1st, of Tibullus:

Untoward guards beset my Cynthia's doors,
And cruel locks the imprison'd fair conceal,
May lightnings blast whom love in vain implores,
And Jove's own thunder rive those bolts of steel.

Nam posita est nostræ custodia sæva puellæ
Clauditur, et dura janua fulta sera.
Janua dificilis domini, te verberet imber,
Te Jovis imperio fulmina missa petant.

* Port Folio for June and July, 1815.

Ah! gentle door attend my humble call,
Nor let thy sounding hinge our thefts betray,
So all my curses far from thee shall fall,
We angry lovers mean not half we say.

Janua jam pateas uni mihi victa querelis ;
Neu furtim verso cardine aperta sones.
Et, mala si qua tibi dixit dementia nostra,
Ignoseas: capiti sint, precor, illa meo.

Still addressing the door;

Remember now the flowery wreaths I gave,
When first I told thee of my bold desires,
Nor thou, O Cynthia, fear the watchful slave,
Venus will favour what herself inspires.

Te meminissee decet quæ plurima voce peregi,
Supplice, cum posti florida serta darem,
Tu quoque ne timide custodes, Delia, falle
Audendum est. Fortes adjuvat ipsa Venus.

She guides the youths who see not where they tread,
She shows the virgin how to turn the door,

Softly to steal from off her silent bed,

And not a step betray her on the floor.

Illa favet, seu quis juvenis nova limina tentat;
Seu reserat fixo dente puella fores.
Illa docet furtim molli decedere lecto:
Illa pedem nullo ponere posse sono.

Sometimes the translation is still closer; as in the following stanza, from the 12th Elegy :—

Sic ego secretis possum bene vivere sylvis,
Qua nulla humano sit via trita pede!
Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atra
Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis.

Tib. b. iv. Eleg. 12.

With thee in gloomy deserts, let me dwell,

Where never human footsteps mark'd the ground;

Thou light of life all darkness can'st expel,

And seem a world with solitude around,

Dr. Johnson ridicules the passage, in which Hammond talks of lambs and kids; for he little imagined, that he was laying hands upon Tibullus :

If late at dusk, while carelessly I roam,
I meet a strolling kid or bleeting lamb,
Under my arm I'll bring the wanderer home,
And not a little chide its thoughtless dam.

In the original:

Non agnamve sinu pigeat, fætumve capella
Desertum oblita matre referre domum.

We are told by Lord Chesterfield, that Hammond 'sat down to write what he thought, not to think what he should write ;* but, if the reader compares the Elegies included in the following list, they will

* Reasons are not wanting for the zeal with which this nobleman promoted the interest of our author. Tibullus had praised Messala; and, when Hammond comes to the passage, he turns it in the fol lowing manner :

Stanhope in wisdom as in wit divine,
May rise and plead Britannia's glorious cause.
El. 13.

Again:

Stanhope shall come, and grace his rural friend,
Delia shall wonder at her noble guest,

With blushing awe the riper fruit commend,
And for her husband's patron cull the best.

All this Delia was to do in the original:

Huc veniet Messala meus cui dulcia poma,
Delia selectis detrahet arboribus;

Et tantum venerata virum, hune sedula curet;
Hnic paret, atque epulas ipsa ministra gerat.
L. i. El. 1.

ascertain, that Hammond was generally contented to think what Tibullus had thought:

Hammond has written fourteen Elegies; and, though the order of the original is inverted, twelve out of the fourteen are proved to be translations.

PREFACE.

BY THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD.

1743.

THE following Elegies were wrote by a young gentleman lately dead, and justly lamented.

As he had never declared his intentions concerning their publication, a friend of his, into whose hands they fell, determined to publish them, in the persuasion that they would neither be unwelcome to the public, nor injurious to the memory of their Author. The reader must decide whether this determination was the result of just judgment or partial friendship; for the editor feels and avows so much of the latter, that he gives up all pretensions to the former

The Author composed them ten years ago, before he was two-and-twenty years old; an age when fancy and imagination commonly riot at the expense of judgment and correctness; neither of which seem wanting here. But sincere in his love as in his friendship, he wrote to his mistresses as he spoke to his friends, nothing but the true genuine sentiments of his heart; he sat down to write what he thought, not to think what he should write : it was nature and sentiment only that dictated to a real mistress, not youthful and poetic fancy to an imaginary one. Elegy, therefore, speaks here her own proper native language, the unaffected plainVOL. XVII. B b