Our author was son of the rev.  Mr. Pomfret, rector of Luton in Bedfordshire, and he himself was preferred to the living of Malden in the same county.  He was liberally educated at an eminent grammar school in the country, from whence he was sent to the university of Cambridge, but to what college is not certain.  There he wrote most of his poetical pieces, took the degree of master of arts, and very early accomplished himself in most kinds of polite literature.  A gentleman who writes under the name of Philalethes, and who was an intimate friend of Pomfret’s, has cleared his reputation from the charge of fanaticism, which some of his malicious enemies brought against him.  It was shortly after his leaving the university, that he was preferred to the living of Malden abovementioned, and was, says that gentleman, so far from being tinctured with fanaticism, that I have often heard him express his abhorrence of the destructive tenets maintained by that people, both against our religious and civil rights.  This imputation it seems was cast on him by there having been one of his sur-name, though not any way related to him, a dissenting teacher, and who published some rhimes upon spiritual subjects, as he called them, and which sufficiently proved him an enthusiast.

About the year 1703 Mr. Pomfret came up to London, for institution and induction, into a very considerable living, but was retarded for some time by a disgust taken by dr.  Henry Compton, then bishop of London, at these four lines, in the close of his poem entitled The Choice.

  And as I near approach’d the verge of life,
  Some kind relation (for I’d have no wife)
  Should take upon him all my worldly care,
  While I did for a better state prepare.

The parenthesis in these verses was so maliciously represented to the bishop, that his lordship was given to understand, it could bear no other construction than that Mr. Pomfret preferred a mistress before a wife; though the words may as well admit of another meaning, and import no more, than the preference of a single life to marriage; unless the gentlemen in orders will assert, that an unmarried Clergyman cannot live without a mistress.  But the bishop was soon convinced that this aspersion against him, was no more than an effort of malice, as Mr. Pomfret at that time was really married.  The opposition which his enemies made to him, had, in some measure, its effect; for by the obstructions he met with, he was obliged to stay longer in London than he intended, and as the Small-pox then raged in the metropolis, he sickened them, and died in London in the 36th year of his age.