Our author obliged the public with a Miscellany of Original Poems, by the Most Eminent Hands; in which himself had no small share.  In this miscellany are several poetical performances of Mrs. Martha Fowkes, a lady of exquisite taste in the belle accomplishments.  As to Mr. Hammond’s own pieces, he acknowleges in his preface, that they were written at very different times, and particularly owned by him, lest they should afterwards be ascribed to other persons; as the Ode on Solitude, was falsely ascribed to the earl of Roscommon, and other pieces of his, were likewise given to other authors.

This author wrote the Life of Walter Moyle Esq; prefixed to his works.——­Mr. Hammond died about the year 1726.

[Footnote A:  Coxeter’s Miscellaneous Notes.]

* * * * *

The Revd.  Mr. Lawrence Eusden.

This gentleman was descended from a very good family in the kingdom of Leland, but received his education at Trinity college in Cambridge.  He was honoured with the encouragement of that eminent patron of the poets the earl of Halifax, to whom he consecrated the first product of his Muse.  He enjoyed likewise the patronage of the duke of Newcastle, who being lord chamberlain, at the death of Mr. Rowe, preferred him to the Bays.

Mr. Eusden was for some part of his life chaplain to Richard lord Willoughby de Brook:  In this peaceful situation of life, one would not expect Mr. Eusden should have any enemies, either of the literary, or any other sort.  But we find he has had many, amongst whom Mr. Pope is the most formidable both in power and keenness.  In his Dunciad, Book I. Line 101. where he represents Dulness taking a view of her sons, he says

  She saw old Pryn, in restless Daniel shine,
  And Eusden eke out Blackmore’s endless line.

Mr. Oldmixon likewise in his Art of Logic and Rhetoric, page 413, affirms, ’That of all the Galimatias he ever met with, none comes up to some verses of this poet, which have as much of the ridiculum and the fustian in them, as can well be jumbled together, and are of that sort of nonsense, which so perfectly confounds all ideas, that there is no distinct one left in the mind.  Further he says of him, that he hath prophesy’d his own poetry shall be sweeter than Catullus, Ovid and Tibullus; but we have little hope of the accomplishment of it from what he hath lately published.’  Upon which Mr. Oldmixon has not spared a reflexion, that the placing the laurel on the head of one who wrote such verses, will give posterity a very lively idea of the justice and judgment of those who bestowed it.

Mr. Oldmixon no doubt by this reflexion insinuates, that the laurel would have better become his own brows than Eusden’s; but it would perhaps have been more decent for him to acquiesce in the opinion of the duke of Buckingham (Sheffield) who in his Session of the Poets thus mentions Eusden.