He held this place to the time of his decease, which happened on the 17th of February 1719, the very night in which his tragedy, entitled the Siege of Damascus, was first acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane.

He was cut off by a consumption, after a painful life, at the age of 42, when he had just arrived at an agreeable competence, and advancing in fame and fortune.  So just is the beautiful reflexion of Milton in his Lycidas;

  Fame is the spur, that the clear spirit doth raise,
    (That last infirmity of noble mind)
  To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
    But the fair guerdon, when we hops to find,
  And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
    Comes the blind fury with th’ abhorred shears,
  And slits the thin-spun life.—­

He was privately buried in the vault under the chancel of St. Andrew’s Church in Holborn.  Mr. Hughes, as a testimony of gratitude to his noble friend, and generous patron, earl Cowper, gave his lordship a few weeks before he died, his picture drawn by Sir Godfrey Kneller, which he himself had received from that masterly painter.  The value lord Cowper set upon it will be best shewn, by the letter he wrote upon this occasion to Mr. Hughes.  As such a testimony from so eminent a person, was considered by himself as one of the highest honours he was capable of receiving, we shall therefore insert it.

24th Jan. 1719-20.

’Sir,

’I thank you for the most acceptable present of your picture, and assure you that none of this age can set a higher value on it than I do, and shall while I live, tho’ I am sensible posterity will out-do me in that particular.’

I am with the greatest esteem, and sincerity

Your most affectionate, and oblig’d humble servant

Cowper.

Mr. Hughes was happy in the acquaintance and friendship of several of the greatest men, and most distinguished genius’s of the age in which he lived; particularly of the nobleman just now mentioned, the present lord bishop of Winchester, lord chief baron Gilbert, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Mr. Southern, Mr. Rowe, &c. and might have justly boasted in the words of Horace

  ——­me
  Cum magnis vixisse, invita fatebitu usque
  Invidia.——­

Having given this short account of his life, which perhaps is all that is preserved any where concerning him; we shall now consider him, first, as a poet, and then as a prose writer.

The Triumph of Peace was the earliest poem he wrote of any length, that appeared in public.  It was written on occasion of the peace of Ryswick, and printed in the year 1677.  A learned gentleman at Cambridge, in a letter to a friend of Mr. Hughes’s, dated the 28th of February 1697-8, gives the following account of the favourable reception this poem met with there, upon its first publication.

’I think I never heard a poem read with so much admiration, as the Triumph of Peace was by our best critics here, nor a greater character given to a young poet, at his first appearing; no, not even to Mr. Congreve himself.  So nobly elevated are his thoughts, his numbers so harmonious, and his turns so fine and delicate, that we cry out with Tully, on a like occasion,