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JAMES HAMMOND.

VOL. II.

5*

105

HAMMOND.

1710-1742.

Birth-Educated at Westminster School-Equerry to Frederick Prince of Wales-His ElegiesDeath and Character.

1

OF Mr. Hammond, though he be well remembered as a man esteemed and caressed by the elegant and the great, I was at first able to obtain no other memorials than such as are supplied by a book called 'Cibber's Lives of the Poets;' of which I take this opportunity to testify that it was not written, nor, I believe, ever seen, by either of the Cibbers; but was the work of Robert Shiels,2 a native of Scotland, a man of very acute understanding, though with little scholastic education, who, not long after the publication of his work, died in London of a consumption. His life was virtuous, and his end was pious. Theophilus Cibber, then a prisoner for debt, imparted, as I was told, his name for ten guineas. The manuscript of Shiels is now in my possession.

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I have since found that Mr. Shiels, though he was no negligent inquirer, had been misled by false accounts; for he relates that James Hammond, the author of the Elegies, was the son of a Turkey merchant, and had some office at the Prince of Wales's court,

1 This is not correct. The work itself shows some revision by Theophilus Cibber; and Griffiths, the publisher of the work, in noticing this statement of Johnson's, asserts that Theophilus Cibber" did very punctually revise every sheet." (See Boswell by Croker,' p. 504 and p. 818.)

2 In Pearch's Collection of Poems,' i. 186, is a poem in blank verse, by "Robert Sheills," called 'The Power of Beauty,' wherein the Aspasia of Johnson's Irene is highly lauded. It is a clever imitation of Thomson's manner. Shiels assisted Johnson in his Dictionary, and was a Jacobite like Johnson.

3 The sum was twenty guineas. (See Griffiths's letter in 'Boswell by Croker,' p. 504.) To which I may add that the original receipt (which I have seen) was for 217. and dated 18th Nov. 1752, Cibber therein undertaking "to revise, correct, and improve a work now printing in four volumes," &c.-"that his name shall be made use of as the author of the said work, and be inserted accordingly in the title-page thereof and in any advertisements relative to it." The receipt was sold 20th April, 1849, at Puttick's auction rooms.

till love of a lady, whose name was Dashwood, for a time disordered his understanding. He was unextinguishably amorous, and his mistress inexorably cruel.

Of this narrative, part is true, and part false. He was the second son of Anthony Hammond, a man of note among the wits, poets, and parliamentary orators, in the beginning of this century, who was allied to Sir Robert Walpole by marrying his sister.' He was born about 1710, and educated at Westminster-school; but it does not appear that he was of any university. He was equerry to the Prince of Wales, and seems to have come very early into public notice, and to have been distinguished by those whose friendship prejudiced mankind at that time in favour of the man on whom they were bestowed; for he was the companion of Cobham, Lyttelton, and Chesterfield. He is said to have divided his life between pleasure and books; in his retirement forgetting the town, and in his gaiety losing the student. Of his literary hours all the effects are here exhibited, of which the Elegies were written very early, and the Prologue not long before his death.

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."

4 Catherine Dashwood, better known as Kitty Dashwood, afterwards one of the bedchamber women to Charlotte, queen of George III. Walpole calls her (writing in 1761) 66 the famous old beauty of the Oxfordshire Jacobites."—Letter to Mann, Sept. 10, 1761. Amidst the gossip of the last century, I shall perhaps be forgiven for recording that my old acquaintance Lady Corke, who died in 1840 at the age of ninety-four, told me that she had known Kitty Dashwood very well, and that Hammond undoubtedly died for love: "the only instance of the kind," she said, "that she had known in her long life." Kitty had at first accepted, but afterwards rejected him, on-Lady Corke, and indeed all Kitty's contemporaries thought-prudential reasons.-CROKER: Preface to Lord Hervey's Memoirs, p. xxx. 5 This account is still erroneous. James Hammond, author of the 'Elegies,' was the second son of Anthony Hammond, of Somersham Place, in the county of Huntingdon, Esq., to whom, in 1694, Southerne dedicated his 'Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery.' ('Gent.'s Mag.' for 1787, p. 780, and Brydges's 'Autobiography,' vol. ii. p. 11.) The poet's grand-uncle was William Hammond, Esq., of St. Alban's Court, in Nonington, Kent, author of a volume of poems, published 1655, and reprinted in 1816 by Sir Egerton Brydges.

6 Frederick Prince of Wales, father of George III.

7 By his will, a very short and informal one, dated Paris, Feb. 1729-30, he leaves Erasmns Lewis, of Cork Street, his sole executor, in trust for his mother, Jane Hammond. Lewis re

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