NATHANIEL HOOKE (1690-1763), the author of a _Roman History_, is better known as the editor of _An Account of the conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, from her first coming to Court in the year 1710, in a letter from herself to Lord ---- in 1742_. The duchess is said to have dictated this letter from her bed, and to have been so eager for its completion that she insisted on Hooke's not leaving the house till he had finished it. He was munificently rewarded for his labour by a present of £5,000. It was Hooke, a zealous Roman Catholic, who, when Pope was dying, asked him if he should not send for a priest, and received the poet's hearty thanks for putting him in mind of it. JOHN HUGHES (1677-1719) was the author of poems, an opera, a masque, several translations, and a tragedy, _The Siege of Damascus_, which was well received, and kept its place on the stage for some years. He died on the first night's performance of the play. Several articles in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ are from his pen. In 1715 he published an edition of Spenser in six volumes. Hughes received warm praise from Steele, and enjoyed also the friendship of Addison. CONYERS MIDDLETON (1683-1750) is now chiefly known for an extravagantly eulogistic life of _Cicero_ (1741), in which, as Macaulay observes, he 'resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to unpardonable distortions and suppressions of facts.' The book is written in a forcible and lively style. A man of considerable learning, Middleton was a violent controversialist, who liked better to attack and to defend than to dwell in the serene atmosphere of literature or of practical divinity. He assailed the famous Richard Bentley with such rancour that he had to apologize and was fined £50 by the Court of King's Bench. Middleton was a doctor of divinity, but his controversial works, while never directly attacking the chief tenets of the religion he professed, lean far more to the side of the Deists than to the orthodox creed, and, indeed, it would not be uncharitable to class him among them. He appears, like Swift, to have chiefly regarded the Christian religion as an institution of service to the stability of the State. Of the _Miscellaneous Works_ which were published after his death in five volumes, the most elaborate and the most provocative of disputation is _A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church through several successive centuries_ (1749). Middleton was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was elected librarian of the University.