Mr. Hammond died in the year 1743, in the thirty-first year of his age, at Stow, the seat of his kind patron, the lord Cobham, who honoured him with a particular intimacy. The editor of Mr. Hammond's Elegies observes, that he composed them before he was 21 years of age; a period, says he, when fancy and imagination commonly riot at the expence of judgment and correctness. He was sincere in his love, as in his friendship; he wrote to his mistress, as he spoke to his friends, nothing but the true genuine sentiments of his heart. Tibullus seems to have been the model our author judiciously preferred to Ovid; the former writing directly from the heart to the heart, the latter too often yielding and addressing himself to the imagination. As a specimen of Mr. Hammond's turn for Elegiac Poetry, we shall quote his third Elegy, in which he upbraids and threatens the avarice of Neæra, and resolves to quit her. Should Jove descend in floods of liquid ore, And golden torrents stream from every part, That craving bosom still would heave for more, Not all the Gods cou'd satisfy thy heart. But may thy folly, which can thus disdain My honest love, the mighty wrong repay, May midnight-fire involve thy sordid gain, And on the shining heaps of rapine prey. May all the youths, like me, by love deceiv'd, Not quench the ruin, but applaud the doom, And when thou dy'st, may not one heart be griev'd: May not one tear bedew the lonely tomb. But the deserving, tender, gen'rous maid, Whose only care is her poor lover's mind, Tho' ruthless age may bid her beauty fade, In every friend to love, a friend shall find. And when the lamp of life will burn no more, When dead, she seems as in a gentle sleep, The pitying neighbour shall her loss deplore; And round the bier assembled lovers weep. With flow'ry garlands, each revolving year Shall strow the grave, where truth and softness rest, Then home returning drop the pious tear, And bid the turff lie easy on her breast. * * * * * Mr. JOHN BANKS. This poet was the son of Mr. John Banks of Sunning in Berkshire, in which place he was born in 1709. His father dying while our author was very young, the care of his education devolved upon an uncle in law, who placed him at a private school, under the tuition of one Mr. Belpene, an Anabaptist. This schoolmaster, so far from encouraging young Banks to make a great progress in classical learning, exerted his influence with his relations to have him taken from school, and represented him as incapable of receiving much erudition. This conduct in Mr. Belpene proceeded from an early jealousy imbibed against this young man, who, so far from being dull, as the school-master represented him, possessed extraordinary parts, of which he gave very early proofs.