Hopkins, Charles and John

(1664-?1700)

   • Charles, the elder brother, 1664-1700

   The elder son of Ezekiel Hopkins, bishop of Londonderry, was born about 1664 at Exeter and was taken early to Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwards at Queen's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. (1688). He subsequently settled in England and gained a reputation as a writer of poems and plays, and counted among his friends many poets, including John Dryden and William Congreve (see entry). His life of excesses led to an early death. He published four plays: Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, 1695; Neglected Virtue, 1696; Boadicea, Queen of Britain, 1697; and Friend188 ship Improved, or The Female Warrior, 1700. His poetry publications: Epistolary Poems: On Several Occasions: With Several of the Choicest Stories of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Tibullus's Elegies, 1694. The History of Love. A Poem: In a Letter to a Lady, 1695 (a selection of fables from Ovid's Metamorphoses). Whitehall: or the Court of England. A Poem, 1698.

   • John, the younger brother, 1675-?

   He graduated B.A. (1693) and M.A. (1698) from Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1698 he published two Pindaric poems: "The Triumphs of Peace, or the Glories of Nassau" (written at the time of his Grace the Duke of Ormond's entrance into Dublin) and "The Victory of Death; or the Fall of Beauty." In 1869 he published Milton's Paradise Lost Imitated in Rhyme; the Fourth Book contained "The Primitive Loves"; the Sixth Book, "The Battel of the Angels"; and the Ninth Book, "The Fall of Man." His last work-Amasia, or the Works of the Muses-was a collection in three volumes of love-verses and translations (from Ovid) (1700). He also translated many of the Psalms into English. There is no evidence of the date of his death. Some of his other poems, most of which dealt with characters from Greek mythology: "Alphæus and Arethusa," "Boreas and Orythia," "Cephalus and Procris," "Hippomenes and Atalanta," "Jupiter and Calisto," "Phæbus and Leucothoe," "Pigmalion and his Iv'ry Statue," "Pluto and Proserpina," "Salmacis and Hermaphroditus," "Tereus and Philomela."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html), for most of Hopkins's poems. Great Books Online (www.bartleby.com). Select Collection of Poems: With Notes, Biographical and Historical, by J. Nichols. The Second Volume (http://www.orgs.muohio.edu/anthologies/nichol2.htm).