Hughes, John

(1677-1720)

   Born at Marlborough, Wiltshire, he was educated at a dissenting academy in Little Britain, in the center of London, where he was the contemporary of Isaac Watts (see entry). In spite of never being in good health, in 1717 he was appointed as secretary in the chancery, a post he held until he died. He contributed to the Tatler, Spectator, and the Guardian, and with Sir Richard Blackmore (see entry) he wrote The Lay Monk, a series of forty essays, 1713-1714. The periodical The Monthly Amusement published a number of his translations. Several of his cantatas were set to music by various composers including Handel, and other composers set some of his poems to music. His Poems on Several Occasions, with some Select Essays in Prose was published posthumously in 1735. Some of his poems: "A Thought in a Garden," "Advice to Mr. Pope, on His Intended Translation of Homer's Iliad," "An Ode in Praise of Musick," "An Ode to the Creator of the World," "The House of Nassau," "The Triumph of Peace," "To Mr. Addison, on His Tragedy of Cato," "To the Memory of Mr. Milton."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Eighteenth-Century English Verse. Dennis Davison, ed. Penguin Books, 1988. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 ( http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Texts of John Hughes set to music (http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/h/jhughes/). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, 1779-1781 (http://www2.hn.psu.edu/Faculty/KKemmerer/poets/preface.htm). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). Turning Tides: Modern Dutch and Flemish Verse in English Versions by Irish Poets. Peter van de Kamp, ed. Story Line Press, 1994.