Of Mr. Hammond, though he be well remembered as a man esteemed and
caressed by the elegant and 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, a native of Scotland, a man of very acute
understanding, though with little scholastick 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.
I have since found that Mr. Shiels, though he was no negligent inquirer,
has 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, 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[43]. He was born about
1710, and educated at Westminster-school; but it does not appear that he
was of any university[44]. He was equerry to the prince of Wales, and
seems to have come very early into publick 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, at Stowe, the famous seat of 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.
The elegies were published after his death; and while the writer's name
was remembered with fondness, they were read with a resolution to admire
them.
The recommendatory preface of the editor, who was then believed, and is
now affirmed by Dr. Maty, to be the earl of Chesterfield, raised strong
prejudices in their favour.
But of the prefacer, whoever he was, it may be reasonably suspected that
he never read the poems; for he professes to value them for a very high
species of excellence, and recommends them as the genuine effusions of
the mind, which expresses a real passion in the language of nature. But
the truth is, these elegies have neither passion, nature, nor manners.
Where there is fiction, there is no passion: he that describes himself
as a shepherd, and his Neæra or Delia as a shepherdess, and talks of
goats and lambs, feels no passion. He that courts his mistress with
Roman imagery deserves to lose her; for she may, with good reason,
suspect his sincerity. Hammond has few sentiments drawn from nature, and
few images from modern life. He produces nothing but frigid pedantry. It
would be hard to find in all his productions three stanzas that deserve
to be remembered.
Like other lovers, he threatens the lady with dying; and what then shall
follow?
Wilt thou in tears thy lover's corse attend;
With eyes averted light the solemn pyre,
Till all around the doleful flames ascend,
Then, slowly sinking, by degrees expire?
To sooth the hov'ring soul be thine the care,
With plaintive cries to lead the mournful band;
In sable weeds the golden vase to bear,
And cull my ashes with thy trembling hand:
Panchaia's odours be their costly feast,
And all the pride of Asia's fragrant year,
Give them the treasures of the farthest East,
And, what is still more precious, give thy tear.
Surely no blame can fall upon the nymph who rejected a swain of so
little meaning.
His verses are not rugged, but they have no sweetness; they never glide
in a stream of melody. Why Hammond or other writers have thought the
quatrain of ten syllables elegiack, it is difficult to tell. The
character of the elegy is gentleness and tenuity; but this stanza has
been pronounced by Dryden, whose knowledge of English metre was not
inconsiderable, to be the most magnificent of all the measures which our
language affords.
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[Footnote 43: This account is still erroneous. James Hammond, our
author, was of a different family, the second son of Anthony Hammond, of
Somersham-place, in the county of Huntingdon, esq. See Gent. Mag. vol.
lvii. p. 780. R.]
[Footnote 44: Mr. Cole gives him to Cambridge. MSS. Athenae Cantab, in
Mus. Brit.]