This elegiast was the second son of Anthony Hammond, a brother-in-law of
Sir Robert Walpole, and a man of some note in his day. He was born in
1710; educated at Westminster school; became equerry to the Prince of
Wales; fell in love with a lady named Dashwood, who rejected him, and
drove him to temporary derangement, and then to elegy-writing; entered
parliament for Truro, in Cornwall, in 1741; and died the next year. His
elegies were published after his death, and, although abounding in
pedantic allusions and frigid conceits, became very popular.