"I'LL tell her the next time," said I Upon my timorous tongue the trembling accents die. Still overawe when she appears! My breath is spent in sighs, my eyes are drown'd in tears. HERE end my chains, and thraldom cease, I'll be this abject thing no more : Despair tormented first my breast, Make women longer true, or sooner kind ; O Love! or give me back my heart again! JAMES HAMMOND. 1733. It may not be incurious to remark, that the father of this poet was not only a votary of the Muse, and lover of the Fair, but, like his son, unsuccessful in the object of his early choice. Perceiving, however, the fruitlessness of his pursuit, Anthony Hammond wisely relinquished it, in favour of Susanna Walpole, daughter of the great Lord Orford, by whom he had two sons. James, the younger, was born in 1711. He received an excellent education at Westminster school, and, early introduced to the notice of public characters, readily obtained the appointment of Equerry to Frederic Prince of Wales. While in this situation, he became enamoured of Miss Dashwood, bed-ehamber woman to Queen Caroline, the lady whose beauty he celebrates, and whose inflexibility he deplores, in his Elegies to DELIA. Inadequacy of fortune, it has been asserted, constituted Miss Dashwood's only objection to a compliance with the solicitations of her admirer. If at this period, however, by the bequest of his relation Nicholas, Hammond had acquired a yearly property of 400 7. aided, as he was, by connexions highly conducive to his future interests, and in the hope and vigour of his days, how sordid must be the determination that could prompt the rejection of his suit, solely in consideration of pecuniary inconveniences! That she survived him long, refusing other overtures towards matrimony, is by many admitted as indubitable evidence of her exclusive attachment to her deceased lover. The fact, notwithstanding, might be the reverse of this conclusion. Repeatedly accused of selfishness and avarice, was it not desirable to rebut so odious a charge, by declining to connect herself in marriage with another? Whatever were the reasons which induced her indifference to Hammond; he who promised only to loiter away his years in the soft solitude of obscurity, was not exactly calculated either to augment or secure those resources on which the happiness of life most essentially depends. Hammond died at Stowe, the delightful retreat of Lord Cobham, a place consecrated to taste and friendship, on June 7, 1742. He had been elected into parliament: but, unambitious of imitating the senatorial career of his father, whom Walpole was accustomed to style "the silver-tongued Hammond," he exclaims, in his thirteenth elegy, alluding to Lord Chesterfield, "Let Stanhope speak his listening Country's wrongs: My humble verse shall please one partial Maid; For her alone I pen my tender songs, Securely sitting in his friendly shade!" Reviewed as an amatory bard, the character in which he is professedly to be considered, Hammond has certainly. enjoyed his full proportion of reputation. He no longer fills the space he once occupied in the temple of fame. Many of his situations imagined, many of his sentiments affected, in all his compositions there is too little of nature or truth. If he is often pleasing, he is seldom impassioned. He may succeed in alluring the imagination; but he cannot seize, and command the feelings. HE ADJURES DELIA TO PITY HIM BY THEIR FRIENDSHIP THOUSANDS Would seek the lasting peace of death, She tells me, Delia, I shall thee obtain, Who seven slow months have dragg'd my painful chain? By all the joys thy dearest Cœlia gave, To her I first avow'd my timorous flame, Ah! do not grieve the dear lamented Shade, To her sad tomb, at midnight, I retire; The friend's pale ghost shall vex thy sleepless bed, Cease, cruel man, the mournful theme forbear ; AH! what avails thy lover's pious care? |