connections, induced the booksellers to consider his assistance as introductive of a rapid sale. At the request of Tonson, therefore, he published, in 1708, a version of Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead; to these he added two Dialogues, written by himself, the interlocutors of which are Lucius Junius Brutus, and Augustus Cæsar; Empedocles and Lucilio Vanini.

In the year following he translated the Misanthrope of Moliere, one of the most esteemed comedies of that original writer, and in 1712, the Abbe Vertot's History of the Revolution of Portugal. He afterwards obliged the public with versions of Fontenelle's Discourse concerning the Ancients and Moderns, and of The Letters of Abelard and Heloise.

The diction of Hughes in all these attempts is, in general, neat, pure, and perspicuous; and he has usually expressed the sense of his author with accuracy and precision. It does not appear that in executing these works he aimed at higher excellence; and he was, probably, inconsiderate in his choice of Fontenelle, whose chief merit consists in those beauties of style which are nearly, or altogether, evanescent during the process of transmission.

Hughes, notwithstanding all his literary exertions, and his official employment in the ord

nance, was by no means in easy circumstances, and, as his expences and desires were singularly moderate and temperate, it would appear, that his virtues and his merits were not sufficiently known and valued. At length, however, his talents and reputation attracted the attention of Lord Cowper; and when, upon the accession of George the First, this nobleman was called to resume the office of chancellor, he forgot not the wants of his friend, but shortly afterwards presented him with the place of secretary to the commissions of the peace; a situation of great profit; and which, when Cowper resigned the seals, was continued to him by Lord Macclesfield, at the earnest request of his predecessor.

The enjoyment of affluence was, alas! no part of the destiny of Hughes. At the period of his appointment in 1717, his health was in a very infirm state; and his complaints terminating in a pulmonary consumption, he expired on February the 17th, 1719-20, on the very night on which his play of The Siege of Damascus was brought forward on the stage. His mental faculties, as is frequently the case in this destructive disease, remained to the last nearly entire; he had dedicated his tragedy, but ten days previous to his death, to Lord Cowper, and received intelligence of its favourable reception only a few hours be

fore he ceased to exist. The information was heard, however, with perfect indifference; to the christian, who is momentarily expecting to stand in the presence of his Redeemer, all sublunary concerns must appear comparatively worthless and insignificant; and the piety of Hughes was such, that every lingering energy was fixed on the eternity just opening to receive him.

From the pen of one who was intimately acquainted with our author; who loved his virtues, and had too much honesty of heart to exceed the strict measure of truth, I shall add some particulars of his disposition and character.

"Mr. Hughes," says Sir Richard Steele, " could hardly ever be said to have enjoyed health; but was, in the very best of his days, a valetudinarian. If those who are sparing of giving praise to any virtue without extenuation of it, should say that his youth was chastised into the severity, and preserved in the innocence for which he was conspicuous, from the infirmity of his constitution, they will be under new difficulty when they hear that he had none of those faults to which ill state of health ordinarily subjects the rest of mankind. His incapacity for more frolic diversions never made him peevish or sour to those whom he saw in them; but his humanity was such, that he could partake and share those plea

sures he beheld others enjoy, without repining that he himself could not join in them. No; he made a true use of an ill constitution, and formed his mind to the living under it with as much satisfaction as it could admit of. His intervals of ease were employed in drawing, designing, or else in music or poetry; for he had not only a taste, but an ability of performance to a great excellence, in those arts which entertain the mind within the rules of the severest morality, and the strictest dictates of religion. He did not seem to wish for more than he possessed even as to his health, but to contemn sensuality as a sober man does drunkenness; he was so far from envying, that he pitied the jollities that were enjoyed by a more happy constitution. He could converse with the most sprightly without peevishness: and sickness itself had no other effect upon him, than to make him look upon all violent pleasures as evils he had escaped without the trouble of avoiding.Peace be with thy remains, thou amiable spirit! but I talk in the language of our weakness. That is flown to the regions of day aud immortality, and relieved from the aching engine and painful instrument of anguish and sorrow, in which, for a long and tedious few years, he panted with a lively hope for his present condition. We shall consign the trunk, in

:

which he was so long imprisoned, to common earth, with all that is due to the merit of its late inhabitant."*

It may be useful to remark, that the moral character of Hughes forms a perfect contrast with that of Budgell; for while the former was distinguished for modesty, meekness, and contentment, the latter was equally remarkable for vanity, irascibility, and ambition.

If in their lives they were thus contrasted, in their deaths they were still more widely opposed; in the one, we behold the resignation, the hopes, the blessedness of christianity; in the other, the frenzy of despair, the contemner of religion, the slayer of himself!

Next to Budgell, Hughes contributed to the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, the greatest number of letters and papers. His assistance in the Tatler, however, was but trifling, compared with that which he afforded to its immediate successor. On the authority of Mr. Duncombe,† two letters in the Tatler, signed Josiah Couplet, in N° 64, and Will Trusty, in N° 73, and N° 113, have been ascribed to our author; to these the editors of the Tatler in 4 vols. octavo, 1797, think themselves warranted in adding the letter in

Vide Theatre, No. 15.

+ Vide Hughes's Correspondence.