COOPER (John-Gilbert), a polite writer of the present age, was born in 1723; and was descended from an ancient family in the county of Nottingham, whose fortune was injured in the last century by their attachment to the principles of monarchy. He resided at Thurgarton priory in Nottinghamshire, which was granted by King Henry VIII. to William Cooper, one of his ancestors. This mansion Mr Cooper inherited from his father, who in 1739 was high-sheriff of the county; and transmitted it to his son, who filled the same respectable office in 1783. After passing through Westminster school under Dr John Nicoll, along with the late Lord Albemarle, Lord Buckinghamshire, Major Johnson, Mr George Ashby, and many other eminent and ingenious men, he became in 1743 a Fellow-Commoner of Trinity-college, Cambridge, and resided there two or three years; but quitted the university on his marriage with Susanna the daughter of William Wright, Esq; son to the Lord Keeper of that name, and Recorder of Leicester 1729-1763. In the year 1745 he commenced author by the publication of The Power of Harmony, a poem in 4to; and in 1746 and 1747 he produced several Essays and Poems under the signature of Philalethea, in a periodical work called The Museum, published by Mr Dodssley. In the same year he came forward as an author, with his name, by a work which received much assistance from his friend the Reverend John Jackson of Leicester, who communicated several learned notes, in which he contrived to manifest his dislike to his formidable antagonist Mr Warburton. It was intitled The Life of Socrates, collected from the Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato, and illustrated further by Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, Cicero, Proclus, Apuleius, Maximus Tyrius, Boethius, Diogenes Laertius, Aulus Gellius, and others, 1749, 8vo. In this work Mr Cooper gave evident marks of superior genius; warm, impetuous, and impatient of restraint. In 1754, Mr Cooper published his Letters on Taste, 8vo; an elegant little volume, on which no small share of his reputation is founded; and in 1755, The Tomb of Shakespeare, a Vision, 4to; a decent performance, but in which there is more of wit and application than of nature or genius. In 1756 he assisted Mr Moore, by writing some numbers of The World; and attempted to rouse the indignation of his countrymen against the Heffians, at that juncture brought over to defend the nation, in a poem called The Genius of Britain, addressed to Mr Pitt. In 1758, he published Epistles to the Great, from Aristippus in Retirement, 4to; and The Call of Aristippus, Epistle IV. to Mark Akenside, M.D. Also, A Father's Advice to his Son, in 4to.
In the Annual Register of the same year is his Translation of An Epistle from the King of Prussia to Monsieur Voltaire. In 1759, he published Ver Vert; or, the Nunnery Parrot; an Heroic Poem, in four cantos; inscribed to the Abbess of D***; translated from the French of Monsieur Gresset, 410; reprinted in the first volume of Dilly's Repository, 1777; and, in 1764, Poems on several Subjects, by the Author of the Life of Socrates; with a prefatory Advertisement by Mr Dodsey. In this little volume were included all the separate poetical pieces which have been already mentioned, excepting Ver Vert, which is a sprightly composition. Mr Cooper died at his father's house in May-Fair, after a long and excruciating illness arising from the stone, April 14. 1769.