HAMMOND, James, known to the world by the Love-Elegies, which, ſome years after his death, were publiſhed by the Earl of Cheſterfield, was the ſon of Anthony Hammond above mentioned, and was preferred to a place about the perſon of the late Prince of Wales, which he held till an unfortunate accident deprived him of his ſenſes. The cauſe of this calamity was a paſſion he entertained for a lady, who did not return it; upon which he wrote thoſe love-elegies that have been ſo much celebrated for their tenderness. The editor obſerves, that he compoſed them before he was twenty-one years of age; a period when fancy and imagination are apt to run riot at the expenſe of judgment and correctness. He was as ſincere in his love as in his friendſhip; and wrote to his miſtreſs, as he ſpoke to his friends, nothing but the genuine ſentiments of his heart. Tibullus ſeems to have been the model our author judiciously preferred to Ovid; the former wrote directly from the heart to the heart, the latter too often addreſſed himſelf to the imagination. Mr Hammond died in the year 1743, at Stow, the ſeat of Lord Cobham, who, as well as
the Earl of Chesterfield, honoured him with a particular intimacy.