HILL, AARON, a poet of considerable eminence, the son of a gentleman of Malmesbury Abbey, in Wiltshire, was born in 1685. His father's imprudence having ruined his paternal inheritance, he left Westminster School at fourteen years of age, and embarked for Constantinople to visit Lord Paget, the English ambassador there, who was his distant relation. Lord Paget received him with surprise and pleasure, provided him a tutor, and sent him to travel, thus affording him an opportunity of visiting Egypt, Palestine, and a great part of the East. About the year 1709 he published his first poem, entitled Camillus, in honour of the Earl of Peterborough, who had commanded in Spain; and being the same year made master of Drury-lane Theatre, he wrote his first tragedy, called Elfred, or the Fair Inconstant. In 1710, he became master of the opera-house in the Haymarket, and wrote an opera called Rinaldo, which met with great success, being the first that Handel set to music after he came to England. Unfortunately for Mr Hill, he was a projector as well as poet, and in 1715 obtained a patent for extracting oil from beech-nuts; an undertaking which miscarried after engaging his attention for three years. He was also concerned in the first attempt to settle the colony of Georgia, from which he never reaped any advantage; and in 1728 he made a journey into the Highlands of Scotland, in prosecution of a scheme of applying the woods there to ship-building; but in this he also lost his labour. Mr Hill seems to have lived in perfect harmony with all the writers of his time, except Mr Pope, with whom he had a short paper war, occasioned by that gentleman's introducing him in the Dunciad as one of the competitors for the prize offered by the goddess of Dulness. Mr Hill, amongst many other pieces, also wrote one called The Northern Star, upon the actions of Peter the Great; and for this he was several years afterwards complimented with a gold medal from the Empress Catharine, agreeably to the czar's desire before his death. His last production was Merope, which was brought upon the stage in Drury Lane by Mr Garrick. He died on the 8th of February 1749, and after his decease four volumes of his works in prose and verse were published in octavo, and his dramatic works in two volumes.