COOPER, John Gilbert (1723-1769), a miscellaneous writer, descended from a decayed family in the county of Nottingham, where his father was high sheriff in 1739. He was educated at Westminster school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first attempts at authorship consisted in the publication anonymously, in 1745, of a poem entitled The Power of Harmony, and in contributing under the signature of Philalethes several essays and poems to Dodley's Museum. These were soon after followed by the Life of Socrates, compiled chiefly from Xenophon and Plato. In 1754 Cooper published his Letters on Taste, and in the following year The Tomb of Shakespeare, a Vision. In 1756 he assisted Moore in writing for the World, and published a variety of occasional pieces, including a translation of Gresset's Ver-Vert. His poems were afterwards collected and published with a preface by Dodley.