JOSEPH, an eminent writer, was fellow of New College, Oxford, where he took the degree of A.M. in 1727. About that time he became first known as an author, by an Essay on Pope's Odyssey, in which some particular beauties and blemishes of that work are considered; a work of great merit, and which for sound criticism and candid diliquition is almost without a parallel. He was elected professor of poetry by the university in 1728, and held that office ten years, which is as long as the statutes will allow. His History of Stephen Duck was first published in 1731; but it was afterwards much altered, and prefixed to an edition of Duck's poems.
About this time he travelled into Italy as tutor to the earl of Lincoln, afterwards duke of Newcastle.—In 1736 he republished Gorboduc, at Mr Pope's desire, with a preface giving an account of the author, the earl of Dorset. He quitted his fellowship in 1742, upon being presented by the Society of New College to the rectory of Great Harwood in Buckinghamshire.—He never resided in his living; but paid it an annual visit, distributing large sums of money among the poor, and providing for many of their children. The fame year he was made professor of modern history at Oxford. In 1747 he published Polymetis; or an inquiry concerning the agreement between the works of the Roman poets and the remains of ancient arts, being an attempt to illustrate them mutually from each other. This work was treated by Gray with a contempt which it did not deserve. He raises objections because the author did not illustrate his subject from Greek writers; that is, because he failed to execute what he never undertook. He was installed prebendary of the seventh stall at Durham the 24th May 1754. He published the same year, "An Account of the Life, Character, and Poems, of Mr Blacklock, student of philosophy at Edinburgh;" which was afterwards prefixed to his Poems. The prose pieces which he printed in the Museum he collected and published, together with some others, in a pamphlet called Moralities, by Sir Harry Beaumont. Under the same name he published "Crito, or a Dialogue on Beauty;" and "A particular Account of the emperor of China's Gardens near Pekin, in a letter from F. Attiret, a French missionary now employed by that emperor to paint the apartments in those gardens, to his friend at Paris." Both these treatises are printed in Dodley's fugitive pieces, as is also "A Letter from a Swif Officer to his friend at Rome;" which Mr Spence first published in the Museum. In 1758 he published "A Parallel, in the Manner of Plutarch, between a most celebrated man of Florence and one scarce ever heard of in England." This was also inserted in the fugitive pieces. The fame year he made a journey into Scotland, which he described in an affectionate letter to Mr Shenstone, published in Hall's Collection of Letters, 1778. In 1764 he was very well described by Mr James Ridley, in his admirable Tales of the Genii, under the name of Phesoi Eneeps (his name read backwards), dervise of the groves. A letter from Mr Spence to that ingenious moralist, under the fame signature, is preserved in the 3d volume of "Let- ters of Eminent Persons." In 1768 he published "Remarks and Dissertations on Virgil, with some other classical observations, by the late Mr Holdsworth." On the 20th of August the same year he was unfortunately drowned in a canal in his garden at Byfleet in Surrey. He was found flat upon his face at the edge of the canal, where the water was so shallow as not even to cover his head. The accident, it was supposed, for he was quite alone, was owing to a fit.
The duke of Newcastle published some manuscript volumes of anecdotes collected by Mr Spence, from which Dr Johnson was permitted to insert many extracts in his Lives of the Poets.