Joseph, an eminent writer, was born in the year 1698, but his family-history remains in obscurity. He was probably educated at Winchester, for he became a fellow of New College, Oxford, where he took the degree of A.M. in 1727. During the same year he published a small volume entitled "An Essay on Pope's Odyssey, in which some particular beauties and blemishes of that work are considered." This essay was greatly admired by his contemporaries, and it procured him the friendship of Pope. Spence was elected professor of poetry in 1728, and held that office ten years, which is as long as the statutes will allow. His account 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 its author, the Earl of Dorset. He quitted his fellowship in 1742, upon being presented by his college to the rectory of Great Harwood in Buckinghamshire. He never resided on his living; but paid it an annual visit, distributing large sums of money among the poor, and providing for many of their children. The same year he was appointed professor of modern history at Oxford. In 1747 he published a large folio volume entitled "Polymetis; or, an Inquiry concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of ancient Artists; 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. By the publication of his Polymetis, Spence is said to have cleared L1500. He was installed prebendary of the seventh stall at Durham on the 24th May 1754. He published the same year, "An Account of the Life, Character, and Poems, of Mr. Blacklock, Student of Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh;" which was afterwards prefixed to Blacklock's Poems. The prose pieces which he printed in the Museum he collected and published, together with some others, in a pamphlet called, "Morali-ties, by Sir Harry Beaumont." Under the same name, he published, "Crito, or a Dialogue on Beauty," and "A par-ticular 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 tracts are printed in Dodslay's Fugitive Pieces, as is also "A Letter from a Swiss 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." The Florentine was Magliabechi, and the other individual was Robert Hill the Hebrew tailor. This tract is also to be found among the Fugitive Pieces. During the same year he made a journey into Scotland, which he described in an affectionate letter to Mr. Shenstone, published in Hull's Collection of Letters, 1778. In 1764 he was very well described by James Ridley, in his admirable Tales of the Genii, under the name of Phosoi Erepos (his name read backwards), dervise of the groves. A letter from Mr. Spence to that ingenious moralist, under the same signature, is preserved in the third volume of "Letters of eminent Persons." In 1768 he published "Remarks and Dissertations on Virgil, with some other classical ob-servations, 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 fatal accident, it was supposed, for he was quite alone, was occasioned by a fit.

More than half a century after his death, appeared his "Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men, collected from the Conversation of Mr. Pope, and others. With notes and a life of the author by S.W. Singer." London, 1820, 8vo. Mr. Malone had likewise prepared an edition of this work, and, after his death, it was published during the same year.