f Drury Lane, and he wrote a number of plays, the
very names of which are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in
his own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He wrote eight
books of a long and unfinished epic called _Gideon_, which I suppose no
one in the present century has had the hardihood to read; like Young he
wrote a poem on _The Judgment Day_, a theme attempted also, shortly
before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind, he produced
a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long poem called _The Northern
Star_, a panegyric on Peter the Great, is said to have passed through
several editions. The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it
shows his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem, which
is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from the following lines:

'Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be!
What can'st thou look upon unblessed by thee?
What inward peace must that calm bosom know,
Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!

* * * * *

Such are the kings who make God's image shine,
Nor blush to dare assert their right divine!
No earth-born bias warps their climbing will,
No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill.
They poise each hope which bids the wise obey,
And shed broad blessings from their widening sway;
To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand,
Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land,
Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw
The sword of conquest, or the sword of law;
Spare what resists not, what opposes bend,
And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.'

Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon Pope, who had put
him into the treatise on the _Bathos_, and then into the _Dunciad_,
where, however, the lines have more of compliment than censure, since he
is made to mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated by a
note in the _Dunciad_, Hill replied in a long poem entitled _The
Progress of Wit, a Caveat_, which opens with the following pointed
lines:

'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side,
The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride;
With merit popular, with wit polite,
Easy though vain, and elegant though light;
Desiring, and deserving others' praise,
Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays;
Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves,
And wants the soul to sp