the tenth. Early in life, he had gained the esteem and patronage of Lord Halifax by translating into Latin his poem "On the Battle of the Boyne." He also gave a Latin version of Lord Roscommon's "Essay on Translated Verse." He contributed to "The Guardian" two translations from Claudian. In "The Spectator" he wrote a "Letter on Idols."
Little is known of the life of Eusden; he appears to have retired to the living of Coningsby in Lincolnshire, where he took to drinking and translating Tasso. Gray, in a letter to Mason, writes: "Eusden was a person of great hopes in his youth, though at last he turned out a drunken parson." However much "bemused with beer," his inebriety did not altogether obstruct his literary labours, for he left behind him a manuscript translation of Tasso, with a Life of that Poet.
He died September 27, 1730.
The reader will, we fear, agree with us that more than enough has been said of this versifier. Though a clumsy courtier, his flatteries gained for him in that era patronage. In the present one, his powers of puffery would have been turned to a different account. He might have exhausted imagination in celebrating the virtues of blacking, or the praises of cheap clothing.
