The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland/Volume 4/The Revd. Mr. Lawrence Eachard

The Revd. Mr. Lawrence Eachard.

This Gentleman, who has been more diſtinguiſhed as an hiſtorian than a poet, was the ſon of a clergyman, who by the death of his elder brother, became maſter of a good eſtate in Suffolk.

He received his education at the univerſity of Cambridge, entered into holy orders, and was preſented to the living of Welton and Elkington in Lincolnſhire, where he ſpent above twenty years of his life; and acquired a name by his writings, eſpecially the Hiſtory of England. This hiſtory was attacked by Dr. Edmund Calamy, in a letter to the author; in which, according to the Dr. the true principles of the Revolution, the Whigs and the Diſſenters are vindicated; and many perſons of diſtinction cleared from Mr Eachard’s aſperſions.

Mr. John Oldmixon, who was of very oppoſite principles to Eachard, ſeverely animadverted upon him in his Critical Hiſtory of England, during the reigns of the Stuarts; but as Oldmixon was a hireling, and a man ſtrongly biaſſed by party prejudices, little credit is due to his teſtimony: Which is moreover accompanied with a perpetual torrent of abuſe. Mr. Eachard’s general Eccleſiaſtical Hiſtory, from the nativity of Chriſt to the firſt eſtabliſhment of Chriſtianity by human laws, under the emperor Conſtantine the Great, has been much eſteemed.

Our author was in the year 1712 inſtalled archdeacon of Stowe, and prebend of Lincoln. He publiſhed a tranſlation of Terence’s Comedies, tranſlated by himſelf and others; but all reviſed and corrected by him and Sir Roger L’Eſtrange: To which is prefixed the life of Terence. Beſides theſe, Mr. Eachard has tranſlated three Comedies from Plautus, viz.

AMPHITRYON.

EPIDICUS.

RUDENS.

With critical remarks upon each play. To which he has prefixed a judicious parallel between Terence and Plautus; and for a clearer deciſion of the point, that Terence was the more polite writer of Comedy, he produces the firſt act of Plautus’s Aulularia, and the firſt act of his Miles Glorioſus, againſt the third act of Terence’s Eunuch. It ought to be obſerved (ſays Mr. Eachard) ‘That Plautus was ſomewhat poor, and made it his principal aim to pleaſe, and tickle the common people; and ſince they were almoſt always delighted with ſomething new, ſtrange, and unuſual, the better to humour them, he was not only frequently extravagant in his expreſſions, but likewiſe in his characters too, and drew them often more vicious, more covetous, and more fooliſh than they really were, and this ſo ſet the people a gazing and wondering. With theſe ſort of characters many of our modern Comedies abound, which makes them too much degenerate into farce, which ſeldom fails of pleaſing the mob.’

 

Mr. Eachard has, in juſtice to Mr. Dryden, given us ſome inſtances of his improvement of Amphitryon, and concludes them with this juſt remark in compliment to our nation; ‘We find that many fine things of the antients, are like ſeeds, that when planted on Engliſh ground, by a poet’s ſkilful hand, thrive and produce excellent fruit.’

 

Theſe three plays are printed in a pocket-volume, dedicated to Sir Charles Sedley; to which is prefixed a recommendatory copy of verſes, by Mr. Tate.

Mr. Eachard died in the year 1730.