24th Jan. 1719-20.
'Sir,
'I thank you for the most acceptable present of your picture, and assure you that none of this age can set a higher value on it than I do, and shall while I live, tho' I am sensible posterity will out-do me in that particular.'
I am with the greatest esteem, and sincerity
Your most affectionate, and oblig'd humble servant
COWPER.
Mr. Hughes was happy in the acquaintance and friendship of several of the greatest men, and most distinguished genius's of the age in which he lived; particularly of the nobleman just now mentioned, the present lord bishop of Winchester, lord chief baron Gilbert, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Mr. Southern, Mr. Rowe, &c. and might have justly boasted in the words of Horace
——me
Cum magnis vixisse, invita fatebitu usque
Invidia.——
Having given this short account of his life, which perhaps is all that is preserved any where concerning him; we shall now consider him, first, as a poet, and then as a prose writer.
The Triumph of Peace was the earliest poem he wrote of any length, that appeared in public. It was written on occasion of the peace of Ryswick, and printed in the year 1677. A learned gentleman at Cambridge, in a letter to a friend of Mr. Hughes's, dated the 28th of February 1697-8, gives the following account of the favourable reception this poem met with there, upon its first publication.