to which the following note is appended:—
“The man here specified writ a thing called The Battle of the Poets, in which Philips and Welsted were the heroes, and Swift and Pope utterly routed.”
Cooke also published some “malevolent things in the British, London, and daily journals, and at the same time wrote letters to Mr. Pope, protesting his innocence.”
His chief work was a translation of “Hesiod, to which Theobald writ notes, and half notes, which he carefully owned.”
Again, in the testimonies of authors, which precede the Dunciad, we find the following remark:—
“Mr. Thomas Cooke,
“After much blemishing our author’s Homer, crieth out
“But in his other works what beauties shine,
While sweetest music dwells in ev’ry line!
These he admir’d, on these he stamp’d his praise,
And bade them live t’ enlighten future days!”
I have somewhere read that Cooke was a native of Sussex; that he became famous for his knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages while at Cambridge; and was ultimately settled in some part of Shropshire, where he soon became acquainted with the family of the young lady celebrated by his muse, in the [fifth number] of the Table Book, and where he also greatly distinguished himself as a clergyman, and preceptor of the younger branches of the neighbouring gentry and nobility. This may in some measure account for the respectable list of subscribers alluded to by G. J. D.
It is presumed, however, that misfortune at length overtook him; for we find, in the “Ambulator, or London and its Environs,” under the head “Lambeth,” that he lies interred in the church-yard of that parish, and that he died extremely poor: he is, moreover, designated “the celebrated translator of Hesiod, Terence, &c.”