Amiable English writer, born in the year 1699, but his family history remains in obscurity. He was educated at Eton, Winchester, and New College, Oxford, where he took his degree of A.M. in 1727. The previous year he published a small volume entitled, An Essay on Pope’s Odyssey, in which some particular beauties and blemishes of that work are considered. This essay was greatly admired by his contemporaries, and it procured him the friendship of Pope. Spence was elected professor of poetry in 1728, and held that office ten years, which is as long as the statutes will allow. His account of Stephen Duck was first published in 1731; but it was afterwards much altered, and prefixed to an edition of Duck’s Poems.
Towards the close of the year 1730 he travelled into Italy as companion to Charles, earl of Middlesex. He likewise visited the continent in 1737 and in 1739. In 1736 he republished Gorboduc, at Pope’s desire, with a preface giving an account of its author, the Earl of Dorset. He quitted his fellowship in 1742, upon being presented by his college to the rectory of Great Horwood in Buckinghamshire. He never resided on his living; but paid it an annual visit, distributing large sums of money among the poor, and providing for many of their children. The same year he was appointed professor of modern history at Oxford. In 1747 he published a large folio volume entitled, Polymetis; or, an Inquiry concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists; being an attempt to illustrate them mutually from each other. By the publication of this work, Spence is said to have cleared L.1500. He was installed prebendary of the seventh stall at Durham on the 24th May 1754. Besides editing Blacklock’s Poems, he wrote a number of tracts on various subjects, which will be found in Dodsley’s Fugitive Pieces. On the 20th of August of the same year, he was unfortunately drowned in a canal at Byfleet in Surrey.
More than half a century after his death, appeared his gossiping Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men, collected from the Conversation of Mr. Pope, and others, with Notes and a Life of the Author by S. W. Singer, London, 1820, 8vo, 2d edition, 1858. This is the only work by which Spence is now known. Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Pope, says of Spence, that he “was a man whose learning was not very great, and whose mind was not very powerful. His criticism, however, was commonly just; what he thought he thought rightly, and his remarks were recommended by his coolness and candour.” See also Literary Criticism.
