An English poet, dramatist, and biographer; born at Shelton, Staffordshire, May 20, 1683; died in Berkshire, August (not July), 1730. He worked with Pope at the translation of the Odyssey, wrote “Mariamne,” a tragedy, and produced a “Hymn to the Sun,” with other verse displaying taste and talent.

Personal

  The lazy Mr. Fenton has obeyed your commands, and wrote for the notes in a huge long letter of at least three lines. I am now in hopes he will not lose the use of writing and speaking. I will tell you a true story: When he was with me at Sturston he often fished; this gave him an opportunity of sitting still, and being silent; but he left it off because the fish bit. He could not bear the fatigue of pulling up the rod and baiting the hook.

  I Intended to write to you on this melancholy subject, the death of Mr. Fenton, before y^rs came; but stay’d to have informed myself & you of y^e circumstances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a Gradual Decay, tho so early in Life, & was declining for 5 or 6 months. It was not, as I apprehended, the Gout in his Stomach, but I believe rather a Complication first of Gross Humours, as he was naturally corpulent, not discharging themselves, as he used no sort of Exercise. No man better bore y^e approaches of his Dissolution (as I am told) or with less ostentation yielded up to his Being. The great Modesty w^ch you know was natural to him, and y^e great Contempt he had for all Sorts of Vanity & Parade, never appeared more than in his last moments: He had a conscious Satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, in feeling himself honest, true, & unpretending to more than was his own. So he dyed, as he lived, with that secret, yet sufficient, Contentment…. I shall with pleasure take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet, deserving, unpretending Christian and Philosophical character, in His Epitaph…. Let us love his Memory, and profit by his example.

	This modest Stone, what few vain Marbles can,
	May truly say, Here lies an honest Man:
	A Poet, blest beyond the Poet’s fate,
	Whom Heav’n kept sacred from the Proud and Great:
	Foe to loud Praise, and Friend to learned Ease,
	Content with Science in the Vale of Peace.
	Calmly he look’d on either Life, and here
	Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear;
	From Nature’s temp’rate feast rose satisfy’d,
	Thank’d Heav’n that he had liv’d, and that he died.

  Whoever mentioned Fenton, mentioned him with honour…. Fenton was tall and bulky, inclined to corpulence, which he did not lessen by much exercise; for he was very sluggish and sedentary, rose late, and when he had risen, sat down to his books or papers…. Of his morals and his conversation the account is uniform; he was never named but with praise and fondness, as a man in the highest degree amiable and excellent.

  His character was that of an amiable but indolent man, who drank, in his great chair, two bottles of port wine a day.

General

	Sweet Fancy’s bloom in Fenton’s lay appears,
	And the ripe judgment of instructive years.

  As the plan of this play [“Mariamne,”] is regular, simple, and interesting, so are the sentiments no less masterly, and the characters graphically distinguished. It contains likewise many beautiful strokes of poetry.

  Fenton seems to have had some peculiar system of versification. “Mariamne” is written in lines of ten syllables, with few of those redundant terminations which the drama not only admits but requires, as more nearly approaching to real dialogue. The tenor of his verse is so uniform that it cannot be thought casual; and yet upon what principle he so constructed it, is difficult to discover…. Of his petty poems some are very trifling, without any thing to be praised either in the thought or expression. He is unlucky in his competition; he tells the same idle tale with Congreve, and does not tell it so well. He translates from Ovid the same epistle as Pope; but I am afraid not with equal happiness. To examine his performances one by one would be tedious. His translation from Homer into blank verse will find few readers, while another can be had in rhyme. The piece addressed to Lambarde is no disagreeable specimen of epistolary poetry; and his ode to the lord Gower was pronounced by Pope the next ode in the English language to Dryden’s “Cecilia.” Fenton may be justly styled an excellent versifier and a good poet.

  A survey of Fenton’s works shows a striking reproduction on his part of most of the species of poetry cultivated by Pope. Fenton has a pastoral (Florelio) to correspond to Pope’s fourth and favourite Pastoral; a paraphrase of the 14th chapter of Isaiah to correspond to Pope’s “Messiah;” an epistle from “Sappho to Phœon,” Epistles, Prologues, and Translations and Imitations of Horace. Fenton was a thorough master of versification, and excelled Pope in his command of a variety of metres. His “Ode to Lord Gower” (which Pope placed next in merit to Dryden’s “St. Cecilia”) avoids the faults committed by Pope in his own “Pindaric” essay; and his blank verse translation of the 11th book of the “Odyssey” is dignified without heaviness. Fenton’s tragedy of “Mariamne” seems to have owed its success in part to the judicious suggestions of the author of “Oroonoko.”

  No poet, though a man with poetic tastes.

  Fenton is styled by Johnson “an excellent versifier and a good poet.” He had, indeed, caught the trick of Pope’s versification with such success that it has never been possible to distinguish his share of the version of the “Odyssey” from Pope’s by internal evidence. It is questionable whether he deserves the appellation of poet. His most considerable pieces, the “Hymn to the Sun,” the ode to Lord Gower, the elegy on Lord Blandford, the “Epistles,” are at most agreeable exercises in metre, and his general good taste does not preserve him from some rather ludicrous lapses. Perhaps his most memorable couplet is one in which he completely inverts the conclusions of modern science respecting the origin of the human species:—

	Foes to the tribe from which they trace their clan,
	As monkeys draw their pedigree from man.

His tragedy exhibits considerable ability, but rather that of a playwright than of a poet. Mariamne’s fate had already been the subject of one of Calderon’s greatest plays, of which Fenton probably never heard. His lighter pieces are not deficient in sprightliness, but the humour is far inferior to that of his model Prior. On the whole he must be classed with those to whom poetry has been rather an amusement than an inspiration or an art. The testimony to his character is very high and uniform. “He was never,” says his pupil Orrery, “named but with praise and fondness, as a man in the highest degree amiable and excellent.” In face of this evidence, which is amply confirmed by particular anecdotes, the assertion that he spoke ungratefully of Pope may be dismissed as groundless. He seems to have had no fault except the indolence which shortened his life.

  He seems to have been one of those beings who are generally and perhaps rather selfishly beloved, because, while known to possess fine powers, they make little effort to use them in their own behalf. His poems, which occasionally show glimpses of genius, exhibit his character much in the same light as his letters to Broome, suggesting something of Swift’s contempt for mankind, mixed with a general kindliness and benevolence, and a strong vein of religious feeling.