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.

'I think I never heard a poem read with so much admiration, as the
Triumph of Peace was by our best critics here, nor a greater character
given to a young poet, at his first appearing; no, not even to Mr.
Congreve himself. So nobly elevated are his thoughts, his numbers so
harmonious, and his turns so fine and delicate, that we cry out with
Tully, on a like occasion,

'Nostræ spes altera Romæ!'

The Court of Neptune, was written on king William's return from
Holland, two years after the peace, in 1699. This Poem was admired
for the verification, however, the musical flow of the numbers is its
least praise; it rather deserves to be valued for the propriety, and
boldness of the figures and metaphors, and the machinery.

The following lines have been justly quoted as an instance of the
author's happy choice of metaphors.

As when the golden god, who rules the day,