He was a stage-manager, translated Voltaire's
Merope, wrote words for Handel's first composition in England, wrote
unsuccessful plays, a quantity of unreadable poetry, and corresponded
with most of the literary celebrities. Pope put his initials, A. H.,
under the head of "Flying Fishes," in the Bathos, as authors who now and
then rise upon their fins and fly, but soon drop again to the profound.
In the Dunciad, he reappeared amongst the divers.
Then * * tried, but hardly snatch'd from sight
Instant buoys up and rises into light:
He bears no token of the sable streams,
And mounts far off amongst the swans of Thames.
A note applied the lines to Hill, with whom he had had a former
misunderstanding. Hill replied to these assaults by a ponderous satire
in verse upon "tuneful Alexis;" it had, however, some tolerable lines at
the opening, imitated from Pope's own verses upon Addison, and
attributing to him the same jealousy of merit in others. Hill soon
afterwards wrote a civil note to Pope, complaining of the passage in the
Dunciad. Pope might have relied upon the really satisfactory answer that
the lines were, on the whole, complimentary; indeed, more complimentary
than true. But with his natural propensity for lying, he resorted to his
old devices. In answer to this and a subsequent letter, in which Hill
retorted with unanswerable force, Pope went on to declare that he was
not the author of the notes, that the extracts had been chosen at
random, that he would "use his influence with the editors of the Dunciad
to get the note altered"; and, finally, by an ingenious evasion, pointed
out that the blank in the Dunciad required to be filled up by a
dissyllable.
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