F Mr. RICHARD DUKE I can find few memorials. He was bred

at Westminster and Cambridge; and Jacob relates, that he was fome time tutor to the duke of Richmond.

He appears from his writings to have been not ill qualified for poetical compofitions; ' and being conscious of his powers, when he left the university he enlifted himself among the wits. He was the familiar friend of Otway; and was engaged, among other popular names, in the translations of Ovid and Juvénal. In his Review, though un

finished,

finished, are some vigorous lines. His poems. are not below mediocrity; nor have I found much in them to be praised.

With the Wit he feems to have fhared the diffolutenefs of the times; for fome of his compofitions are fuch as he must have reviewed with deteftation in his later days, when he published thofe Sermons which Felton has commended.

Perhaps, like fome other foolish young men, he rather talked than lived viciously, in an age when he that would be thought a Wit was afraid to fay his prayers; and whatever might have been bad in the first part of his life, was furely condemned and reformed by his better judgment,

In 1683, being then master of arts, and fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge, hewrote a poem on the marriage of the Lady Anne with George Prince of Denmark,

He took orders; and being made prebendary of Gloucester, became a proctor in

VOL. II.

S

convocation

convocation for that church, and chaplain to Queen Anne.

In 1710, he was prefented by the bishop of Winchester to the wealthy living of Witney in Oxfordshire, which he enjoyed but a few months. On February 10, 1710-11, having returned from an entertainment, he was found dead the next morning. His death is mentioned in Swift's Journal,

KING,

KIN N G.

WILI

ILLIAM KING was born in London in 1663; the fon of Ezekiel King, a gentleman. He was allied to the family of Clarendon.

From Westminster-fchool, where he was a fcholar on the foundation under the care of Dr. Busby, he was at eighteen elected to Chrift-church, in 1681; where he is said to have profecuted his ftudies with so much intenseness and activity, that, before he was eight years standing, he had read over, and made remarks upon, twenty-two thousand odd hundred books and manuscripts. The books

books were certainly not very long, the manuscripts not very difficult, nor the remarks very large; for the calculator will find that he dispatched seven a-day, for every day of his eight years, with a remnant that more than fatisfies moft other students. He took his degree in the most expensive manner, as a grand compounder; whence it is inferred that he inherited a confiderable fortune.

In 1688, the fame year in which he was made master of arts, he published a confutation of Varillas's account of Wicliffe; and, engaging in the ftudy of the Civil Law, becamè doctor in 1692, and was aḍmitted advocate at Doctors Commons.

He had already made fome tranflations from the French, and written fome humorous and fatirical pieces; when, in 1694, Molesworth published his Account of Denmark, in which he treats the Danes and their monarch with great contempt; and takes the opportunity of infinuating those wild principles, by which he fuppofes liberty to be established, and by which his adversaries fufpect