John Hughes was an English poet also noted for his editing of and commentary on the works of Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

. Writing at the very end of 17th Century and at the beginning of the 18th, he also translated French drama and poetry, including Molière

Molière

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...

. Hughes was a favorite of the nobility and aristocracy, which probably accounted for his popularity. Subscribers to his volumes included the Dukes of Buckingham, Bedford, Bridgewater, and Buccleugh, as well as Levett

Levett

Levett is an Anglo-Norman territorial surname deriving from the village of Livet-en-Ouche, now Jonquerets-de-Livet, in Eure, Normandy. Ancestors of the earliest Levett family in England, the de Livets were lords of the village of Livet, and undertenants of the de Ferrers, among the most powerful of...

 Blackborne, grandson of Sir Richard Levett

Richard Levett

Sir Richard Levett , Sheriff, Alderman and Lord Mayor of London, was one of the first directors of the Bank of England, an adventurer with the London East India Company and the proprietor of the trading firm Sir Richard Levett & Company. He had homes at Kew and in London's Cripplegate, close by...

, Lord Mayor of London

Lord Mayor of London

The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of London is the legal title for the Mayor of the City of London Corporation. The Lord Mayor of London is to be distinguished from the Mayor of London; the former is an officer only of the City of London, while the Mayor of London is the Mayor of Greater London and...

. Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

 included Hughes in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets

Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets

Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets was a work by Samuel Johnson, comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century...

 in 1781 but Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

 and Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 thought both his verse and prose mediocre.

Notable works

• An Essay on Allegorical Poetry. With Remarks on the Writings of Mr. Edmund Spenser. (1715)
• Remarks on the Fairy Queen. (1715)

External links

• s:Prefaces, Biological and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets/Volume the Fourth/Hughes
• Dr Johnson's biography of Hughes