University of Virginia Library

NEW LIGHT ON JOHN HOADLY AND HIS
`POEMS SET TO MUSIC BY DR. GREENE'

IT was Keith Maslen who, in the pages of this journal, first drew attention
to a small but nonetheless interesting volume of poems by John Hoadly
(1711-76) which is now in the rare books collection of the University of
Otago library and whose contents are said (on its front cover) to have been
`Set to Music by Dr. Greene'.[1] This consists partly of printed libretti (with
autograph additions) and partly of libretti in the poet's own hand. As a
musicologist long concerned with the wok of Maurice Greene (1696-1755),
I was naturally intrigued, and in a companion piece published two years
later I sought to fill in some of the musical background;[2] neither could I
resist the temptation to speculate on what other Hoadly verse known to have
been set by Greene might possibly have appeared in the now missing section
of this volume. The two men had known each other well since 1730 at least,
in which year Greene took a doctorate of music at Cambridge, and Hoadly,
his junior by fifteen years, went up to Corpus Christi College (Cambridge) to
read law. Shortly after he came down (in 1735) John Hoadly became a
clergyman, chiefly, it is said, to avail himself of the rich patronage at his
father's disposal.[3] He was also passionately interested in the theatre, and,
already intimate with Hogarth, he later on—in the 1740s—became good
friends with David Garrick and James (`Hermes') Harris as well. For Greene,
he produced not only a great many song texts, but also the libretti for no
fewer than five major works: two pastoral operas, two oratorios and a
masque. In chronological order these are Florimel or Love's Revenge (1734),
Jephtha (1737), The Choice of Hercules (1740), The Force of Truth (1743)
and Phoebe (1747).[4] The wordbooks were published anonymously, the first in

no fewer than five editions,[5] and printed copies of all but The Choice of
Hercules are to be found in the Otago source, where they are, in each case,
provided with cast lists, and, for Florimel and Phoebe, a trio of dedicatory
poems, all in the hand of John Hoadly himself.[6] An autograph copy of The
Choice of Hercules (with cast list) is there too, its text written out no doubt
because the printed version had not been issued separately, but was contained
within A Miscellany of Lyric Poems, The Greatest Part Written for, and
Performed in the Academy of Music, Held in the Apollo (London, 1740)
where, incidentally, it is entitled `The Judgment of Hercules'. The Academy
of Music at the Apollo was a semi-private music club founded by Greene
seven or eight years earlier, and at which, as is evident from Hoadly's cast
lists, all five works listed here had been performed.

Of the two dedicatory poems which Hoadly inserted into the Otago copy
of the Winchester editon of Love's Revenge, one (undated) is inscribed to
Diana, Duchess of Bedford; the other, to James Harris, is dated 1743, and
must have been designed to accompany a score of the work apparently sent
to him by the librettist in the autumn of that year.[7] Also dating from 1743,
and evidently intended for Harris himself to set, is an autograph copy of the
libretto of the oratorio, The Song of Moses. There is a second autograph
copy from the library of the Earl of Malmesbury now housed in the Hampshire
County Record Office in Winchester, Hants., and this is the one actually
sent by Hoadly to the prospective composer. In the event, Harris never got
round to it, and Hoadly, many years later (in 1775), passed a copy to Garrick
with the request that he send it on to Thomas Linley in Bath for consideration.
It was not the elder Thomas Linley, however, but rather his gifted son
(also Thomas), who finally set it to music—and by the time of its first performance
(on 12 March 1777), Hoadly himself was dead.[8] As for Love's Arti-

fice, a masque based on an episode from Cervantes' Don Quixote (and also
in Otago), that too was still unset in 1775.[9] Nevertheless, as will shortly
appear, there is some evidence to suggest that it had once been offered to,
and probably turned down by, a former Greene pupil, the blind organist
John Stanley (1712-86).

And so things stood until the spring of 2004 when four volumes of John
Hoadly MSS, largely autograph, suddenly appeared on the market, and were
shortly afterwards acquired by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, where they
are now catalogued as MSS Eng. d. 3623-26.[10] It is the last of these (MS Eng.
d. 3626) which is of particular interest in the present context. Not only does
this volume contain the same seven works as appear in the Otago source
(and in the same order too), but it (together with MS Eng. d. 3623) also
includes autograph copies of most of those poems which, in my 1997 addendum
to Maslen, I surmised might once have been included there. In the case
of the first five works however—i.e., those texts set to music by Greene—it is
only the title pages, cast lists and dedicatory verses which are in Hoadly's
own hand; the lists of dramatis personae and the libretti themselves are the
work of an amanuensis as yet unidentified, but quite possibly Elizabeth
Hoadly, the poet's wife. The letter forms used are strikingly similar to those
of her husband, and the texts are marked up in such a way (with single,
double, and triple underlining) as to suggest they may perhaps have been
intended as printer's copy. It may also be worth noting that the `The Choice
of Hercules' is here undated but entitled `The Judgment of Hercules' (as it is
in the 1740 print referred to above). With Love's Artifice (starting on fol.
76r), Hoadly himself takes over, and everything thereafter is in his hand. But
whereas the Otago copy (also autograph) leaves blank the space after `Set to
Musick by', that space is here filled in by `Mr: Stanley'. According to a note
later pencilled-in on fol. 84v, there was once yet another copy signed `J.
Hoadly' and dated 1744—and to that, the following memorandum had apparently
been added: `This Mask was afterwards somewhat alter'd, and given
to Mr. Stanley to set to Musick. J. H.'.[11] Whether John Stanley actually considered
the text and rejected it is anyone's guess; what is certain, however,
is that no such piece has yet come to light (or is known to have been composed

by him).[12] The 1744 date too must remain slightly suspect given that
Love's Revenge is here said (wrongly) to have been written in 1736 and set
to music by Greene in 1737—and Jephtha to have been composed in 1739.

Between Love's Artifice and The Song of Moses (in a third autograph
copy which Hoadly here declares to have been `compos'd for James Harris
Esqre. but never set'), there stands an unfinished `Ode on the Origin of
Musick' which, if we may believe what its author says of it (on fol. 86r), was
designed as a text for Greene's 1730 Cambridge Mus.D. exercise, but had
been abandoned `on Mr. Pope's applying to Him [i.e., Greene], that his Ode
on St. Cecilia's Day might be perform'd on that Occasion'. Its first stanza
will serve to illustrate the enviable facility and already quite polished style
of the young nineteen-year-old poet:

The mimetic possibilities of the last eight lines in particular are obvious, but
the remaining five stanzas, much more narrowly focused on the tale of Pan
and Syrinx, provide fewer opportunities for musical expression. From a note
in John Hawkins' General History of the Science and Practice of Music
(1776),[13] and from the fact that the text was specially altered and adapted by
the poet for the occasion, it has always been assumed that it was Greene who
took the initiative in approaching Pope. It now looks, however, as if things
might actually have been the other way round.[14]

From various bibliographical notes pencilled in by some early nineteenth-century
owner of these four quarto volumes, quite possibly the poet's nephew,

the Rev. Robert Hoadly-Ashe (1751-1826), it is clear that there were once
no fewer than nine octavo volumes as well, some obviously containing yet
more copies of some at least of those various extended Hoadly works already
discussed. It may be that the Otago source was one of these, but if so, it certainly
wasn't the one referred to in the annotations mentioned earlier, since
the Otago copy of Love's Artifice is neither signed nor dated, and does not
contain any of those later alterations noted in the marginalia to MS Eng. d.
3626. Someone else—just conceivably the poet's widow in extreme old age—
also flagged most (though not all) of those several poems by Hoadly included
in Robert Dodsley's six-volume Collection of Poems . . . by Several Hands
(1748-58).[15] By 1836, these same four volumes—presumably bound as they
are now, in gilt-ruled sprinkled calf and numbered vols. I-IV on the spine
bands—had passed into the hands of the well-known London bookseller
Thomas Thorpe, who sold them on to Sir Thomas Phillipps as part of the
largest single bulk-buying operation of that extraordinary bibliophile's manic
career. On that one occasion, Phillipps bought no fewer than 1647 manuscripts
at a knock-down price of £6,000.[16] Thus the Hoadly volumes became
MS 9406 in the Phillipps collection. They resurfaced (as lot 303) in a Sotheby's
(Phillipps) sale of 19-22 June 1893, and again in 1903 when they were
bought by Dobell for two guineas. Shortly afterwards, it would appear, they
were acquired by one Samuel John Hoadly, who believed himself (wrongly
as it happens) to have been a member of the Winchester branch of the
family.[17]

As a poet, John Hoadly is now remembered (if at all) solely for his verses
written to be placed, one each, under the eight plates of Hogarth's Rake's
Progress (1735); these were subsequently included in volume 5 of the Dodsley
collection (1758), and there is a MS fair copy of them in volume I here (MS
Eng. d. 3623, pp. 184-190). So too (on pp. 222-229) is Hoadly's 1737 (and
author-approved) translation of Edward Holdsworth's `Muscipula, sive
Kambromyomaxia' (`The Mouse-Trap'). But neither of these is autograph.
The first two-thirds of volume I (pp. 1-257) were copied by the same person
as copied the first five libretti (i.e., those set by Greene) in volume IV (see
discussion of MS Eng. d. 3626 above). Hoadly himself takes over on p. 258
and thereafter continues uninterruptedly to p. 388 (with eight blank pages
at the end). He also seems, at some later date—most probably in the mid1760s—to
have gone back and made various alterations and additions to

those neat fair copies contained in the earlier part of the volume. Included
in the autograph section, and hitherto unknown, is a rather charming `Sonnet
in Spenser's Stanza' addressed `To Dr Greene, on his setting to Musick
the Sonnets of Spencer, [sic] and dedicating them to her Grace the Duchess
of Newcastle':

Greene's setting of twenty-five of Spenser's Amoretti, composed in the summer
of 1738 and published in the spring of the following year, is undoubtedly
his finest achievement in the field of English solo song. Whether or not
Hoadly was involved we do not know, but by a careful selection of poems,
the autobiographical narrative of the original (1595) sonnet sequence is
neatly preserved, and to that extent the collection may be viewed as a curious
precursor of the later romantic song cycle. There is, however, no evidence to
suggest that Greene ever envisaged the consecutive performance of all twenty-five
songs.[18]

In volume I (but not in volume IV) the material is chronologically arranged,
and several pieces (in both volumes) are actually dated. The contents
of volume I, prefaced by a few lines of Latin ascribed to Strada,[19] are also
divided into two parts, the first (pp. 1-22) being described on its title-page
as `Poems written while at School', the second (pp. 23-372) as `Poems on
several Occasions'. The latter covers the period from 1729 to February 1746.
From an autograph index at the end (pp. 375-388), as also from various
alterations made to the fair copies in the earlier part of the volume, it might
possibly be inferred that the poet once had publication in mind. I rather
doubt it, however, since (as appears from his correspondence with Garrick
and Richard Warner too) Hoadly the writer was clearly concerned to maintain
his anonymity. Just as well, perhaps, as the juvenilia gets off to a

rather bad start with a short poem on farting written `Extempore from the
French, while at the House of Office' and introduced by the following pair
of lines from Henry Carey's Namby-Pamby [1725].[20]

Why anyone should wish to preserve such coarse schoolboy smut I cannot
imagine, but there is worse to come in volume IV, a volume whose title page
proclaims it to be a collection of `Poems for Musick'. Here (on fols. 94v-95v)
we encounter a fairly long lavatorial `Ode to Stt. Cloacine by an Epicurean
Philosopher: Set to Musick by ye most zealous of her Adorers Maurice Greene
Mus: Dr.'. The text, in Hoadly's hand, is dated 1745 at the end, and is laid
out in cantata form, with three airs, each prefaced by a slab of what must
obviously be recitative. Can it really be that Greene, as Organist and Composer
of His Majesty's Chapel Royal, Master of the King's Musick, Organist
of St Paul's Cathedral, and honorary Professor of Music at the University of
Cambridge, actually set (and performed) such stuff, even in the privacy of
some convivial (and no doubt very tipsy) all-male gathering? If so, it suggests
a far greater degree of intimacy between composer and poet than one had
previously assumed. In somewhat similar vein, but much less vulgar, is a
five-verse `Ballad' headed `The humble Petition of an ancient Gentlewoman
to ye worshipfull the Trustees for the College of Old Maids, to be founded
by A. W. Spinster. 1746' (volume IV, fol. 131r). This too is said to have been
set to music by Greene, but in neither case does the music survive.

Also lost is Greene's setting of six cantatas entitled `The Trophy'. Written
in 1746 in honour of the Duke of Cumberland on his triumphant return
from Culloden, the words were printed by Dodsley in volume 3 of his Collection
of Poems (1748), and the autograph is here in volume IV (MS Eng. d.
3626, fols. 102v-109r).[21] The words of two other cantatas said to have been
set by Greene and previously unknown are also included: one a three-fold
set of recitative and aria pairs beginning `Cynthia display'd her silver Ray'
and dated 1729, the other, seemingly composed in November 1747 `on the
Birth Day of her Grace Mary Duchess of Leeds, lately brought to Bed of a
Marquiss [sic] of Carmarthen' (fols. 99v-100v and 101v-102v respectively.)
Likewise new are two songs, `Love in thy Youth; Fair Maid, be wise' and `Too
late for Redress, & too soon for my Ease' (on fols. 124v-125r), plus two ballads
in addition to the afore-mentioned `humble Petition': `The Nymphs around
attending' (1737) and `The Syllabub. To Laetilla' (1740), beginning `Who
can Laetilla's Skill withstand' (on fols. 127r-128r). At the very end of the

volume (fols. 136r-137r) are two metricalised psalms, the first a version of
Psalm 23 (`The Lord is my Shepherd, then what shall I need?') apparently set
by Greene in 1744, the second (1745) a version of Psalm 137 beginning `Tost
by the sedge Side Of Babel's hostile Tide'. And finally, a curious local yokel
type of piece evidently written at Farnham (his father's country seat) in 1743;
described (on fol. 93v) as an `Ode of Horace parodied', it is cast as a dialogue
between `Bunney' and `Lunney', who are elsewhere identified as John Burnel,
the `BP.'s fat Porter at Farnham Castle' and `his adored Dairy Woman Mrs.
Lunn'.[22]

For none of these, however, does the music survive. Greene's first volume
of songs, entitled The Chaplet, was published anonymously in March 1738.
That the words of one of the most popular items in that collection, `Fair
Sally lov'd a bonny seaman', were by John Hoadly has long been known.[23]
What we haven't known before is that Hoadly was responsible for the words
of the other eleven songs as well. They are all simple strophic pieces, and all
but two were also published separately, in single half-sheet editions and/or
various popular songbooks, and sometimes (as with `Fair Sally') in advance
of The Chaplet itself. One of those which did not succeed is `Hob's come
home again', the last song in the book. In 47 verses of mummerset, it chronicles
the adventures in London of Hob and his `Zister Zuzan', and is obviously
a first cousin once removed to the Bunney and Lunney piece just mentioned.
But a couple of songs clearly did make it into the charts. Front runner, with
no fewer than thirteen editions in addition to its appearance in The Chaplet,
is the `Scots Sang' beginning `Sweet Annie fra the sea beach came', its pseudo-vernacular
text so stuffed with Scots words as to require a glossary printed
after the last verse.[24] Astonishingly perhaps, the piece had, by the end of the
century, become `so much naturalized as to pass for Scotish'—and as such it
was included (anonymously) in the first book of George Thomson's Select
Collection of Original Scotish Airs (Edinburgh, 1793) where it is decked out
with `Introductory & Concluding Symphonies & Accompanyments for the
Violin & Piano Forte' by Ignace Pleyel. Not far behind (with eleven separate
printings of the music) is another convivial piece entitled `Life is chequer'd'.
Taken up by Smollett in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle and there referred
to as `The Boatswain's Whistle', the song was a great favourite with

Commodore Trunnion and Tom Pipes, his ex-boatswain's mate, whenever
they made merry together in taverns.[25]

Also quite popular among the twelve songs in The Chaplet was one which
begins `In vain the force of female arms' and is simply headed `Chloe' in
both manuscript and print. Its words were first published anonymously
(with Greene's music) in the Gentleman's Magazine for March 1738. Somewhat
later, and also addressed to Chloe, are two other Greene/Hoadly settings:
`Chloe resolv'd' (1744), and `The Poet's Picture of his Love' (1745).
The latter was shortly afterwards published (but with no mention of Hoadly
as poet) in the second of Greene's two books of A Cantata and [Four] English
Songs (1746), while the words of the former were subsequently included in
the third volume of Dodsley's collection (where they are dated 1743). But
again, what hasn't hitherto been evident is that the Chloe of the title was
no mere Arcadian shepherdess, but the poet's wife, Elizabeth (née Ashe of
Salisbury).[26] The couple were married on 10 February 1736, so the verses
`On a Bay-Leaf pluck'd from Virgil's Tomb, near Naples' (and dated 1736 in
Dodsley's volume 3) must almost certainly have been composed on honeymoon.[27]
Greene's next publication was a volume of Catches and Canons for
Three and Four Voices. To which is added a Collection of Songs for Two
and Three Voices With a Through Bass for the Harpsicord issued in December
1747. None of the catches or canons is of any interest in the present
context, but three of the songs have words now known to be by Hoadly, and
all were written for the annual Stepney Feast, the first (`Britain and Belgia
joyn') in 1734, the second (`From Zembla's ever-icy plain') in 1735, and the
third (`Great ruler of the restless waves') in 1736.[28] A fourth song for the
Stepney Feast of 1733 (`Hail British Isle, of mighty fate') is also included in
Greene's 1747 Collection, but whether Hoadly was responsible for this too
does not appear.[29]

Like many other eighteenth-century clergymen, country parsons in particular,
John Hoadly turned out reams of such neatly crafted but essentially
anodyne verse, and, with a good classical education behind him, also a great
many translations and parodies of such poets as Anacreon, Horace, Ovid and
Virgil.[30] And like many other eighteenth-century poets too, most notably
perhaps Pope, he was also much given to the writing of epistolary verses.
There are several of these in volume I, and one of them, not dated, but
clearly penned sometime in the early 1730s, is addressed to Dr. Greene. It
begins with greetings sent to the composer's wife and three children (all
named), and then goes on, in another 43 four-line stanzas, to describe, quite
amusingly, an incident in which, on a recent coach journey across Salisbury
Plain, Hoadly and a couple of cronies had been involved. Having stopped
off to whet their whistles at Lord Arundel's place (just next to the ruins of
Wardour Castle), they returned to their coach to find their driver blind
drunk on his lordship's beer. On mounting the coach box, he got his feet
caught up in the reins, fell off, and was run over by the carriage. The party
thought him dead,

The hero of the occasion, the man who got the coachman patched up and
back on board and then drove them on to Salisbury, was their mutual friend
Dr John Freke (1688-1756), to whom the coach evidently belonged. Freke
was a well-known surgeon (like Hoadly's elder brother, Benjamin). He was
also very keen on music, and was (with Greene until 1731) a member of the
Academy of Vocal (later Ancient) Music. Daringly supportive of his friend,
he is said to have maintained (in coffee-house conversation) that Greene `was
as eminent in composition as Handel'. And this unguarded remark, passed
on to Hogarth not long after, is also said to have provoked the following
vigorous response: `That fellow Freke . . . is always shooting his bolt absurdly

one way or another! Handel is a giant in music; Greene only a light Florimel
kind of a composer'.[31]

Hogarth was quite right of course. But Greene as a composer is by no
means to be despised. And neither, for that matter, is Hoadly as poet (though
no one, it seems, has yet given him any serious scholarly attention). What is
rather curious about the contents of these two volumes is that, with the
exception of the pastoral opera, Phoebe, written in 1747, and a dedicatory
poem sent with a copy of that work to the Marchioness Grey, wife of his old
friend, Philip Yorke (later 2nd Earl of Hardwicke), in 1749, as also one other
piece not yet mentioned, they contain nothing later than February 1746.[32]
What, one wonders, did he produce during the remaining thirty years of his
life? We have numerous letters to Garrick (and others) of course, but almost
nothing in the way of verse, save, that is, for three items in Dodsley's fifth
volume: a six-line poem in French, English and Latin entitled `Verses to be
fixed on the Gate of the Louvre at Paris. 1751', together with an epilogue to
Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I as acted by `Young Gentlemen at Mr. Newcome's
School at Hackney' in 1748 and a `Prologue to Comus. Performed for
the Benefit of the General Hospital at Bath, 1756; And spoken by Miss Morrison
in the Character of a Lady of Fashion'.[33] There are also two poems
written in 1755 which survive among the Grenville papers in the British Library
(Add. MS 57836, fols. 77r-78r), but neither is of any real interest. To
these may be added a Prologue to the Siege of Damascus (by John Hughes)
dating from 1764, and one last Chloe-centred piece (`When Chloe tried her
virgin fires') included in a letter of 8 February 1776 from Hoadly to Mrs
Joseph Warton.[34] Presumably there was a good deal more in that long lost
set of nine octavo volumes to which reference has earlier been made.

Though the emphasis here has been very much on those poems written
for (or at any rate set by) Greene, Hoadly produced words for a couple of
other composers as well. One was Joseph Kelway (c. 1702-82), who, as `Mr.

Kellaway', apparently set a five-movement cantata entitled `Venus and
Adonis'.[35] Another was Greene's close friend Michael Christian Festing
(1705-52), whose setting of `The Bird of Passage' was subsequently included
in his A Collection of English Cantatas and Songs. Sung by Mr. Beard at
Ranelagh House [1750].[36] There was also John Ernest Galliard (c. 16871749),
whom Hoadly himself elsewhere describes as a `most genteel and
knowing composer'.[37] The words of their enormously popular song, `The
Early Horn', were, he says, written `for Rich, in the Cambridge stage-coach,
[in] 1731', and, in autograph, they are included here (vol. IV, fols. 133r-134v)
in their original dramatic context. This Hoadly explains as follows:

It is to the first of these two scenes that `The Early Horn' properly belongs.
It was to be another five years, however, before The Royal Chance; or, Merlin's
Cave, a pantomime generally accredited to Edward Phillips, took the stage.

Unlike his elder brother Benjamin (1706-57), whose Suspicious Husband
of 1747 quickly established itself as one of the favourite comedies of the
century, John Hoadly cut no ice as a playwright. He was, however, something
of an expert on the theatre, and Garrick's most recent biographers
refer to him glowingly as `perhaps the best informed nonprofessional scholar
of English drama, past and present'.[38] He is known to have written the fifth
act of James Miller's tragedy, Mahomet the Imposter (1744), and to have
revised and completed George Lillo's Arden of Feversham (1759), but, until
recently, it appeared that the only survivors among his own original works
were those several libretti intended for musical setting and discussed in the
earlier part of this article. Among the `Poems on several Occasions' of volume
I (MS Eng. d. 3623) are a small handful of prologues and epilogues for plays
performed by the boys at his old school in Hackney;[39] also the prologue and

epilogue to Mahomet together with a revised version of the prologue designed
to be spoken at a Drury Lane benefit for Miller's widow on 24 November
1744.[40] To these may now be added the two five-act historical tragedies
and two comedies included in those recently acquired Bodleian volumes not
yet mentioned: MSS Eng. d. 3624 and 3625. In the latter is an autograph
copy of The Contrast, written jointly by John and Benjamin Hoadly, and
first acted at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln's Inn Fields on 30 April 1731. It
was, however, withdrawn after three performances, seemingly at the insistence
of their father, the bishop, who was concerned that his sons' authorship
of the play, anonymously produced, should not be discovered. But all that is
another story which needs must be deferred to some other occasion.[41]