Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/302

298 the parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting, and about 1727 printed "Grongar Hill" in Lewis's Miscellany.

Being, probably, unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other painters, travelled to Italy; and coming back in 1740, published the "Ruins of Rome."

If his poem was written soon after his return, he did not make much use of his acquisitions in painting, whatever they might be; for decline of health and love of study determined him to the church. He therefore entered into orders; and, it seems, married about the same time a lady of the name of Ensor; "whose grandmother," says he, "was a Shakspeare, descended from a brother of every body's Shakspeare;" by her, in 1756, he had a son and three daughters living.

His ecclesiastical provision was a long time but slender. His first patron, Mr. Harper, gave him, in 1741, Calthorp in Leicester shire, of eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten years, and then exchanged it for Belchford in Lincolnshire, of seventy-five. His condition now began to mend. In 1751, Sir John Heathcote gave him Coningsby, of Rh