Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/198

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HIS ingenious gentleman was the eldeſt ſon of Mr. John Sewel, treaſurer, and chapter-clerk of the college of Windſor, in which place our poet was born. He received his education at Eton ſchool, was afterwards ſent to the univerſity of Cambridge, and took the degree of bachelor of phyſic at Peter-houſe College. He then paſſed over to Leyden, and ſtudied under the famous Boerhaave, and afterwards returned to London, where for ſeveral years he practiſed as a Phyſician. He had a ſtrong propenſion for poetry, and has favoured the world with many performances much applauded. In the year 1719 he introduced upon the ſtage is tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh, taken from the hiſtorical account of that great man’s fate. He was chiefly concerned in writing the fifth volume of the Tatler, and the ninth of the Spectator. He tranſlated, with ſome other gentlemen, the Metamorphoſes of Ovid, with very great ſucceſs, and rendered the Latin poems of Mr. Addiſon into Engliſh. Dr. Sewel made an attempt, which he had not leiſure to execute, of tranſlating Quillet’s Callipedia, which was afterwards done by Rowe. He is the author of ſeveral miſcellanous poems, of which the following is as accurate an account as we could poſſibly obtain. On