Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/215

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HIS gentleman was deſcended from a very good family in Leiceſterſhire, and received the rudiments of his education in Weſtminſter vchool. We are informed by major Cleland, author of a Panegyric on Mr. Pope, prefixed to the Dunciad, that he was a member of both the univerſities.

In a piece ſaid to have been written by Mr. Welſted, called The Characters of the Times, printed in 8 vo. 1728, he gives this account of himſelf; ‘Mr. Welſted had in his youth raiſed ſo great expectations of his future genius, that there was a kind of ſtruggle between the two univerſities, which, ſhould have the honour of his education; to compound this, he civilly became a member of both, and after having paſſed ſome time at the one, he removed to the other. From thence he returned to town, where he became the darling expectation of all the polite writers, whoſe encouragement he acknowledged in his occaſional poems, in a manner that will make no ſmall part of the fame of his protectors. It alſo appears from his works, that he was happy in the patronage of the moſt illuſtrious characters of the preſent age. Encouraged by ſuch a combination in his favour, he publiſhed a book of poems, ſome in the Ovidian, ſome in the Horatian manner, in both