Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/82

72

HIS poet was deſcended of the family of the Stepneys of Pindigraſt in Pembrokeſhire, but born in Weſtminſter in the year 1693. He received the rudiments of his education in Weſtminſter ſchool, and after making ſome progreſs in literature there, he was removed to Trinity College in Cambridge, where he was cotemporary with Charles Montague, eſq; afterwards earl of Hallifax; and being of the ſame college with him, a very ſtrict friendſhip was contracted between them. To this lucky accident of being early known to Mr. Montague, was owing all the preferment Mr. Stepney afterwards enjoyed, for he ſeems not to have had parts ſufficient to have riſen to any diſtinction, without the immediate patronage of ſo great a man, as the lord Hallifax. When Stepney firſt ſet out in life, he was perhaps attached to the Tory intereſt, for one of the firſt poems he wrote, was an Addreſs to king James the Second, on his Acceſſion to the Throne. In this little piece, in which there is as little poetry, he compares that monarch to Hercules, but with what propriety let the reader judge. Soon after the acceſſion of James II. when Monmouth’s rebellion broke out, the univerſity of Cambridge, to demonſtrate their zeal for the King, thought proper to burn the picture of that raſh Prince, who had