John Hoole

John Hoole (December 1727 – 2 August 1803) was an English translator, the son of Samuel Hoole (born 1692), a mechanic, and Sarah Drury (c. 1700 – c. 1793), the daughter of a Clerkenwell clockmaker. He became a personal friend of Samuel Johnson's.

Profile by George Dance

Family

Hoole was born in Moorfields, London, and was educated at a private school at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, kept by a James Bennet.[1] In 1757 he married Susannah Smith (c. 1730 – 1808), a Quaker from Bishop's Stortford. They had a son, Rev. Samuel Hoole, who became a poet and religious writer of some distinction.[2]

Works

At the age of seventeen John Hoole became a clerk in India House (1744–83), of which he rose to be principal auditor of Indian accounts.[1] In connection with his post, he wrote Present State of the English East India Company's Affairs (1772).[2]

Meanwhile he translated Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1763), and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1773–83), as well as other works from the Italian. He was also the author of Cleonice, Princess of Bithynia and of two other dramas which failed.[1]

Samuel Johnson was a personal friend of Hoole, who described Johnson's final days in the European Magazine of 1799.[3] Robert Southey recalled that Hoole's Jerusalem Delivered was "the first book he ever possessed," apart from a set of sixpenny children's books.[4] Hoole was a genial character, but termed as a translator not unfairly by Sir Walter Scott as "a noble transmuter of gold into lead".[5]

David Barclay of Youngsbury turned to Hoole to write the biography of his friend John Scott of Amwell, when Johnson, his first choice, died before he could do so.[6][7]

Retirement

In 1786 Hoole retired to the parsonage of Abinger, Surrey. Afterwards he lived at Tenterden, Kent, and died in Dorking.[1]

Selected works

References
  1. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hoole, John". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 675.
  2. Vivienne W. Painting: Hoole, John (1727–1803). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK: OUP), 2004 Retrieved 16 April 2018.
  3. "Really as It Was: Writing the Life of Samuel Johnson, and Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library". Archived from the original on 16 June 2010. Retrieved 19 May 2010.. Accessed 19 May 2010.
  4. The Early Diary of Frances Burney 1768–1778, ed. Annie Raine Ellis (London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd., 1913 [1889]), p. 308n.
  5. The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, from the original manuscript at Abbotsford. Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1891, p. 204. googlebooks.com. Accessed August 26, 2007.
  6. David Perman, Scott of Amwell: Dr. Johnson's Quaker Critic, pp. 15–17.
  7. Spenserians, John Hoole, An Account of the Life and Writings of John Scott, Esq., Scott, Critical Essays (1785) i-lxxxix.
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