Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Crompton, Hugh
CROMPTON, HUGH (fl. 1657), poet, was, according to his friend Winstanley, ‘born a Gentleman and bred up a Scholar.’ He probably belonged to the Lancashire family of Crompton. But his father's means failed, and he had to earn his own livelihood, ‘which his learning had made him capable to do.’ Misfortune still dogged him, and he employed his enforced leisure in writing poetry. Before 1687 he emigrated to Ireland. The date of his death is uncertain. His published works, which are very rarely met with, are: 1. ‘Poems by Hugh Crompton, the Son of Bacchus and Godson of Apollo. Being a fardle of Fancies or a medley of Musick, stood in four ounces of the Oyl of Epigrams,’ London, 1657, dedicated to the author's ‘Friend and Kinsman Colonell Tho. Compton.’ 2. ‘Pierides, or the Muses Mount,’ London, 1658?, dedicated to Mary, duchess of Richmond and Lennox. Many of Crompton's poems are fluently and briskly written; a few are obvious imitations of Waller, and others are unpleasantly coarse. Granger mentions a portrait of Crompton at the age of eighteen which was engraved by A. Hertocks. A second engraved portrait is prefixed to the ‘Pierides.’
[Winstanley's Lives of the English Poets, 191; Granger's Biog. Hist. iii. 100; Corser's Collectanea, iv. 521–6; Park's Restituta, i. 272, iii. 167.]