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Hurd
314
Hurd

plates, notably 'Le Repos Champêtre,' after Watteau. When the father was forced to take refuge in England, the son accompanied him and settled in London, where he obtained considerable practice as a portrait painter in crayons. In 1771 he exhibited a portrait of himself at the Royal Academy, and was an occasional contributor in the following years. In 1783 he appears to have been residing at Cambridge. He drew a portrait of the Chevalier d'Eon, which was engraved in mezzotint by T. Burke. Huquier etched a portrait of Richard Tyson, master of the ceremonies at Bath, for Anstey's 'New Bath Guide' (1782). He married at Paris, 30 Nov. 1758, Anne Louise, daughter of Jacques Chereau, the engraver. Late in life he retired to hrewsbury, where he died on 7 June 1805.

[Seubert's Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon; Portalis et Beraldi's Graveurs du 18e Siècle; Dodd's manuscript History of English Engravers (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 33402); Royal Academy Catalogues.]

HURD, RICHARD, D.D. (1720–1808), bishop of Worcester, second son of John Hurd, a substantial farmer, by Hannah his wife, was born at Congreve, Staffordshire, on 13 Jan. 1719-20. He was educated at Brewood grammar school and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1738-9, and proceeded M.A. in 1742, taking a fellowship and deacon's orders. After a brief experience of parochial work at Reymersham, near Thetford, he returned to Cambridge, was ordained priest in 1744, and graduated B.D. in 1749. At Cambridge he formed a close friendship with his pupil and old schoolfellow, Sir Edward Littleton, bart. William Mason and Gray were also among his contemporaries and friends. His first literary effort took the shape of Remarks on a late Book [by William Weston, q. v.] entitled "An Enquiry into the rejection of the Christian Miracles by the Heathens,"' London, 1746, 8vo. In 1748 he contributed an English poem of very modest merit on the blessings of peace to the 'Gratulatio Academies Cantabrigiensis,' published on the occasion of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1749 he published 'Q.Horatii Flacci Ars Poetica. Epistola ad Pisones. With an English Commentary and Notes,' London, 8vo. In the text he generally followed Bentley, but in the commentary and notes (though these display considerable erudition and taste) he developed the theory, long since discredited, that the poem was a systematic criticism of the Roman drama (see Colman, George, the elder, and Gibbon, Misc. Works, edit. 1796, ii. 27 et seq.) The work was anonymous, but a judicious compliment in the preface gained Hurd the patronage of Warburton, through whose influence he was appointed Whitehall preacher in 1750. The 'Ars Poetica' was followed by 'Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola ad Augustum, with an English Commentary and Notes; to which is added A Discourse concerning Poetical Imitation,' London, 1751, 8vo. Both editions were highly praised by Warburton in a note to Pope's 'Essay on Criticism,' 1. 632. Hurd, in return, dedicated to him in fulsome terms a new and enlarged edition of his two works on Horace, London, 1753, 2 vols. 8vo (reissued with various additions in 1757, 1766, and 1776). A German translation by Eschenburg appeared at Leipzig in 1772, 2 vols. 8vo.

Hurd also published in 1751 a pamphlet entitled 'The Opinion of an Eminent Lawyer [Lord Hardwicke] concerning the right of appeal from the Vice-chancellor of Cambridge to the Senate; supported by a short Historical Account of the Jurisdiction of the University of Cambridge,' &c., 8vo. In 1753 he accepted the donative curacy of St. Andrew the Little, Cambridge, which he exchanged in 1757 for the rectory of Thurcaston, Leicestershire. In 1755 he chastised Dr. Jortin for venturing in his 'Sixth Dissertation' to reject Warburton's theory that the descent of Æneas into Hades in the sixth book of the 'Æneid' was intended to allegorise the rite of initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries, in a piece of elaborate and unmerited irony entitled 'On the Delicacy of Friendship: a Seventh Dissertation addressed to the Author of the Sixth,' 8vo. In 1757 he edited Warburton's 'Remarks' on Hume's 'Natural History of Religion.' Hume keenly resented the flippant and insolent tone of this pamphlet, which appeared without either author's or editor's name, but was at once attributed to Hurd (see Warburton, Works, ed. Hurd, i. 67-8, xii. 341, and Hume, 'On my own Life,' in his Essays). In 1759 Hurd published a volume of 'Moral and Political Dialogues,' in which he introduced historical personages as interlocutors. Henry More and Waller discourse 'On Sincerity in the Commerce of the World,' Cowley and Sprat 'On Retirement,' the Hon. Robert Digby, Arbuthnot, and Addison 'On the Golden Age of Queen Elizabeth,' Sir John Maynard, Somers, and Burnet 'On the Constitution of the English Government.' The dialogues were much admired, although Johnson was offended by their 'wofully whiggish cast.' Hurd's reputation was further enhanced by the publication in 1762 (London and Dublin, 8vo) of a volume of 'Letters on