The Chase
9781465682543
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
That celebrity has not always been the attendant on merit, many mortifying examples may be produced to prove. Of those who have by their writings conferred a lasting obligation on their country, and at the same time raised its reputation, many have been suffered to descend into the grave without any memorial; and when the time has arrived, in which their works have raised a curiosity to be informed of the general tenour, or petty habits of their lives, always amusing, and frequently useful, little more is to be collected, than that they once lived, and are no more. Such has been the fate of William Somervile, who may, with great propriety, be called the Poet of the Chase; and of whom it is to be regretted that so few circumstances are known. By the neglect of friends while living, and the want of curiosity in the publick, at the time of his death, he has been deprived of that portion of fame to which his merits have entitled him; and though the worth of his works is now universally acknowledged, his amiable qualities, and he is said to have possessed many, are forgotten and irrevocably lost to the world. In the lapse of more than half a century, all his surviving friends, from whom any information could be derived, are swept away. The little which has been hitherto collected concerning him, will be found, on examination, not perfectly satisfactory; and of that little, some part is less accurate than our respect for so excellent a writer leads us to wish it had been. He was of a family of great antiquity in the county of Warwick. His ancestor came into England with William the Conqueror, and left two sons. The eldest, from whom our poet was descended, had Whichnour, in the county of Stafford, for his inheritance; and the other, the ancestor of Lord Somervile, settled in the kingdom of Scotland. The eldest branch afterwards removed to Ederston, in the county of Warwick; which manor Thomas Somervile became possessed of, by marrying Joan, daughter and sole heir of John Aylesbury, the last heir male who owned that estate. This Thomas died in the year 1501, leaving one son, Robert, who also left one son, John, who was the father of William Somervile, whose only son, Sir William Somervile, Knight, left a posthumous son, William, who died in 1676, having married Anne, daughter of John Viscount Tracey, of the kingdom of Ireland, by whom he had eleven sons and five daughters.
