FENTON, ELIJAH (1683-1730)

—Poet and translator, ed. at Camb., for a time acted as sec. to the Earl of Orrery in Flanders, and was then Master of Seven oaks Grammar School. In 1707 he pub. a book of poems. He is best known, however, as the a istant of Pope in his translation of the Ody ey , of which he Englished the first, fourth, nineteenth, and twentieth books, catching the manner of his master so completely that it is hardly po ible to distinguish between their work; while thus engaged he pub. (1723) a succe ful tragedy, Marianne . His latest contributions to literature were a Life of Milton , and an ed. of Waller's Poems (1729).