Charles Hopkins (poet)


Charles Hopkins was an Anglo-Irish poet and dramatist.

Life

The elder son of Ezekiel Hopkins, bishop of Derry, he was born about 1664 at Exeter and was taken early to Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and then at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1688.
Returning to Ireland Hopkins engaged in military service. He subsequently settled in England, and gained some reputation as a writer of poems and plays. Giles Jacob in the Poetical Register says that he might have made a fortune in any scene of life, but was unmotivated. His death aged 35, about the beginning of 1700, was put down to a debauched lifestyle.

Works

, in a letter to Mrs. Steward, described Hopkins as "a poet who writes good verses without knowing how or why; I mean, he writes naturally well, without art or learning or good sense."
He wrote:
Hopkins was also the author of three tragedies, performed at Lincoln's Inn Fields:
Before Friendship Improved there is a dedicatory epistle, written from Londonderry, in which the author refers to his failing health: "My Muse is confined at present to a weak and sickly tenement; and the winter season will go near to overbear her, together with her household." In John Nichols's Collection of Poems are preserved some verses written by Hopkins "about an hour before his death".