HOOLE, John, translator of the Gierusalemme Liberata of Tasso, was the son of Samuel Hoole, watchmaker, London, and born at Moorfields in 1727. Having receiv-. ed some elementary instruction from his uncle, a tailor in Grub Street, he was sent to a private school in Hertfordshire, kept by Bennet, the publisher of Roger Ascham’s works, where he acquired a knowledge of the Latin and French languages, and some smattering of Greek. It was the wish of the father to bring up his son to his own trade of watchmaker, in which he had met with considerable success; but the shortsightedness of young Hoole proving an insuperable objection, he was, at the age of seventeen, placed as a clerk in the accountant’s department in the East India House. About this time, having accompanied to the theatre his father, who had access behind the scenes, he contracted a fondness for the stage, which, if indulged, might have proved fatal to him, seeing he was entirely devoid of histrionic talents; but his attention having been diverted from this pursuit, he employed his leisure in improving himself in Latin, and in learning Italian, which he studied with the view of being able to read in the original the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, of which, while a boy, he had become enamoured in the translation of Sir John Harrington. From admiring he soon proceeded to translate his favourite production; but after having made some progress in his task, he laid it aside for a time, in order to execute a translation of the Gierusalemnιe Liberata, which, accordingly, he commenced in 1758. ∙ In 1761 he printed ?ı specimen, which appears to have met the approbation of his friends; for the whole was published in 1763, with a dedication to the queen, written by Dr Johnson. This translation is distinguished for cold correctness and elaborate elegance; but, in the transfusion, the essential spirit of poetry has in a great measure evaporated, leaving a residuum, the general character of which is insipidity. In 1773 Hoole published the first volume of his Orlando Furioso, which was favourably received by the public; but the further prosecution of the translation was interrupted by his receiving an appointment as auditor of accounts to the East India Company, an office which occupied much of his time and attention; nor did the whole make its appearance[7:11:558] until 1783, when it was published in five vols. 8vo. In 1785 he wrote the life of his friend Mr Scott, the poet of Amwell, with whom he had become acquainted in 1757; in 1791 he published the Orlando reduced to twenty-four books, in two vols.8vo; and, in 1792, he gave to the English public Tasso’s juvenile production, Rinaldo. He also published, in three vols. 8vo, the dramas and other poems of Metastasio, his versions of which display more spirit and variety than his translations of Tasso and Ariosto, of which the chief characteristic is an uniform and monotonous smoothness of versification. He was also the author of several dramas, namely, Cyrus, which appeared in 1768, Timanthes in 1770, and Cleonice in 1775; but none of these had any success on the stage. Mr Hoole lived in habits of intimacy with Dr Johnson, whom he attended in his last illness; and died at Dorking on the 2d of August 1803, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. In his private character he was amiable and estimable; but though a man of taste and a good scholar, he had not the slightest pretension to poetical genius, though, from long practice, he had acquired considerable skill in the mechanical construction of verse. He had no kindred sympathies with the mens divinior of true poetry, and in his hands, accordingly, its finer spirit generally escaped, (a.)