DENHAM, Sir John, an eminent English poet, the only son of Sir John Denham, chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland, and one of the lords commissioners there, was born at Dublin in 1615; but his father having, in 1617, been made a baron of the exchequer in England, he received his education in that country. In his youth he was greatly addicted to gaming; but in 1641 he published a tragedy called the Sophy, which was much admired by the best judges; and in 1643 he composed his Cooper s Hill, a poem which Dryden says will ever be the standard of good writing for majesty of style. Denham was sent as ambassador from Charles II. to the king of Poland; and at the Restoration he was made surveyor-general of his majesty’s buildings, and created knight of the bath. On obtaining this post he is said to have renounced his poetry for more important studies. He died at his office in Whitehall in 1668; and his works have since been often printed. The sixth edition is that of 1719; and besides this collection, Wood mentions several pieces, which are either his productions, or have been ascribed to him. “Denham,” says Dr Johnson, “is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry. Denham and Waller, according to Prior, improved our versification, and Dryden perfected it. He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition of being upon proper occasions a merry fellow; and, in common with most of them, to have been by nature or by early habits debarred from it. Nothing is less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham. He does not fail for want of efforts: he is familiar, he is gross; but he is never merry, unless the ‘ speech against peace in the close committee’ be excepted. For grave burlesque, however, the imitation of Davenant shows him to have been well qualified. His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts are just. Coopers Hill is the work that confers upon him the rank and dignity of an original author. He seems to have been, at least amongst us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or incidental meditation. To trace a new scheme of poetry has in itself a very high claim to praise, and its praise is yet more when it is apparently copied by Garth and Pope; after whose names, little will be gained by an enumeration of smaller poets. He appeared to have been one of the first that understood the necessity of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines and interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the clearest and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors, may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them the works of men well qualified, not only by a critical knowledge, but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness, degraded at once their originals and themselves. Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success. His versions of Virgil are not pleasing, but they taught Dryden to please better.”