Fawkes, Francis

Fawkes, Francis (1720-1777), English poet and divine, was born at Warmsworth, near Doncaster, Yorkshire, where his father was rector, and was baptized on the 4th of April 1720. After studying at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. in 1745, he took holy orders, and was successively curate of Bramham, curate of Croydon, vicar of Orpington, and rector of Hayes, and finally was made one of the chaplains to the princess of Wales. His first publication is said to have been Bramham Park, a Poem, in 1745; a volume of poems and translations appeared in 1761; and Partridge Shooting, an eclogue, in 1764. His translations of the minor Greek poets—Anacreon, Sappho, Bion and Moschus, Musaeus, Theocritus and Apollonius—acquired for him considerable fame, but they are less likely to be remembered than his fine song, “Dear Tom, this brown jug, that now foams with mild ale.” Fawkes died on the 26th of August 1777.