John_Pomfret

John Pomfret (1667-1702), English poet, son of Thomas Pomfret, vicar of Luton, was born in 1667. He was educated at Bedford grammar school and at Queens' College, Cambridge. He became rector of Maulden, Bedfordshire, in 1695, and of Millbrook in the same county in 1702. Dr Johnson says that the bishop of London refused to sanction preferment for him because in his Choice the declared that he would have no wife, although he expressed a wish for the occasional company of a modest and sprightly young lady. The poet was married in real life all the same, and - while waiting to clear up the misunderstanding with the bishop - he died in November 1702. The Choice or Wish: A Poem written by a Person of Quality (1700) expresses the epicurean desires of a cultivated man of Pomfret's time. It is smoothly written in the heroic couplet, and was widely popular. His Miscellany Poems were published in 1702.