Author: Hough, John
Biography:
HOUGH, John (fl 1777-78)
There is a famous John Hough (1651-1743), Bishop of Worcester, but this author is an obscure figure. He identifies himself as “of the Inner Temple,” which implies that he was a barrister or solicitor or otherwise involved with the legal profession, but the admission records of the Inner Temple do not include his name and it is possible that he simply rented rooms there. (There was a John Hough with an address in Garden Court, Middle Temple, about this time: he appears to have done some conveyancing and was declared bankrupt in 1781. But that may not have been the same person.) He tried his hand as a polemical author both with The Pastor, which attacks John Wesley as a “fallacious casuist,” and with a short “opera” in two acts, Second Thought is Best (1778), which MR dismissed as “A little piece, of very little merit.” No further reliable information has been found about him and there are no other publications to go by. (MR 58 [1778], 473; Manchester Mercury 10 Apr. 1781)