Author: Hucks, Joseph
Biography:
HUCKS, Joseph (1772-1800: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised 24 Mar. 1772 at Knaresborough, Yorkshire, the third son of William Hucks (1717-82) and his wife Eleanor Barnett (1729-1807). He was educated at Eton and St. Catherine’s (then Catherine Hall) Cambridge, (BA 1794, MA 1797, Fellow 1795). He also entered the Inner Temple in 1792. In 1794 he went on a walking tour in Wales with another Cambridge student, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (q.v.). He recorded the experience in A Pedestrian Tour through North Wales (1795) which included his topographical poem "Upon the Ruins of Denbigh Castle" and Coleridge’s "Lines Written at the King’s Arms, Ross." He then published Poems (1798) which was printed at Cambridge by the radical Unitarian Benjamin Flowers, who had earlier published Coleridge’s The Fall of Robespierre (1794). It contained two philosophical poems, 'The Retrospect" and "The Philanthropist"; an unusual Ode to Nature; topographical poems; "Lines Address’d to S. T. Coleridge"; and ten sonnets, the most notable of which was "To Freedom." He sent three poems to Robert Southey (q.v.) for inclusion in The Annual Anthology (1799-1800). Later Southey intended to include a selection of his poems and a sketch of his life in his Specimens of the Later English Poets (1807) but he did not make the cut. He died at Exmouth, Devon, on 19 Sept. 1800, from what was recorded as a "decline," the usual term for consumption. Southey confirmed this in a letter to Charles Danvers, 6 Nov. 1800: “I have learnt of the death of Hucks--also by the cursed consumption.” However, in a letter to Coleridge, 25 July 1801, he added “Poor H-, he has literally killed himself by the law.” Southey had a weakness for such explanations and later promoted over-study as the cause of death of Kirke White (q.v.). (ancestry.co.uk 6 Oct. 2020; findmypast.co.uk 6 Oct. 2020; Exeter Flying Post 2 Oct. 1800; Romantic Circles [Southey Correspondence] romantic-circles.org) AA
Other Names:
- J. Hucks