JOHN

See also:

• JOHN POMFRET (1667-1702)

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 he 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 .