HOOLE, John (1727-1803), translator and dramatic, was born at Moorfields, London, in December 1727. At the age of seventeen he became a clerk in the accountants’ department of the East India House. His leisure hours he devoted to the study of Latin and especially Italian, after obtaining a mastery of which he commenced writing translations of the chief works of tl∣.e Italian poets. He published the Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso in 1763, the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto in 1773-1783, the Dramas of Metastasio in 1767, and Rinaldo, an early work of Tasso, in 1792. He also wrote the following dramas— Cyrus (1768), Timanthes (fHiif), and Cleonia (1775), none of which achieved success. The verses of Hoole have been praised by Johnson, with whom he was on terms of intimacy, but, though correct, smooth, and flowing, they cannot be commended for any other merit; and the noble poetry of Italy, transmuted through the crucible of his translations, becomes spiritless and commonplace. In 1773 he was promoted to be auditor of Indian accounts, which office he resigned in 1783, and in 1786 he retired to Abinger near Dorking, Surrey, where he died 2d April 1803.

See Anecdotes of the Life of John Hoole, by the Rev. Samuel Hoole, London, 1803.