HUGHES, JOHN (1677-172o), English poet and miscella neous writer, was born at Marlborough, Wiltshire. He died on the night of the production of his most celebrated work, The Siege of Damascus, Feb. 17, 172o. Hughes wrote some of the libretti of the cantatas (2 vols., 1712) set to music by Dr. John Christopher Pepusch. Others of his pieces were set to music by Ernest Gal liard and by Handel. In the masque of Apollo and Daphne (1716) he was associated with Pepusch, and in his opera of Calypso and Telemachus (1712) with John E. Galliard. Hughes's version of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise . . . (1714) is notable as the basis of Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard" (1717).
His Poems on Several Occasions, with some Select Essays in Prose . . . were edited with a memoir in by William Duncombe, who had married his sister Elizabeth. See also Letters by several eminent persons (2 vols., 1772) and The Correspondence of John Hughes, Esq. . . . and Several of his Friends . . . (2 vols., 1773), with some additional poems.