Thomas Newcomb (1682?–1765) was an English clergyman and teacher, known as a poet. He was pro-government (i.e. Whig) writer of the ascendance of Robert Walpole, associated to Walpole through the interest of his patron Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle.[1]
He was born about 1682. He matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford 15 April 1698, aged 16, when he was described as son of William Newcomb of Westbury, Shropshire. He graduated B.A. on 30 March 1704.
Newcomb became chaplain to Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, and rector of Stopham, near Pulborough in Sussex, in 1705. By 1706 he was also rector of the nearby parish of Barlavington, and he appears to have held that living until his death.[2]
Newcomb taught in Hackney parish, where John André was among his pupils.[3] On 8 May 1764 he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, stating that his salary for supplying the chapel at Hackney had been taken from him, while his living in Sussex was very small. He asked the duke to contribute to a collection which friends were raising for him, and he enclosed a Latin character of John Wilkes, and verses on him.
Newcomb died at Hackney in 1765, and was buried there on 11 June. In the following year his library was sold. A mezzotint engraving of Newcomb by J. Faber, after Hawkins, was prefixed to his Last Judgment (1723).
In 1712 Newcomb published an anonymous satire Bibliotheca, a Poem occasioned by the sight of a modern Library. It is friendly to Richard Steele, and hostile to Daniel Defoe. The poem's form is related to a Battle of the Books; unusually for the period Newcomb included some female writers.[4] The image of the goddess Oblivion may have influenced "Dulness" in Alexander Pope's Dunciad;[5] the resemblance was pointed out by John Nichols.[6] Roger Lund has argued that the debt may be considerably greater;[7] as Newcomb himself complained.[3]
In 1717 Newcomb wrote an Ode sacred to the Memory of the Countess of Berkeley, for the daughter of the Duke of Richmond, which Edmund Curll published on the recommendation of Edward Young, who was Newcomb's friend. Young announced in the Evening Post for 29 August that Curll was not authorised by him in publishing the Ode with his letter prefixed, and Curll defended himself in an advertisement in Mist's Weekly Journal for 31 August. In 1719 Newcomb contributed an Ode to Major Pack to the Life of Atticus, published by Richardson Pack, and in 1721 he published a translation of the Roman History of C. Velleius Paterculus.
In 1723 Newcomb brought out, by subscription, his longest work, The Last Judgment of Men and Angels. A Poem in Twelve Books, after the manner of Milton. The poem was written, says Newcomb, not for fame, but to promote the great ends of religion.
Newcomb published also: