He was a stage-manager, translated Voltaire's Merope, wrote words for Handel's first composition in England, wrote unsuccessful plays, a quantity of unreadable poetry, and corresponded with most of the literary celebrities.

Pope put his initials, A.H., under the head of "Flying Fishes," in the Bathos, as authors who now and then rise upon their fins and fly, but soon drop again to the profound.
In the Dunciad, he reappeared amongst the divers.
Then * * tried, but hardly snatch'd from sight Instant buoys up and rises into light: He bears no token of the sable streams, And mounts far off amongst the swans of Thames.
A note applied the lines to Hill, with whom he had had a former misunderstanding.

Hill replied to these assaults by a ponderous satire in verse upon "tuneful Alexis;" it had, however, some tolerable lines at the opening, imitated from Pope's own verses upon Addison, and attributing to him the same jealousy of merit in others.

Hill soon afterwards wrote a civil note to Pope, complaining of the passage in the Dunciad.

Pope might have relied upon the really satisfactory answer that the lines were, on the whole, complimentary; indeed, more complimentary than true.