[2] Returning to Ireland, Hopkins engaged in military service.
He subsequently settled in England, and gained some reputation as a writer of poems and plays.
Giles Jacob in the Poetical Register says that Hopkins might have made a fortune in any scene of life, but was unmotivated.
"[2] He wrote: Hopkins was also the author of four tragedies, three performed at Lincoln's Inn Fields: Before Friendship Improved there is a dedicatory epistle, written from Londonderry (to Edward Coke of Norfolk), in which the author refers to his failing health: "My Muse is confined at present to a weak and sickly tenement; and the winter season will go near to overbear her, together with her household."
In John Nichols's Collection of Poems are preserved some verses written by Hopkins "about an hour before his death".