AKENSIDE, MARK (1721-1770), poet and physician, born at New- castle-on-Tyne, and descended from Northumbrian Presby- terians of the lower middle class; was educated in the free school of his native town, and at a private Academy kept by a dissenting minister by name of Wilson, and afterwards studied for the ministry in Edinburgh. In Jan- uary, 1744, appeared the Pleasures of the Imagination. The same year Akenside left England for Leyden, Hol- land, where he took his degree of Doctor of Physic after completing the necessary studies within a month. He prac tised medicine at North End, Hampstead, between 1745 and 1747, but without much success. In January, 1753, he was admitted by mandamus to a doctor's degree at Cam- bridge, and was in the same year elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; in April, 1754, he was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and in September of the fol lowing year was elected fourth censor of the College, and delivered the Gulstonian Lectures. In 1756, he read the Croonian Lectures before the same College. Besides the Pleasures of the Imagination, of which there exists a pos- thumous version, he wrote a number of scattering odes and epistles. He is said to have died in the bed in which Milton expired.
If Rightly Tuneful Bards Decide.
The Complaint..
To the Evening Star.
AUSTIN, ADAM (1726?-1774), was a medical practitioner of note in Edinburgh in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. The single poem by which his memory has been kept alive, was inspired by Miss Jean Drummond, the young lady of his heart who forsook him to marry James, Duke of Athole, in 1747.
BAILLIE, LADY GRISELL (1665-1746), was born at Redbracs Cas- tle, Berwickshire, the daughter of Sir Patrick Hume (or Home) who was concerned in the intrigues against the succession of the Catholic Duke of York who afterwards became James VII. When James ascended the throne Hume with his family escaped to Utrecht in Holland where he assumed the name of "Dr. Wallace." With the land- ing of the Prince of Orange the exiles, among whom was George Baillie of Jerviswood to whom Grisell Hume was greatly attached, returned home. In 1692, she was mar-
ried to Baillie of Jerviswood. During the exile in Holland Grisell kept a manuscript of the songs she composed, which was at one time in the possession of her daughter, Lady Murray of Stanhope. Only the two verses here printed
The Ewe-Buchtin's Bonnie....
Werena My Heart Licht I Wad Dee..
BAILLIE, JOANNA (1762-1851), dramatist and poet, was born at the manse of Bothwell, Lanarkshire, and was descended from an ancient Scottish family. She was the daughter of Dr. Baillie, professor of Divinity in the University of Glas- gow. In 1790, she published in London a small volume of miscellaneous poems entitled Fugitive Verses. The first play she wrote, Arnold, does not survive. In 1798, she pub- lished the first volume of Plays on the Passions, entitled "A Series of Plays, in which it is attempted to delineate the stronger passions of the mind, each passion being the subject of a tragedy and a comedy." In 1802, she issued a second volume. She was also the author of numerous volumes of plays and poems.
Song (They who may tell love's wistful tale)..
The Maid of Llanwellyn..
Saw Ye Johnny Comin'?.
Woo'd and Married and A'
To a Kitten..
The Outlaw's Song.
Poverty Parts Gude Companie..
BARBAULD, ANNA LAETITIA (1743-1825), was born at Kibworth, Leicestershire. At fifteen years old she became one of the tutors in the newly established academy of Warring- ton. In 1773, she published her first volume of verse; this was followed by a number of works well-known in their day. She also edited fifty volumes of the best English novelists, to which she prefixed an essay of length on the Origin and Progress of Novel Writing. Life
BEATTIE, JAMES (1735-1803), was born in the village of Lau- rencekirk in Kincardineshire, of humble parentage. At fourteen he entered Marischal College, Aberdeen, with the intention of studying for the ministry. In 1752, he became parish schoolmaster at Fordoun, at the foot of the Gram- pians, and in 1760, was offered the chair of Natural Phi- losophy in Marischal College. In 1761, he published, Original Poems and Translations, and in 1766, appeared a much revised edition with omissions and additions which won him considerable fame in both Scotland and England. In 1771, appeared his best-known work, The Minstrel. Epitaph, Intended for Himself..
BISHOP, SAMUEL (1731-1795), was born in London, and edu- cated at St. John's College, Oxford. He was ordained to the curacy of Headley in Surrey, and afterwards received the preferments of Ditton in Kent, and St. Martin Out- wich in London. In 1798, three years after his death, the
Rev. Thomas Clare collected and printed Sermons Chiefly upon Practical Subjects by the Rev. Samuel Bishop, and two volumes of Poetical Works. Fati Valet Hora Benigni.. The Touch Stone...
BLAIR, ROBERT (1699-1746), was born in Edinburgh, eldest son of the Rev. David Blair a minister of the old church in Edinburgh and one of the chaplains to the king. He was educated at Edinburgh University, and travelled for a time on the continent, afterwards becoming minister of Athelstaneford in Haddingtonshire in 1731. At twenty-one he contributed to the Edinburgh Miscellany. In 1743, The Grave was published - as unlike the light verses of his contemporaries as the toll of a funeral bell to the merry gill bells' of St. Giles." Among the many editions of the poem published to the beginning of the nineteenth century, that illustrated by William Blake, and issued by Cromek in 1808, remains the most notable. The Grave...
BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827), poet, artist and seer, was born in London, the son of a linen draper. At thirteen he was apprenticed to Basire the engraver with whom he remained seven years, the last five of which much of his time was spent in making drawings of Gothic monuments, chiefly in Westminster Abbey. For a short time after leaving the engraver, Blake studied at the Antique School at the newly founded Royal Academy. In his twentieth year he began engraving and drawing upon his own account, and made the acquaintance of Flaxman and Fuseli who re- mained his life-long friends. In 1782, he married Cather- ine Boucher who became to him "the best wife a man of genius ever had." In 1783, Blake issued his first work, the Poetical Sketches, which was published at the expense of Flaxman and the Rev. Henry Matthew. In 1784, Blake is known to have composed an extravaganza named from the opening phrase, An Island in the Moon, which Mr. Ed- win J. Ellis has printed for the first time in full in his Real Blake: A Portrait Biography, 1907. The same year of the Extravaganza, Blake became a print-seller at 27 Broad Street. In 1789, he issued his Songs of Innocence, the first of his books to be produced by the "method of his invention which he described as illuminated printing.'" Then followed from his press the Book of Thel, dated the same year: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790. The Visions of the Daughters of Albion, America, Europe, The Gates of Paradise, The Book of Urizen, the first series of Prophetic Books, 1793: The Songs of Experience, 1794; The Song of Los, Ahania, 1795; Jerusalem and Milton, 1804.
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