Richard Blackmore
Richard Blackmore | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 22 January 1654 |
| Died | 9 October 1729 (aged 75) |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation(s) | poet, physician |
Sir Richard Blackmore (22 January 1654 – 9 October 1729),
Earlier years
He was born at Corsham, in Wiltshire, the son of a wealthy attorney. He was educated briefly at Westminster School and entered St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 1669 at 15. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1674 and his MA in 1676. He was a tutor at the college for a time, but in 1682 he received his inheritance from his father. He used the money to travel. He went to France, Geneva, and various places in Italy. He stayed for a while in Padua and graduated in medicine at Padua. Blackmore returned to England via Germany and Holland, and then he set up as a physician. In 1685 he married Mary Adams, whose family connections aided him in winning a place in the Royal College of Physicians in 1687. He had trouble with the College, being censured for taking leave without permission, and he strongly opposed the project for setting up a free dispensary for the poor in London. This opposition would be satirised by Sir Samuel Garth in The Dispensary in 1699.
Blackmore the epic poet
Blackmore had a passion for writing
Having used his epics to fight political battles, albeit safe ones at first, Blackmore was opposed by wits of the other camp, especially as time went on. William Garth attacked Blackmore's stance on the dispensary, only to be answered by Blackmore with A Satyr against Wit (1700).
In 1705, with Anne on the throne and William dead, Blackmore wrote another epic, Eliza: an Epic Poem in Ten Books, on the plot by
In 1711, Blackmore produced The Nature of Man, a physiological/
Blackmore ceased writing epics for a time after Creation. In 1722 he continued his religious themes with Redemption, an epic on the divinity of
While others approached the epic as a celebration of national origins (Dryden, for example) or sought in it the most lofty subject matter possible (as
Non-epic writing
Blackmore was a religious author when he was not a political author. In 1713 he and his friend John Hughes began a periodical modelled on The Spectator entitled The Lay Monk. It only ran from 13 November 1713 to 15 February 1714 and appeared once every three weeks during that period. All the same, Blackmore had its issues collected and published as The Lay Monastery in the year the journal foundered.
In 1716, he became censor as well as a director of the College of Physicians, but the Hanoverians were not as taken with Blackmore as William or Anne had been. In that year, he had two volumes of Essays upon Several Subjects published, with an attack on Alexander Pope in the second volume. In 1718, he again went to press with A Collection of Poems on Various Subjects, which collected shorter poems that had already been published.
Blackmore was very concerned with
Finally, Blackmore attempted to answer Deism again with Natural Theology, or, Moral Duties Consider'd apart from Positive in 1728. In 1731, his last work, The Accomplished Preacher, was published posthumously.
As a physician
Blackmore has come down, largely through the verse of Alexander Pope, as one avatar of Dulness, but, as a physician, he was quite forward thinking. He agreed with Sir Thomas Sydenham that observation and the physician's experience should take precedence over any Aristotelian ideals or hypothetical laws. He rejected Galen's humour theory as well. He wrote on plague in 1720, smallpox in 1722, and consumption in 1727.
He died in Boxted, Essex and was buried in his local parish church, where a monument was constructed.
As a butt of satire
Blackmore's fame today rests with his enemies. Garth's The Dispensary made him out to be a greedy fool with delusions, but Pope's criticisms would be the most lasting, and Pope hits Blackmore over and over again on his stupidity and delusions of grandeur. The
Blackmore's poetry is leaden. What further qualified him as a 'dunce' was his willingness to use poetry for the purposes of self-advancement. The self-interest involved in King Arthur was apparent to contemporaries, and the desperation of Alfred was similarly offensive to other poets. In addition, Blackmore used his poetry to vilify fellow poets, especially (but not exclusively) Tory poets, and that made him vulnerable to counter-attacks that he could not survive. Nevertheless, in his own time, he enjoyed the "approbation of Locke, and the admiration of Molineux."[1] His poetry was also praised by Watts[1] and Matthew Henry, who frequently quoted Blackmore's poems in his Commentary on the Whole Bible.
Notes
 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (March 2016) |
- ^ a b Blackmore, Sir Richard (1806). Creation: A Philosophical Poem, in Seven Books. Robert Johnson.
References
- Matthew, H.C.G. and Brian Harrison, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. vol. 6, 1–3. London: Oxford UP, 2004.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Blackmore, Sir Richard". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
External links
Texts on Wikisource:- Works by Richard Blackmore at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Richard Blackmore at Internet Archive
- The poetical works of Sir Richard Blackmore, Containing Creation; a philosophical poem, in seven books. To which is prefixed the life of the author (1793)
- Sir Richard Blackmore from Lives of the Poets by Samuel Johnson
- Essay upon Wit, by Blackmore (1716)
- "Blackmore, Sir Richard". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.
- "Blackmore, Sir Richard". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
- "Blackmore, Sir Richard", A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910 – via Wikisource
- "Blackmore, Sir Richard". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. 1907.
- Bullen, Arthur Henry (1886). "Blackmore, Richard". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 5.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
