John Skinner, born on 3 October 1721 and dead on 16 June 1807, lived through an age of political defeat, religious repression, agricultural change, intellectual expansion, and remarkable literary revival in Scotland. He is remembered above all as the author of “Tullochgorum,” the exuberant song that Robert Burns called “the best Scotch song ever Scotland saw.” Yet that deservedly famous lyric represents only one part…
“The difference between our two tracks of education, and ways of life, is entirely in your favour, and gives you the preference every manner of way.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Hymn Writers, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Anger, Sorrow
Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on 20 November 1752 and died in London on 24 August 1770, not yet eighteen years old. Few English poets have left behind a life so brief, so fiercely productive, and so persistently mythologized. His name has become almost inseparable from the image of the neglected young genius: a boy of provincial poverty who invented a medieval poetic world, attempted to conquer the London lit…
“Heroes, patriots, and statesmen, are not only entitled to the love and veneration of their cotemporaries during their lives, but their virtues and services ought to be transmitted to the latest posterity.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Folk & Ballad Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Wonder
