William Broome was born on 30 April 1689 and baptized three days later, on 3 May, at Haslington in Cheshire, near Crewe. He died at Bath on 16 November 1745. Although his name survives most readily in accounts of Alexander Pope’s Homer, Broome deserves attention as more than a subordinate craftsman in a famous enterprise. He was a clergyman, classicist, translator, occasional poet, schoolmaster, and ambitious partici…
“I prefix your Name to the following Poem, as a Monument of the long, and sincere Friendship I have born you: I am sensible you are too good a Judge of Poetry to approve it; however it will be a Testimony of my Respect.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Tenderness
William Oldys, born on 14 July 1696 and dead on 15 April 1761, belongs to that remarkable class of literary figures whose influence exceeds their modern fame. He was a poet only intermittently, an editor often anonymously, a biographer by patient accumulation, a bibliographer before bibliography had fully become a profession, and an antiquary whose chief subject was the survival of the written past. To encounter Oldy…
“We hardly ever find the worth of books till we lose them; and it is then too late to value them.”
Neighbourhood:
Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Peace
