James Beattie, born on 25 October 1735 and dead on 18 August 1803, occupied an unusual and revealing place in eighteenth-century British culture. He was at once a Scottish professor, a poet of landscape and sensibility, a popular moral philosopher, a Christian apologist, a music lover, a man of sociable ambition, and a bereaved father whose final years were darkened by illness and loss. In his own lifetime he was fam…
“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.”
Neighbourhood:
Enlightenment Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Spirituality
Henry Carey, poet, songwriter, composer, dramatist, performer, and irrepressible satirist, was born about 26 August 1687 and died on 5 October 1743. He belonged to that unusually fertile and unruly generation of English writers who worked in the crowded space between coffeehouse wit, commercial theater, political controversy, popular song, and the new culture of print. His name is not as immediately familiar as those…
“A vulgar error having long prevailed among many persons, who imagine Sally Salisbury the subject of this ballad, the author begs to undeceive and assure them that it has not the least allusion to her.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Satirical Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Tenderness
