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Revision as of 14:21, 25 February 2021

Sonnets russell

Thomas Russell (1762-1788), Sonnets, and miscellaneous poems (1789). Forgotten Books, 2018. Courtesy Amazon.com.

Rev. Thomas Russell (1762 - 31 July 1788) was an English poet and cleric.

Life

Russell was born at Beaminster, Dorset, in January or February 1762 (baptised 2 March), the 2nd son of John Russell (1725–1808), a prosperous Beaminster attorney, by his wife Virtue (1743–1768), daughter of Richard Brickle of Shaftesbury. His father's family had been for generations merchants and shipowners at Weymouth.[1]

After attending the grammar school at Bridport, he entered Winchester School as a commoner in 1777, and before the end of the year he was already in 6th book and 15th boy in the school.

In 1778 he entered Winchester College, where he studied under Joseph Warton and Thomas Warton, the profesor of poetry.[2] By the following year he was senior in the school; he gained medals for Latin verse and Latin essay (1778–1779).[1]

He was elected to New College, Oxford, in 1780, being 2nd on the roll, and earned a B.A. in October 1784.[1] During his residence at the university he devoted himself to French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Provencal and even German literature.[2]

In the Gentleman's Magazine (1782, p. 574, and 1783, i. 124), under the signature ‘A.S.,’ he wrote 2 erudite papers on the poetry of Mosen Jordi and the Provençal language, defending his former master, Thomas Warton, against Ritson's ill-tempered Observations upon the History of Poetry.[1]

He was ordained deacon in 1785, and priest in 1786.[1]

A career of brilliant promise was cut short by phthisis, of which Russell died at Bristol Hotwells on 31 July 1788. He was buried in the churchyard of Powerstock, Dorset.[1]

Writing

Until shortly before Russell's death he was engaged in correcting his poems. He left a few fragments in manuscript, now in the possession of Captain Thomas Russell of Beaminster.[1]

In 1789 appeared Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems by the late Thomas Russell, Fellow of New College, Oxford, sm. 4to; these were dedicated to Warton by the editor, William Howley (1766-1848), afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. A fine scholarly taste is exhibited in the versions from Petrarch, Camoens, and Weisse, but the most noteworthy feature of the little volume is the excellence of Russell's sonnets.[1] The book contained 23 sonnets, of regular form, and a few paraphrases and original lyrics. The sonnets are the best, and it is by right of these that Russell takes his place as a most interesting precursor of the romantic school. "War, Love, the Wizard, and the Fay he sung" ”in other words, he rejected entirely – the narrow circle of subjects laid down for 18th-century poets. In this he was certainly influenced both by Chatterton and by William Collins. But he was still more clearly the disciple of Petrarch, of Boccaccio and of Camoens, each of whom he had carefully and enthusiastically studied. His Sonnet, “Suppos'd to be written at Lemnos,” is his masterpiece, and is unquestionably the greatest English sonnet of the 18th century.[3]

Wordsworth not only wrote with warm appreciation of Russell's genius as a sonneteer, but in his sonnet, Iona (upon landing), he adopted from Russell, as conveying his feeling better than any words of his own could do, the 4 concluding lines:

    And ‘hopes, perhaps, more heavenly bright than thine,
    A grace by thee unsought and unpossest,
    A faith more fixed, a rapture more divine
    Shall gild their passage to eternal rest.’[1]

Another sonnet of Russell's seems to have suggested an exquisite passage in Byron's "O snatch'd away in beauty's bloom;" of a third, "supposed to be written at Lemnos," Landor wrote that it alone authorised Russell to join the shades of Sophocles and Euripides. Coleridge, Cary, and Bowles applaud this "Miltonic" sonnet, which finds a place in the anthologies of Dyce, Capel Lofft, Tomlinson, Main, Hall Caine, and William Sharp.[4]

Southey in his Vision of Judgment associated Russell with Chatterton and Bampfylde among the young spirits whom the muses "marked for themselves at birth and with dews from Castalia sprinkled." Russell lacked the originality of genius, but, says Cary, "his ear was tuned to the harmonies of Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, and fragments of their sounds he gives us back as from an echo, but so combined as to make a sweet music of his own."[4]

Recognition

A mural tablet was erected to his memory in the tower of Powerstock church.[1]

The Oxford edition of Russell's sonnets is scarce, but his remains are printed in Thomas Park's Collection of British Poets, 1808, vol. xli., in Sanford's British Poets, 1819, xxxvii., and in the Chiswick edition of the British Poets, 1822, lxxiii.[4]

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica declared his "Sonnet supposedly written at Lemnos" to be "unquestionably the greatest English sonnet of the 18th century."[2]

Publications

  • Sonnets, and miscellaneous poems. Oxford, UK: D. Prince & J. Cooke / J.F. & C. Rivington, London / T. Cadell, London / et al, 1789.
  • Poetical Works. London: J. Sharpe, 1808.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[5]

Poems by Thomas Russell

  1. Sonnet Supposedly written at Lemnos

See also

References

  • PD-icon Seccombe, Thomas (1897) "Russell, Thomas (1762-1788)" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 49 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 472-473 . Wikisource, Web, Oct. 21, 2016.

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 Seccombe, 472.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Thomas Russell (1762-1788), Encyclopædia Britannica 1911, Vol. XXIII, 825. JRank.org, Web, Oct. 21, 2016.
  3. PD-icon Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 865.  Web, Feb. 25, 2021.
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 Seccombe, 473.
  5. Search results = au:Thomas Russell 1788, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Oct. 21, 2016.

External links

Poems
About

PD-icon This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Russell, Thomas (1762-1788)