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Lives of the English Poets : Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope by Samuel Johnson
page 44 of 212 (20%)
BLACKMORE



Sir Richard Blackmore is one of those men whose writings have
attracted much notice, but of whose life and manners very little has
been communicated, and whose lot it has been to be much oftener
mentioned by enemies than by friends. He was the son of Robert
Blackmore, of Corsham in Wiltshire, styled by Wood Gentleman, and
supposed to have been an attorney, having been for some time
educated in a country school, he was at thirteen sent to
Westminster, and in 1668 was entered at Edmund Hall in Oxford, where
he took the degree of MA. June 8, 1676, and resided thirteen years,
a much longer time than is usual to spend at the university, and
which he seems to have passed with very little attention to the
business of the place; for, in his poems, the ancient names of
nations or places, which he often introduces, are pronounced by
chance. He afterwards travelled. At Padua he was made doctor of
physic, and, after having wandered about a year and a half on the
Continent, returned home.

In some part of his life, it is not known when, his indigence
compelled him to teach a school, a humiliation with which, though it
certainly lasted but a little while, his enemies did not forget to
reproach him, when he became conspicuous enough to excite
malevolence; and let it be remembered for his honour, that to have
been once a schoolmaster is the only reproach which all the
perspicacity of malice, animated by wit, has ever fixed upon his
private life.

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