John Langhorne (poet)

John Langhorne was an English clergyman poet, translator, editor and author. He was born in March 1735 in Winton, a village in the former Westmorland, now the Eden District of Cumbria:

He died on 1 April 1779, in Blagdon, Somerset.

John Langhorne’s father was also a clergyman and died when his son was four. His mother made sure he had a school education, first in Winton village and then in Appleby, but there were not sufficient funds to send him to university. From the age of 18, he supported himself by teaching at various places in Yorkshire and finally was appointed tutor to the nine sons of Robert Cracroft at Hackthorn Hall in Lincolnshire. Having taken deacon’s orders, he left in 1761 and, after a curate’s appointment in Dagenham, became curate and lecturer at St. John's, Clerkenwell in 1764, and was appointed assistant preacher at Lincoln's Inn at the end of the following year.

Langhorne now began to put his literary talents to use, particularly as a reviewer for the Monthly Review, where his sarcastic style earned him many enemies. He was more generous in the case of William Collins, whose poetry at that period was largely disregarded. Langhorne brought out a first edition of his collected poems in 1765, subsequent re-editions of which eventually helped establish Collins’ reputation. Then in 1766 Langhorne brought out his own Poetical Works and that same year became rector of Blagdon. Now at last he was in a position to marry Ann Cracroft, with whom he had been corresponding since his employment at Hackthorn Hall, but she died giving birth to a son on 4 May 1768.

Following his wife’s death, Langhorne left Blagdon to stay for a while with his elder brother William at Folkestone. There they made their joint translation of Plutarch's Lives (published in 1770) with such success that it was frequently reprinted. In 1772 Langhorne was married for the second time to the daughter of a Westmorland magistrate, but she too was to die on the birth of her first child in 1776. But in other ways his fortunes were rising. He was made a justice of the peace and at the suggestion of a fellow magistrate began work on his most substantial poem, The Country Justice, published in three parts between 1774-7. Then in 1777 he was installed as a prebendary of Wells Cathedral but died at the age of 45 two years later.

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