Vincent Bourne

Vincent Bourne, familiarly known as Vinny Bourne (1695, Westminster – 2 December 1747), was an English classical scholar and Neo-Latin poet.

Even near contemporaries could find little biographical information about Vincent Bourne. His father's name was Andrew and he was born in 1695. In 1710 he was admitted to Westminster School and was elected to a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 27 May 1714, proceeding to B.A. in 1717 and becoming a fellow of his college in 1720. In 1721, the year he commenced his M.A., he edited a collection of Carmina Comitialia which contains, among the Miscellanea at the end, some verses of his own, including his tripos poem on Androcles.

On leaving Cambridge he became a master at Westminster School, and continued to hold this appointment until his death. He was a man of peaceful temperament, content to pass his life in indolent repose. As a teacher he wanted energy, and he was a very lax disciplinarian. The poet William Cowper, who was one of his pupils and particularly fond of Bourne, commented that he was so inattentive to his pupils, and so indifferent whether they brought him good or bad exercises, that "he seemed determined, as he was the best, so to be the last, Latin poet of the Westminster line." In another letter Cowper wrote, "I lost more than I got by him; for he made me as idle as himself."

In 1734 he published his Poemata, Latine partim reddita, partim scripta, with a dedication to the Duke of Newcastle, and in November of the same year he was appointed housekeeper and deputy sergeant-at-arms to the House of Commons. Later the Duke of Newcastle offered him valuable ecclesiastical preferment, which he declined from conscientious motives. In a letter to his wife, written shortly before his death, he summed up his feelings: "I own and declare that the importance of so great a charge, joined with a mistrust of my own sufficiency, made me fearful of undertaking it: if I have not in that capacity assisted in the salvation of souls, I have not been the means of losing any; if I have not brought reputation to the function by any merit of mine, I have the comfort of this reflection — I have given no scandal to it by my meanness and unworthiness."

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