Richard Jago
Encyclopedia
Richard Jago was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 poet. He was the third son of Richard Jago, Rector of Beaudesert, Warwickshire
Beaudesert, Warwickshire
Beaudesert is a village and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district of Warwickshire, England, half a mile east across the River Alne to the north and west of Henley-in-Arden, to which it is closely associated and shares a joint parish council with...

.

Education

Jago was educated at Solihull School
Solihull School
Solihull School is a British Independent school situated near the centre of Solihull, West Midlands, England.2010 saw Solihull School celebrate its 450th anniversary since its foundation in 1560....

 in the West Midlands
West Midlands (county)
The West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a 2009 estimated population of 2,638,700. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The...

. One of the school's five houses bears his name. He afterwards referred to his schooling there with these lines,

"Hail, Solihull! respectful I salute,
Thy walls; more awful once! when from the sweets
Of festive freedom, and domestic ease,
With throbbing heart, to stern discipline
Of pedagogue morose I had return'd
But tho' no more his brow severe, nor dread
Of birchen sceptre awes my riper age.
A sterner tyrant rises to my view,
With deadlier weapon arm'd."

The pedagogue morose was one John Crompton (1704–35) and the sterner tyrant the literary critic and his pen.
From there, in 1732, he went up to University College, Oxford
University College, Oxford
.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...

, taking his MA degree in 1738.

Priesthood

In 1737, Jago was ordained to the curacy of Snitterfield, Warwickshire. He became vicar of Harbury
Harbury
Harbury is a village and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district of Warwickshire, England. In the 2001 census it had a population of 2,485....

 in 1746 and shortly after Chesterton
Chesterton
-Places:United Kingdom*Chesterton, Cambridge**Chesterton railway station*Chesterton, Huntingdonshire*Chesterton Rural District*Chesterton *Chesterton, Oxfordshire*Chesterton, Staffordshire*Chesterton, Warwickshire...

 both in Warwickshire followed by Snitterfield in 1754 where he took up residence until his death in 1781. Lord Willoughby de Broke
Baron Willoughby de Broke
Baron Willoughby de Broke is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created by writ in 1491 for Sir Robert Willoughby, of Brooke/Broke manor, Heywood, near Westbury, Wiltshire, de jure 9th Baron Latimer...

 presented him with the rectory at Kimcote
Kimcote and Walton
Kimcote and Walton is a parish situated in Leicestershire, approximately 4 miles north east of Lutterworth. The villages of Kimcote and Walton combine to form one parish, with all Saints Parish Church being situated in Kimcote. The parish was the base for many stockingers during the 19th Century....

 in Leicestershire in 1771 and he resigned Harbury and Chesterton keeping Snitterfiled and Kimcote.
Snitterfield remained his favorite residence and it was there that he would die at the age of 66. He was twice married.

Poetry

Jago's best-known poem, The Blackbirds, was first printed in Hawkesworths Adventurer (No. 37, March 13, 1753), and was generally attributed to Gilbert West
Gilbert West
Gilbert West was a minor English poet, translator and Christian apologist in the early and middle eighteenth century. Samuel Johnson included him in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets.-Biography:...

, but Jago published it in his own name, with other poems, in Robert Dodsley
Robert Dodsley
Robert Dodsley was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school....

's Collection of Poems (vol. iv., 1755). In 1767 appeared a topographical poem, Edge Hill, or the Rural Prospect delineated and moralized; two separate sermons were published in 1755; and in 1768 Labor and Genius, a Fable. Shortly before his death Jago revised his poems, and they were published in 1784 by his friend, John Scott Hylton, as Poems Moral and Descriptive.

See a notice prefixed to the edition of 1784; A. Chalmers, English Poets (vol. xvii., 1810); Frederick Leigh Colvile, Warwickshire Worthies (1870); some biographical notes are to be found in the letters of William Shenstone
William Shenstone
William Shenstone was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.-Life:...

to Jago printed in vol. iii. of Shenstones Works (1769).

Sources


External links

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