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.
When he first engaged in the study of physic, he inquired, as he says, of Dr. Sydenham,
what authors he should read and was directed by Sydenham to "Don Quixote": "which"
said he, "is a very good book; I read it still." The perverseness of mankind makes it often
mischievous to men of eminence to give way to merriment; the idle and the illiterate will
long shelter themselves under this foolish apophthegm. Whether he rested satisfied with
this direction, or sought for better, he commenced physician, and obtained high eminence
and extensive practice. He became Fellow of the College of Physicians, April 12, 1687,
being one of the thirty which, by the new charter of King James, were added to the
former fellows. His residence was in Cheapside, and his friends were chiefly in the City.
In the early part of Blackmore's time a citizen was a term of reproach; and his place of
abode was another topic, to which his adversaries had recourse in the penury of scandal.
Blackmore, therefore, was made a poet not by necessity but inclination, and wrote not for
a livelihood but for fame; or, if he may tell his own motives, for a nobler purpose, to
engage poetry in the cause of virtue.
I believe it is peculiar to him that his first public work was an heroic poem. He was not
known as a maker of verses till he published (in 1695) "Prince Arthur," in ten books,
written, as he relates, "by such catches and starts, and in such occasional uncertain hours
as his profession afforded, and for the greatest part in coffee-houses, or in passing up and
down the streets." For the latter part of this apology he was accused of writing "to the
rumbling of his chariot wheels." He had read, he says, "but little poetry throughout his
whole life; and for fifteen years before had not written a hundred verses except one copy
