Author: Howard, Nathaniel
Biography:
HOWARD, Nathaniel (1781-1834: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born into a poor family and was probably baptised in Plymouth although there appears to be no record. As a charity boy he attended Plymouth Grammar School, where Benjamin Haydon (q.v.) was a contemporary and Joseph Bidlake (q.v.) the headmaster. There is no record of his going to any university and he appears to have been largely self-taught. He acquired proficiency in Latin and Greek and later added Hebrew and Persian. After his early ventures in poetry, Bickleigh Vale, With Other Poems (1804), and a well-received translation of Dante (1807)--long overshadowed by Henry Francis Cary’s (q.v) version--he produced a number of school books on Greek and Latin vocabulary and exercises. These may have been produced as a result of his teaching experiences at Harwood House, Tamerton, where he was headmaster of a small classical school (1812). He may also have taught at Eton. He married Rebecca Burd (1777-1866) on 20 June 1810 at Okehampton, Devon. A son, John Bidlake Howard, was born in 1811 but there is no further trace of him and he is not mentioned in Nathaniel’s will so may have been an infant death. Another son, Nathaniel Arscott Howard (1818-47), was educated at Eton and Exeter College Oxford and was later assistant minister at St. Andrew’s Chapel, Plymouth. Around 1829 Howard moved to Oxford, probably to pursue his oriental studies and supervise his son’s education. He died at Margate and was buried at Thanet on 23 Aug. 1834, aged 53. His widow returned to Plymouth and in later years lived with her sister Frances Burd. She died in 1866, leaving an estate of around £2000. Apart from the volume of poetry listed here, he was probably best known for his paper delivered at the Plymouth Institution, On Persian Poetry (1830). (ancestry.co.uk 26 May 2022; findmypast.co.uk 26 May 2022; Life of Benjamin Haydon, ed. Tom Taylor [London 1853] 1: 8; Exeter Flying Post 16 Feb. 1826, 11 Sept. 1834; Western Times 13 Sept. 1834, 2 Jan. 1841; Morning Post 10 Mar. 1847; Spenserians; Johnson, item 465; West Country Poets, 264-5; Gilbert F. Cunningham, The Divine Comedy in English: a Critical Bibliography 1782-1900 [1965], 22-5) AA