Author: Merivale, John Herman
Biography:
MERIVALE, John Herman (1779-1844: ODNB)
Born 5 Aug. 1779 at Exeter, the only son of John Merivale (1752-1831) and his wife Ann Katenkamp (1754–1829), he matriculated at St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1796. There he befriended notable linguists and classical scholars, Thomas Denman, Francis Hodgson (q.v.), Robert Bland (q.v.), and Henry Drury. They cemented their friendships by marrying into each other’s families; in 1805 he married Drury’s sister, Louisa Heath Drury (1787–1873), the daughter of Harrow School’s headmaster. He was the father of Herman Merivale (1806-1874), professor of political economy at Oxford, and of Charles Merivale (1808-93), historian of ancient Rome; and grandfather to Herman Charles Merivale (1839-1906), minor poet and dramatist. A Unitarian, he declined to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles and therefore took no degree. His friend and relative John Hookham Frere (q.v.) convinced him by 1819 to become a communicant in the Church of England. At Lincoln’s Inn from 1798, he passed the bar in 1804. He reported Chancery cases from 1815 and from 1832 he was a well-remunerated Commissioner of Bankrupts (£2,000 per annum). With Bland, he published a seminal work, Translations, Chiefly from the Greek Anthology, with Tales and Miscellaneous Poems (1806), to which Denman and Drury contributed. Lord Byron (q.v) praised the volume in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). He may have authored a four-decker, The Ring and the Well; Or, The Grecian Princess. A Romance (Longman, 1808). He wrote plays, but though he collaborated with Byron, who was canvasing for new dramatists for Drury Lane, they were rejected and never performed. He notably contributed to the revival of British interest in Italian literature with his translation and commentary on Luigi Pulci’s Il Morgante Maggiore, published in Monthly Magazine (21, May 1806; 23, Feb. 1807) and with reviews of Italian literature in the QR (7, Jun. 1812;18 Jul. 1813). His use of ottava rima in Orlando in Roncesvalles (1814) and in his translation of Fortiguerra’s Ricciardetto (1820) influenced Frere and, in turn, Byron. A self-described Liberal Whig, he wrote for the Whig MR, including a review of Wordsworth’s (q.v.) Excursion (76, Feb. 1815). He died at 18 Bedford Square, on 25 Feb. 1844. (NLS, John Murray Archive; ODNB 3 Mar. 2023. A. W. Merivale, Family Memorials [1884]; E. H. A. Koch, Leaves from the Diary of a Literary Amateur: John Herman Merivale, 1819–1844 [1911]; EN2) JC
Other Names:
- J. H. Merivale