Author: Richardson, William
Biography:
RICHARDSON, William (1743-1814: ODNB)
Poet, classicist, and literary scholar, he was the son of Jean (Burrell, of Northumberland) and James Richardson, a Church of Scotland minister, and was born on 1 Oct. 1743 at Aberfoyle, Perthshire, where he was baptised on 6 Jan. 1744 (as Richardsone). He was educated at the parish school before attending the University of Glasgow where he was recognised as a scholar and poet. He earned his MA and, although he began studying theology intending to be a minister like his father, he became tutor for two sons of Lord Cathcart, living with the family and going with the boys to Eton. When Cathcart was appointed ambassador-extraordinary to Catherine the Great in 1763, he travelled with him to Russia as his secretary; his years there were the source for his influential Anecdotes of the Russian Empire (1784). On his return to Scotland in 1772, he took up the chair in humanity at the University of Glasgow and was a popular lecturer first in classics and then in an increasingly wide range of subjects covering all aspects of civil society. To supplement his meagre income, he took in students as boarders. He was a member of the Literary Society of Glasgow and edited classical texts for the Foulis press (his letters about the press are a major source of information on its operations). He published analyses of Shakespeare’s characters, wrote an essay in support of the authenticity of the Ossian poems of James Macpherson (q.v.), and contributed to periodicals. In later life he suffered from painful attacks of gout. He never married and died on 3 Nov. 1814 at Glasgow. (ODNB 1 Sept. 2020; ancestry.co.uk 20 Jan. 2025) SR
Other Names:
- Mr. Richardson