Author: Russell, Thomas
Biography:
RUSSELL, Thomas (1762-88: DNB)
He was baptised on 2 Mar. 1762 at St. Mary’s, Beaminster, Dorset, the third of at least six children of John Russell (1725-1808), a wealthy attorney, and Virtue Brickle (1731-87), who had married at Dorchester in 1756. He was educated at Bridport grammar school and Winchester College where he won prizes for Latin verse and prose (1778-9) and was taught by Joseph Warton (q.v.). In 1780 he went up to New College Oxford (BA 1784) and was ordained deacon (1785) and priest (1786). He wrote two learned papers published in GM (Dec. 1782, Feb. 1783) which were clearly influenced by and defended Thomas Warton’s (q.v.) History of English Poetry (1774-81) against intemperate attacks by Josph Ritson. Robert Southey later wrote that Winchester “had become a nursery of poets” and “The first pupils of [Thomas] Warton’s school--the true English school--were Bampfyde and Russell” (QR, 1824, 289). His promising career as poet and scholar was cut short by consumption. He died on 31 July 1788 at Hotwells, Bristol, and was buried at St. Mary’s Powerstock, Dorset, where there is mural tablet. His mother, Virtue, and his niece, Mary Anne, had also been buried there in June of the previous year and were possibly also consumptive. His accomplished Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems (1789) were edited posthumously by his younger contemporary at Winchester and Oxford, William Howley, and dedicated to Thomas Warton. The sonnets were admired by various Romantic poets--Wordsworth, Byron, Landor--as his work became more widely available through Thomas Park’s Works of the British Poets (v. 41, 1808) and the Chiswick edition of The British Poets (v. 73, 1822) with Richard Allen Davenport (q.v.) supplying a life to the latter. He was also included in Alexander Dyce’s Specimens of English Sonnets (1833) and Peter Cunningham’s editing of the second edition of Thomas Campbell’s Specimens of the British Poets (1841). (DNB; ODNB 3 May 2023; C. W. Holgate, The Wykehamist, 31 July 1888, N&Q, 6 June 1896, 450; ancestry.co.uk 3 May 2023; findmypast.co.uk 3 May 2023; GM Aug. 1788, 752-3; Salisbury and Winchester Journal 15 Aug. 1808; winchestercollegearchives.org) AA