Author: Scott, John
Biography:
SCOTT, John (1730-83: ODNB)
He was the younger of two sons born to Quakers Samuel Scott (d 1768) and his wife Martha Wilkins (d 1766) on 9 Jan. 1730 in Bermondsey, Southwark. His father was a linen draper. Scott attended a local school where he was taught by a Scottish schoolmaster but when he was about ten the family moved to Amwell, Hertfordshire, to escape an epidemic of smallpox. There he attended a private day school. His interest in poetry was encouraged by his friends Charles Frogley and John Turner, and in the 1750s Scott began submitting verse to the Gentleman’s Magazine. His first book, Four Elegies, was published anonymously in 1760. The following year smallpox forced another move, this time a short distance from Amwell to St. Margaret’s where he met John Hoole (q.v.), who later introduced him to Samuel Johnson (q.v.). Scott’s treatment by variolation against smallpox emboldened him to travel to London where he met other poets and writers, including James Beattie (q.v.) who became a friend. In 1767 he married Sarah Frogley (Charles Frogley’s daughter) but she died in childbirth the following year, followed soon after by their baby. He married Mary De Horne on 1 Nov. 1770 at Ratcliff, London; they had one daughter and lived at Amwell but also kept a house at Ratcliff. Scott was public-spirited and closely involved in community matters at Amwell; he also had a passion for gardening. In 1773 he published a pamphlet Observations on the Present State of the Parochial and Vagrant Poor; this was followed in 1778 by A Digest of the Highway and General Turnpike Laws. His Poetical Works of 1782 was harshly criticised by the Critical Review (which attacked, inter alia, the very idea of a Quaker writing verse); Scott replied to the criticisms with his Letter to the Critical Reviewers. Late in 1783 he became feverish and died of infection on 12 Dec.; he was interred in the Quaker burial ground at Ratcliff. Samuel Johnson intended to write a biography of him but Hoole took over the task after Johnson’s death in 1784. (ODNB 26 Oct. 2021; John Hoole, “Account of the Life and Writings of John Scott,” Critical Essays [1782])