Drummond, William Hamilton

(1778-1865)

   Born in Larne, County Antrim, the son of Naval surgeon, he was educated at Belfast Academy. He studied in his spare time for the ministry, was ordained in 1800, and was given a church in Belfast. He ran a boarding school in Belfast, where one of his pupils was Thomas Romney Robinson, the astronomer. He was a founding member of the Belfast Literary Society (1801), and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, where for many years he was the librarian, with an interest in Celtic literature. He was granted a degree of doctor of divinity from Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1810. He was buried at Harold's Cross Cemetery near Dublin. Some of his poetry: Juvenile Poems, 1795. Hibernia, 1797. The Man of Age, 1798. The First Book of T. Lucretius Carus: Of the Nature of Things, 1808 (translation). The Giants' Causeway, 1811. Who Are the Happy? 1818 (a poem on the Christian beatitudes, with other poems on sacred subjects). Clontarf, 1822. Bruce's Invasion of Ireland, 1826. Battle of Trafalgar, 1835. The Pleasures of Benevolence, 1835. Ancient Irish Minstrelsy, 1852.

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry, Second Edition Bibliography (http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk/html/ep2/bibliography/d.htm).