Dyer, John

(1699-1758)

   Born in Aberglasney, Carmarthenshire, Wales, he was educated at Westminster School. He started in his solicitor father's office, and on the death of his father he gave up the business to study art and became an itinerant painter. Having caught malaria in the Campagna, and not being successful as painter, in 1741 he took holy orders and became vicar of Catthorpe in Leicestershire. In 1751 he was appointed by Lord Hardwicke as chancellor to Belchford in Lincolnshire. He had two more livings: Coningsby (where he died, probably of tuberculosis) and Kirkby-on-Bane, both in Lincolnshire. He was made bachelor of laws of Cambridge University by royal mandate in 1752. Some of his publications: Grongar Hill, 1726. The Ruins of Rome, 1740. The Fleece, 1757. Some of his poems: "A Night Prospect," "An Epistle to a Famous Painter," "An Epistle to a Friend in Town," "On the Destruction of Lisbon, 1756," "Paraphrase of Part of Chapter 7 of Ecclesiastes," "The Country Walk," "To Aurelia," "To His Son," "Written at St. Peter's."

   Sources: A Treasury of Great Poems: English and American. Louis Untermeyer, ed. Simon and Schuster, 1955. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib. utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, 1779-1781 (http://www2.hn.psu.edu/Faculty/KKemmerer/poets/preface.htm). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside and John Dyer. Robert Aris Willmott, ed. George Routledge and Co., 1855.