Bampfylde, John Codrington

(1754-1796)

   The second son of Sir Richard Warwick Bampfylde, of Poltimore, Devonshire, educated at Cambridge University. He had every opportunity, but in London he lost his sense of direction. He fell in love with and proposed to Miss Palmer, niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom, in 1778, he dedicated Sixteen Sonnets. Angered at Sir Joshua's refusal Joshua virtually threw him out - he broke one of Sir Joshua's windows and was sent to Newgate prison. Although his mother secured his release, he thereafter lived in squalor and spent some years in a private mental asylum before he died of tuberculosis. Some of his poems: "On Christmas," "On Hearing That Torture Was Suppressed Throughout the Austrian Dominions," "On a Frightful Dream" (reads as an expression of his experience in the asylum), "On a Wet Summer," "To the Evening," "To the Redbreast," "Written at a Farm."

   Sources: A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic-Era Revival, 1750-1850. Paula R. Feldman and Daniel Robinson, ed. Oxford University Press, 1999. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. ChadwyckHealey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/ search/epoetry/author.html). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Oldpoetry (www.oldpoetry.com). Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org).