Merivale, John Herman

(1779-1844)

   Born in Exeter, Devon, he was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, but left without graduating. He was called to the bar in 1804 and practiced in chancery and bankruptcy and sat on the Chancery Commission of 1824. In 1831 he was appointed to a commissionership in bankruptcy, which he held until his death. When past middle age he learned German, and shortly before his death he published, in 1840, translations of The Minor Poems of Schiller of the Second and Third Periods. Merivale was a friend of Byron, who warmly praised both his translations from the Greek and his Orlando in Roncesvalles (1814). He published Collections from the Greek Antholog y and from the Pastoral, Elegiac, and Dramatic Poets of Greece (1813), and Poems, Original and Translated (1844). He was buried in the churchyard at Hampstead, northwest London. Some of his poems: "Almighty God! Before Thy Throne," "For the General Fast," "From the Lay of a Troubadour," "Invasion of Julius Cæsar," "Ode to a Son Entering College," "On Beauty," "The English Sailor and the King of Achen's Daughter," "The Wraith," "To My Mother, on Her Birth-Day."

   Sources: An Antholog y of World Poetry. Mark Van Doren, ed. Reynal and Hitchcock, Inc., 1936. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). 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).