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Anthony Alsop was born about 1670 and died in
Winchester Winchester is a cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, at the western end of the South Downs National Park, on the River Itchen. It is south-west of Lond ...
on 10 June 1726. He was a clergyman and Neo-Latin poet who sided with the
Tory Party The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed ...
at the end of the Stuart era. His poetry was admired at the time but was eventually forgotten until a recent interest in such work brought him to notice again.


Life

Alsop was born at
Darley Dale Darley Dale, also known simply as Darley, is a town and civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales district of Derbyshire, England, with a population of 5,413. It lies north of Matlock, on the River Derwent and the A6 road. The town forms par ...
in Derbyshire and educated at
Westminster School (God Gives the Increase) , established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560 , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , head_label = Head ...
. Going on to
Christ Church, Oxford Christ Church ( la, Ædes Christi, the temple or house, '' ædēs'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is uniqu ...
, in 1690, he took the degrees of Bachelor of Arts in 1695 and
Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
in 1697. While there he gained a reputation for his elegant Latin verse, some of it produced for public university occasions, some for private circulation, and some Jacobite in spirit. His speciality was the witty verse epistle, most often using the
Sapphic stanza The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form of four lines. Originally composed in quantitative verse and unrhymed, since the Middle Ages imitations of the form typically feature rhyme and accentual prosody. It is "the longest ...
. In 1698 Alsop edited a selection of
Aesop’s Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to m ...
in Latin verse, ''Fabularum Aesopicarum Delectus''. It contains 237 fables in Latin, with the original Greek of the first 158, the Hebrew of the next 10, the Arabic of the next 8, whilst the other 60 are in Latin only. Two of his satirical epistles on Oxford figures were printed in broadsheet form in 1706, the year in which he gained the degree of
Bachelor of Divinity In Western universities, a Bachelor of Divinity or Baccalaureate in Divinity (BD or BDiv; la, Baccalaureus Divinitatis) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded for a course taken in the study of divinity or related disciplines, such as theology ...
and through patronage was made a
prebendary A prebendary is a member of the Roman Catholic or Anglican clergy, a form of canon with a role in the administration of a cathedral or collegiate church. When attending services, prebendaries sit in particular seats, usually at the back of ...
at
Winchester Cathedral The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity,Historic England. "Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity (1095509)". ''National Heritage List for England''. Retrieved 8 September 2014. Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Swithun, commonly known as Winches ...
, with the rectory of Brightwell in Berkshire. After Alsop married in 1716, he was sued for breach of promise by his mistress and, having lost the case, had to flee abroad for a while. He died in an accident at his home in 1726 with the reputation of an agreeable and witty companion, a learned preacher and a fine lyric poet, although his loose manner of living and sometimes bawdy verse had kept him confined to a small circle of admirers.


Poetry

Alsop left many Latin odes in manuscript which were published in 1752 by his stepson Francis Bernard as ''Antonii Alsopi, Aedis Christi Olim Alumni, Odarum Libri Duo''. In the introduction it is claimed that the author was "esteemed inferior only to his master Horace," a judgment that
Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
seems to second in his line in the
Dunciad ''The Dunciad'' is a landmark, mock-heroic, narrative poem by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times from 1728 to 1743. The poem celebrates a goddess Dulness and the progress of her chosen agents as they brin ...
, " etAlsop never but like Horace joke" (IV.224). In addition Alsop published some slight poems in English in magazines, of which four addresses to "Chlorinda" appeared in
Robert Dodsley Robert Dodsley (13 February 1703 – 23 September 1764) was an English bookseller, publisher, poet, playwright, and miscellaneous writer. Life Dodsley was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school. He ...
’s ''Collection of Poems in Six Volumes'' (1782). The humorous nature of his Latin writing can be gained from some of the personal epistles he wrote. That written to the aristocratic archdeacon Henry Bridges in 1721 contains the satirical advice to trim his
High church The term ''high church'' refers to beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology that emphasize formality and resistance to modernisation. Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term originated ...
religious views to those of the new Hanoverian establishment: ::Be wise at last, and learn those skills ::by which to be accounted great and good. ::Let the pattern of worship be everywhere free, :::unconfined by law; ::let each have his own faith and mind, ::under no leader or guidance, for who can ::bear the imperious yoke of the clergy, :::or priestly control?" Another to the lawyer Joseph Taylor begins with a Horatian invitation to supper but then playfully adapts the Latin to the contemporary situation of enjoying smuggled goods: "I have a little bottle of wine (''vasculum Bacchi''), brought by a friendly ship, without the knowledge of the customs officer (''clam quaestore'')." Another poem warns him of the tedious and expensive process of bribing his way into Parliament, when "you must furrow your way through a great ocean of liquor, many clouds of smoke must pour out and a perpetual flow of ale." The two books of Alsop's odes was not reprinted and he was forgotten until a biographical and critical study of him, with a modern edition of the Latin and English poems, was published in 1998.D. K. Money, ''The English Horace: Anthony Alsop and the Tradition of British Latin Verse'', Oxford University 1998.


References

Biographical details are chiefly taken from two sources.
"Alsop, Anthony"
in the ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (1885–1900).
"Anthony Alsop"
in ''The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Eighteenth-Century Writers and Writing'', (Oxford 2011)


External links


Anthony Alsop
at th
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alsop, Anthony 1726 deaths Year of birth unknown 18th-century English clergy Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford English male poets People from Brightwell-cum-Sotwell 17th-century Latin-language writers 18th-century Latin-language writers New Latin-language poets