Anthony Alsop
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Anthony Alsop was born about 1670 and died in
Winchester Winchester (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs N ...
on 10 June 1726. He was a clergyman and
Neo-Latin Neo-LatinSidwell, Keith ''Classical Latin-Medieval Latin-Neo Latin'' in ; others, throughout. (also known as New Latin and Modern Latin) is the style of written Latin used in original literary, scholarly, and scientific works, first in Italy d ...
poet who sided with the Tory Party 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 in Derbyshire and educated at
Westminster School Westminster School is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school in Westminster, London, England, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. It descends from a charity school founded by Westminster Benedictines before the Norman Conquest, as do ...
. Going on to
Christ Church, Oxford Christ Church (, the temple or house, ''wikt:aedes, ædes'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by Henry V ...
, in 1690, he took the degrees of
Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...
in 1695 and
Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) 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. Those admitted to the degree have ...
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. In 1698 Alsop edited a selection of Aesop’s Fables 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 and through patronage was made a
prebendary A prebendary is a member of the Catholic Church, Catholic or Anglicanism , Anglican clergy, a form of canon (priest) , canon with a role in the administration of a cathedral or collegiate church. When attending services, prebendaries sit in part ...
at
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, 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 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early ...
seems to second in his line in the Dunciad, " 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’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 A ''high church'' is a Christian Church whose beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, Christian liturgy, liturgy, and Christian theology, theology emphasize "ritual, priestly authority, ndsacraments," and a standard liturgy. Although ...
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 writers in Latin 18th-century writers in Latin British writers in Latin Neo-Latin poets