The son of Richard Jago, rector of Beaudesert in Warwickshire, Richard Jago studied with at the grammar school at Solihull where he met his longtime friend William Shenstone (William Somervile was another friend). Jago entered University College Oxford as a servitor in 1732 (B.A. 1736, M.A. 1739). He was vicar of Kimcote (1746) before obtaining the living at Snitterfield (1754) from Lord Clare, afterwards Earl of Nugent. Jago contributed several poems to Dodsley's Collection; his once-famous elegy on blackbirds was published in The Adventurer as by Gilbert West.
TEXT RECORDS:
1758The Scavengers. A Town Eclogue. In the Manner of Swift.
PUBLICATIONS:
The causes of impenitence consider'd. 1755.
The nature and grounds of a Christian's happiness ... in death. A sermon. 1763.
Edge-Hill, or the rural prospect delineated and moralized: a poem. 1765.
Labor and genius: a fable. 1768.
Poems, moral and descriptive. 1784.
William Shenstone, Letters, ed. Marjorie Williamson. 1939.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Anglican
Solihull Grammar School
University College Oxford
Bachelor of Arts
Master of Arts
clergyman
poet
Joseph Cockfield
Rev. William Dodd
Robert Dodsley
Rev. Richard Graves
Charles Jennens
William Shenstone
William Somervile
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL.
Robert Dodsley, Collection of Poems (1748-58); Pearch, Supplement to Dodsley's Collection (1768-83); obituary in Gentleman's Magazine 51 (May 1781) 242; Annual Register for 1782 (1782) 179; Biographia Dramatica (1782; 1812); life by John Scott Hylton in Jago, Poems (1784); Bell's Fugitive Poets (1789-97); Robert Anderson, British Poets (1795); "Richard Jago" Port Folio [Philadelphia] 4 (25 February 1804) 60-62 [from Anderson]; Robert Southey, Specimens of Later English Poets (1807); Samuel Jackson Pratt, Cabinet of Poetry (1808); Alexander Chalmers, English Poets (1810); Alexander Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary (1812-17); John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes (1812-15); Thomas Campbell, Specimens of the British Poets (1819); Henry Francis Cary, "Richard Jago" in London Magazine 6 (November 1822) 419-20; Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature 3rd ed. (1876); Foster, Alumni Oxon (1887-91); Wright, West-Country Poets (1896) 271-72; Fairchild, in Religious Trends in English Poetry (1942); I. D. Lind, Jago: a Study in Eighteenth-Century Localism (1945); Butt, OHEL (1979); Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Database (1995); Michael F. Suarez, ed., Dodsley, Collection of Poems (1997).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for Rev. Richard Jago:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for Rev. Richard Jago:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)
1. | 1751 William Shenstone: Richard Jago, "To William Shenstone, on receiving a Gilt Pocket-Book" 1751; Dodsley, Collection of Poems (1757) 5:70-72. |
2. | 1780 ca. Francis Quarles: Richard Jago, "Hamlet's Soliloquy imitated" 1790 ca.; Knox, Elegant Extracts (1805) 2:757. |