Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)
Scottish poet and man of letters; author of
The Pleasures of Hope
(1799),
Gertrude of Wyoming (1808) and lyric odes. He edited the
New Monthly Magazine (1821-30).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
John Philpot Curran (1750-1817)
Irish statesman and orator; as a Whig MP (from 1783) he defended the United Irishmen in
Parliament (1798).
Charles Dickinson (1792-1842)
Bishop of Meath in Ireland; he was a classmate of the poet Charles Wolfe at Trinity
College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1815.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728 c.-1774)
Irish miscellaneous writer; his works include
The Vicar of
Wakefield (1766),
The Deserted Village (1770), and
She Stoops to Conquer (1773).
Henry Grattan (1746-1820)
Irish statesman and patriot; as MP for Dublin he supported Catholic emancipation and
opposed the Union.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
English poet, author of “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” “Elegy written in a
Country Churchyard,” and “The Bard”; he was professor of history at Cambridge
(1768).
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of
The
Examiner and
The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English man of letters, among many other works he edited
A Dictionary
of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote
Lives of the Poets (1779-81).
John Keats (1795-1821)
English poet, author of
Endymion, "The Eve of St. Agnes," and
other poems, who died of tuberculosis in Rome.
Marcus Claudius Marcellus (268 BC c.-208 BC)
Roman general who fought against the Gauls and served with distinction in the second
Punic War, in which he was killed in an ambush.
Thomas Medwin (1788-1869)
Lieutenant of dragoons who was with Byron and Shelley at Pisa; the author of
Conversations of Lord Byron (1824) and
The Life of
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols (1847).
Sir John Moore (1761-1809)
A hero of the Peninsular Campaign, killed at the Battle of Corunna; he was the son of Dr.
John Moore, the author of
Zeluco.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
English scientist and president of the Royal Society; author of
Philosophae naturalis principia mathematica (1687).
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and
The Dunciad (1728).
Thomas Reid (1710-1796)
Scottish moral sense philosopher who taught at King's College, Aberdeen, and Glasgow
University; he wrote
Inquiry into the Human Mind (1764).
Sappho (612 BC c.-570 BC c.)
Greek lyric poet, born on the Isle of Lesbos.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of
Queen
Mab (1813),
The Revolt of Islam (1817),
The Cenci and
Prometheus Unbound (1820), and
Adonais (1821).
Virgil (70 BC-19 BC)
Roman epic poet; author of
Eclogues,
Georgics, and the
Aenead.
Charles Wolfe (1791-1823)
Irish clergyman and poet whose anonymous ode on the death of Sir John Moore was reprinted
throughout the nineteenth century.
