Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Markland, Jeremiah
MARKLAND, JEREMIAH (1693–1776), classical scholar, son of Ralph Markland, vicar of Childwall, Lancashire, where he was born on 29 Oct. 1693 (or 18 Oct., according to the Christ's Hospital register), was admitted on the foundation of Christ's Hospital, London, in 1704, and proceeded to St. Peter's College, Cambridge, in 1710, with the usual exhibition of 30l. a year for seven years. He graduated B.A. in 1713, and M.A. in 1717, when he was elected fellow and tutor of his college. In 1714 he appears among the poetical contributors to the 'Cambridge Gratulations,' and in 1717 he wrote some verses in vindication of Addison against Pope's satire. He was also author of a modernisation of Chaucer's 'Friar's Tale.' He was prevented by the weakness of his lungs, and probably by conscientious objections to certain doctrines of the church, from becoming a clergyman. He left Cambridge in 1728 to act as private tutor to the son of W. Strode of Punsbourn, Hertfordshire, returning to the university in 1733. At a later date he lived at Twyford, and in 1744 went to Uckfield, Sussex, in 1 order to superintend the education of the son of his former pupil, Mr. Strode. In 1752 he fixed his abode at Milton Court, near Dorking, Surrey, and remained there, living in great privacy, to the end of his days. He twice declined to offer himself as a candidate for the Greek professorship at Cambridge, and often repulsed the advances of those who would have been glad to befriend him or to profit by intercourse with him. Yet he was warmly attached to a few congenial friends, one of the closest of whom was William Bowyer [q. v.] the learned printer. Despite his narrow means he was very charitable to the poor, and his benevolent disposition led him, a few years before his death, to espouse, against her worthless and unfeeling son, the cause of the widow with whom he lodged, and thus entail upon himself the burden of an expensive lawsuit, which reduced him almost to indigence.
He died at Milton Court on 7 July 1776, aged 82, and was buried in Dorking Church, where there is a brass plate to his memory. lie left his books and papers to Dr. Heberden, and several of them are preserved in the British Museum. His portrait, in which he is shown in very gay apparel, is prefixed to vol. iv. of Nichols's 'Literary Anecdotes.'
His works are : 1. 'Epistola Critica ad ... Franciscum Hare in qua Horatii loca aliquot et aliorum veterum emendantur,' Cambridge, 1723, 8vo. 2. An edition of the 'Sylvæ' of Statius, 1728, 4to, printed by Bowyer. 3. 'Conjecturæ' to Taylor's edition of 'Lysiæ Orationes et Fragmenta,' 1738. 4. Annotations contributed to Davies's 'Maximus Tyrius,' 1740. 6. 'Remarks on the Epistles of Cicero to Brutus, and of Brutus to Cicero,' 1745, 8vo. His object was to prove that all the epistles were spurious, and the book involved him in a tedious controversy. 6. 'De Græcorum quinta declinatione imparisyllabicâ et inde formatâ, Latinorum tertia, quaestio grammatica,' 1760, 4to; forty copies only, printed at the expense of W. Hall, of the Temple. 7. 'Euripidis Drama Supplices Mulieres,' 1763, 4to. 8. 'Euripidis Dramata Iphigenia in Aulide et Iphigenia in Tauride,' published in 1771, but printed in 1768 at the expense of Dr. Heberden. The last three books were brought out together by Dr. Gaisford in 1811 (Oxford, 4to and 8vo), and were reviewed at length in the 'Quarterly Review,' June 1812. Markland also contributed to Arnold's 'Commentary on the Book of Wisdom,' 1748; Kuster's 'De Verbo Medio,' 1750; an edition of 'Sophocles,' 1758; Foster's 'On Accent and Quantity,' 1763; and 'Demosthenis Oratio de Corona,' 1769. His notes on the New Testament were rescued from many other manuscripts which he destroyed in his later years, and were printed in Bowyer's 'Critical Conjectures on the New Testament,' 1782. In Musgrave's 'Euripidis Hippolytus,' 1756, there are notes by Markland, but they were printed without his knowledge or consent.
[Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, iv. 272, &c., containing full notices of Markland and many of his letters; Nichols's Illustr. of Lit. Hist.; Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xxi. 318; W. Trollope's Hist. of Christ's Hospital, 1834; Timbs's Promenade round Dorking, 1824, p. 122; Quarterly Rev. vii. 441, viii. 229; Brayley's Hist. of Surrey, v. 99.]