authors, both Greek and Roman. Thenceforward he withdrew from active life and devoted himself to literature. He seems to have maintained to a certain degree an attitude of independence, if not of opposition, towards Augustus. He died in his villa at Tusculum, regretted and esteemed by all.
Pollio was a distinguished orator; his speeches showed ingenuity and care, but were marred by an affected archaism (Quintilian, Inst. x. 1, 113; Seneca, Ep. 100). He wrote tragedies also, which Virgil (Ecl. viii. 10) declared to be worthy of Sophocles, and a prose history of the civil wars of his time from the first triumvirate (60) down to the death of Cicero (43) or later. This history, in the composition of which Pollio received assistance from the grammarian Ateius Praetextatus, was used as an authority by Plutarch and Appian (Horace, Odes, ii. 1; Tacitus, Annals, iv. 34). As a literary critic Pollio was very severe. He censured Sallust (Suetonius, Gram. 10) and Cicero (Quintilian, Inst. xii. 1, 22) and professed to detect in Livy's style certain provincial isms of his native Padua (Quintilian, i. 5, 56, viii. 1, 3); he attacked the Commentaries of Julius Caesar, accusing their author of carelessness and credulity, if not of deliberate falsification (Suet. Caesar, 56). Pollio was the first Roman author who recited his writings to an audience of his friends, a practice which afterwards became common at Rome. The theory that Pollio was the author of the Bellum africanum, one of the supplements to Caesar's Commentarii, has met with little support. All his writings are lost except a few fragments of his speeches (H. Meyer, Orat. rom. frag., 1842), and three letters addressed to Cicero (Ad. Fam. x. 31-33).
See Plutarch, Caesar, Pompey; Vell. Pat. ii. 36, 63, 73, 76; Florus iv. I2, 11; Dio Cassius xlv. 10, xlviii. 15; Appian, Bell. civ.; V. Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit (1891), i.; P. Groebe, in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie (1896), ii. pt. 2; Teuffel-Schwaben, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans), § 221; M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, pt. 2, p. 20 (2nd ed., 1899); Cicero, Letters, ed. Tyrrell and Purser, vi. introd. p. 80.
PÖLLNITZ, KARL LUDWIG, Freiherr von (1692–1775), German adventurer and writer, was born at Issum on the 25th of February 1692. His father, Wilhelm Ludwig von Pöllnitz (d. 1693), was in the military service of the elector of Brandenburg, and much of his son's youth was passed at the electoral court in Berlin. He was a man of restless and adventurous disposition, unscrupulous even for the age in which he lived,
visited many of the European courts, and served as a soldier in
Austria, Italy and Spain. Returning to Berlin in 1735 he
obtained a position in the household of King Frederick William I.
and afterwards in that of Frederick the Great, with whom he
appears to have been a great favourite; and he died in Berlin on the 23rd of June 1775.
Pöllnitz's Mémoires (Liege, 1734), which were translated into German (Frankfort, 1735), give interesting glimpses of his life and the people whom he met, but they are very untrustworthy. He also wrote Nouveaux mémoires (Amsterdam, 1737); Etat abrégé de la cour de Saxe sous le regne d'Auguste III. (Frankfort, 1734; Ger. trans., Breslau, 1736); and Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des quatres derniers souverains de la maison de Brandenbourg, published by F. L. Brunn (Berlin, 1791; Ger. trans., Berlin, 1791). Perhaps his most popular works are La Saxe galante (Amsterdam, 1734), an account of the private life of Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony and king of Poland; and Histoire secrete de la duchesse d’Hanovre, épouse de Georges I. (London, 1732). There is an English translation of the Mémoires (London, 1738–1739). See P. von Pöllnitz, Stammtafeln der Familie von Pöllnitz (Berlin, 1894); and J. G. Droysen, Geschichte der preussischen Politik, pt. iv. (Leipzig, 1870).
POLLOCK, the name of an English family which has contributed
many important members to the legal and other professions.
David Pollock, who was the son of a Scotsman and built
up a prosperous business in London as a saddler, had three distinguished
sons: Sir David Pollock (1780–1847), chief justice of
Bombay; Sir jonathan Frederick Pollock, Bart. (1783–1870),
chief baron of the exchequer; and Sir George Pollock, Bart.
(1786–1872), field-marshal. Of these the more famous were
the two last. Field Marshal Sir George Pollock, who rendered
valuable military service in India, and especially in Afghanistan
in 1841–1843, ended his days as constable of the Tower of London,
and was buried in Westminster Abbey; his baronetcy, created in
1872, descended to his son Frederick (d. 1874), who assumed
the name of Montagu-Pollock, and so to his heirs. Chief Baron
Sir J. Frederick Pollock, who had been senior Wrangler at Cambridge,
and became F.R.S. in 1816, was raised to the bench in
1844, and created a baronet in 1866. He was twice married
and had eight sons and ten daughters, his numerous descendants
being prominent in many fields. The chief baron's eldest son,
Sir William Frederick Pollock, 2nd Bart. (1815–1888), became a
master of the Supreme Court (1846) and queen's remembrance
(1874); his eldest son, Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Bart. (b. 1845),
being the well-known jurist and legal historian, fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge, and Corpus professor of jurisprudence at
Oxford (1883–1903), and the second son, Walter Herries Pollock
(b. 1850), being a well-known author and editor of the Saturday
Review from 1883 to 1894. The chief baron's third son, George
Frederick Pollock (b. 1821), became a master of the Supreme
Court in 1851, and succeeded his brother as queen's (king's)
remembrance in 1886; among his sons were Dr W. Rivers
Pollock (1859–1909), Ernest Murry Pollock, K.C. (b. 1861),
and the Rt. Rev. Bertram Pollock (b. 1863), bishop of Norwich,
and previously head master of Wellington College from 1893 till
1910. The chief baron’s fourth son, Sir Charles Edward Pollock
(1823–1897), had a successful career at the bar and in 1873
became a judge, being the last survivor of the old barons of the
exchequer; he was thrice married and had issue by each wife.
POLLOK, ROBERT (1798–1827), Scottish poet, son of a small farmer, was born at North Moorhouse, Renfrewshire, on the 19th of October 1798. He was trained as a cabinet-maker and afterwards worked on his father's farm, but, having prepared himself for the university, he took his degree at Glasgow, and studied for the ministry of the United Secession Church. He published Tales of the Covenanters while he was a divinity student, and planned and completed a strongly Calvinistic poem on the spiritual life and destiny of man. This was the Course of Time (1827), which passed through many editions and became a favourite in serious households in Scotland. It was written in blank verse, in ten books, in the poetic diction of the 18th century, but with abundance of enthusiasm, impassioned elevation of feeling and copious force of words and images. The poem at once became popular, but within six months of its publication, on the 18th of September 1827, its author died of consumption.
POLLOKSHAWS, a police burgh and burgh of barony of Renfrewshire, Scotland, on the White Cart, now virtually a suburb of Glasgow, with which it is connected by electric tramway and the Glasgow & South-Western and Caledonian railways. Pop. (1901), 11,183. It is named from the shows or woods (and is locally styled “the Shaws”) and the lands of Pollok, which have been held by the Maxwells since the 13th century. The family is now called Stirling-Maxwell, the estate and baronetcy having devolved in 1865 upon Sir William Stirling of Keir, who then assumed the surname of Maxwell. Pollok House adjoins the town on the west. The staple industries are cotton-spinning and weaving, silk-weaving, dyeing, bleaching, calico-printing and the manufacture of chenille and tapestry, besides paper mills, potteries and large engineering works. Pollokshaws was created a burgh of barony in 1813, and is governed by a. council and provost. About 2 m. south-west is the thriving town of Thornliebank (pop. 2452), which owes its existence to the cotton-works established towards the end of the 18th century.
POLL-TAX, a tax levied on the individual, and not on property or on articles of merchandise, so-called from the old English poll, a head. Raised thus per capita, it is sometimes called a capitation tax. The most famous poll-tax in English history is the one levied in 1380, which led to the revolt of the peasants under Wat Tyler in 1381, but the first instance of the kind was in 1377, when a tax of a groat a head was voted by both clergy and laity. In 1379 the tax was again levied, but on a graduated scale. John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, paid ten marks, and the scale descended from him to the peasants, who paid one groat each, every person over sixteen years of age being liable. In 1380 the tax was also graduated, but less steeply. For some years after the rising of 1381 money was only raised
in this way from aliens, but in 1513 a general poll tax was imposed. This, however, only produced about £50,000, instead of £160,000 as was expected, but a poll-tax levied in 1641 resulted in a revenue of about £400,600. During the reign of
