The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Blackmore, Sir Richard

BLACKMORE, Sir Richard, court physician and poet: b. about 1650; d. 1729. He was educated at Westminster School and Saint Edmund Hall, Oxford; first took up teaching, but after graduating in medicine at Padua settled in London as a physician, holding appointments in the court of King William and Queen Anne. He had a gift for writing epics, all lengthy and written on the most exalted themes. He published ‘Prince Arthur’ (1695) and six other lengthy poems before 1723. His ‘Creation’ received high praise from such competent contemporary critics as Addison, Johnson and John Dennis, but the cooler judgment of posterity has pronounced all alike to be uniformly dull, heavy and tedious.