JOHN

See also:

• JOHN NICHOL (1833-1894)

NICHOL (1833-1894)  , Scottish man of letters, son of the astronomer J . P . Nichol (1804-1859), was born on the 8th of September 1833, and educated at Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford, where he had a brilliant career . After taking his first-class in classics, he remained at Oxford as a coach . With Albert Venn Dicey, Thomas Hill Green, Swinburne and others, he formed the Old Mortality Society for discussions on literary matters . In 1862 he was made professor of English literature at Glasgow . He had already made a reputation as an acute critic and a successful lecturer, and his influence at Glasgow was very marked . He visited the United States in 1865, and in 1882 he wrote the article on American literature for the ninth edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica—an article which is a good example of his pungent (sometimes unduly pungent) style . He left Glasgow for London in 1889, and died on the 11th of October 1894 . Among his best works were his drama Hannibal (1873),, The Death of Themistocles, and other Poems (1881), his Byron in the " English Men of Letters " series (188o), his Robert Burns (1882) and Carlyle (1892) . A Memoir by Professor Knight was published in 1896 .