THOMAS

See also:

• RUSSELL (FAMILY)
• RUSSELL, ISRAEL COOK (1852- )
• RUSSELL, JOHN (1745-1806)
• RUSSELL, JOHN (d. 1494)
• RUSSELL, JOHN RUSSELL, 1ST EARL (1792-1878)
• RUSSELL, JOHN SCOTT (1808–1882)
• RUSSELL, LORD WILLIAM (1639–1683)
• RUSSELL, SIR WILLIAM HOWARD
• THOMAS RUSSELL (1762-1788)
• RUSSELL, WILLIAM CLARK (1844– )

RUSSELL (1762-1788)  , English poet, was born at Beaminster, early in 1762 . He was the son of John Russell, an attorney at Bridport, in Dorsetshire, and his mother was Miss Virtue Brickle, of Shaftesbury . He was educated at the grammar school of Bridport, and in 1777 proceeded to Winchester, where he stayed three years, under Dr Joseph Warton, and Thomas Warton, the professor of poetry . In 178o Russell became a member of New College, Oxford . He graduated B.A. in 1784 and was ordained priest in 1786 . During his residence at the university he devoted himself to French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Provencal and even German literature . His health, however, broke down, and he retired to Bristol hot wells to drink the waters; but in vain, for he died there on the 31st of July 1788 . He was buried in Power-stock churchyard, Dorset . In 1789 was published a thin volume, containing his Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems, now a very rare book . It contained twenty-three sonnets, of regular form, and a few paraphrases and original lyrics . The sonnets are the best, and it is by right of these that Russell takes his place as one of the most interesting precursors of the romantic school . " War, Love, the Wizard, and the Fay he sung "—in other words, he rejected entirely the narrow circle of subjects laid down for 18th-century poets .

In this he was certainly influenced both by

Chatterton and by Collins . But he was still more clearly the disciple of Petrarch, of Boccaccio and of Canloens, each of whom he had carefully and enthusiastically studied . His sonnet, " Suppos'd to be written at Lemnos," is his masterpiece, and is unquestionably the greatest English sonnet of the 18th century . The anonymous editor of Russell's solitary volume is said to have been William Howley (1766-1848), long afterwards arch-bishop of Canterbury, who was a youthful bachelor of New College when Russell, who had been his tutor, died . His memoir of the poet is very perfunctory, and the fullest account of Russell is that published in 1897 by T . Seccombe .