Bourne, Vincent

Bourne, Vincent, Latin poet, was born in 1695, from Westminster passed in 1714 to Trinity College, Cambridge, and after obtaining a fellowship in 1720, became a master in his old school. Such he remained till his death on 2d December 1747. Cowper, one of his pupils, expressed his 'love for the memory of Vinny Bourne,' and actually thought him 'a better Latin poet than Tibullus, Propertius, Ausonius, or any of the writers in his way except Ovid, and not at all inferior to him.' And Lamb, more happily, remarks: 'What a sweet, unpretending, pretty-mannered, matterful creature! Sucking from every flower, making a flower of everything. His diction all Latin, and his thoughts all English!' The best edition of his Poemata (1734) is that with a memoir by Mitford (1840).