Doyle

Doyle, SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS, poet, was born at Nunappleton, near Tadcaster, August 22, 1810. He was educated at Eton, and Christ Church, Oxford, and took a first-class in classics in 1831. He was called to the bar, but his devotion to poetry and his innate love of horses and horse-racing were hardly consistent with success as a barrister. He succeeded his father as second baronet in 1839, held lucrative offices in the Customs, and filled for ten years (1867-77) the chair of Poetry at Oxford, together with an All Souls' fellowship. In 1886 he published his Reminiscences and Opinions, 1813-1885, which revealed its author's genial humour, broad sympathies, and liberal culture. Doyle died June 8, 1888. His two series of Oxford lectures he published in 1869 and in 1877; his volumes of verse were Miscellaneous Verses (1841), Two Destinies (1844), and the Return of the Guards, and other Poems (1866). By his 'Birkenhead,' 'The Private of the Buffs,' 'The Red Thread of Honour,' 'The Saving of the Colours,' and 'Gordon,' he made himself in an especial sense the laureate of English heroism.