Farmer, RICHARD, D.D.

Farmer, RICHARD, D.D., a well-known 18th-century scholar, was born at Leicester, August 28, 1735, and in 1753 was entered a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where four years later he graduated a senior optime. Appointed classical tutor of his college, he took orders, and served the curacy of Swavesey, a village 9 miles from Cambridge. On Dr Johnson's visit to Cambridge the two scholars had a 'joyous meeting,' and ever after kept up the most friendly relations. Dr Farmer became a member of the famous Literary Club, and helped Johnson with Cambridge notes for his Lives of the Poets. He soon abandoned his projected history of Leicester, and published in 1767 his only work, the once famous Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, which showed that the great dramatist derived his knowledge of the ancients from translations, having often preserved the phraseology and even the errors of the translators. In 1775 Farmer was elected to the mastership of Emmanuel College, and in 1778 became chief-librarian to the university. In 1780 he obtained a prebendal stall at Lichfield, in 1782 at Canterbury, which he exchanged in 1788 for a residentiary prebend in St Paul's. The remaining years of his life he divided betwixt residence in London and at Cambridge, beloved alike by the members of his college and by London men of letters for his geniality and his brilliant talk over a pipe of tobacco and a bottle of port. He was careless of his appearance, an inveterate collector of old books, and habitually indolent—a failing which alone prevented his making a figure in literature. He died September 8, 1797.