Home, JOHN, a Scotch clergyman and dramatist, was born at Leith in 1722. He graduated at the Edinburgh University in 1742, and three years later entered the church. He was present as a volunteer on the king's side when the royalists were routed by the young Pretender at Falkirk, and was carried a prisoner to the castle of Donne, whence he effected his escape. In 1747 he was appointed minister of Athelstaneford, near Haddington, where he produced in 1747 the tragedy of Agis, and, after the lapse of five years, Douglas, a tragedy founded (before the publication of Percy's Reliques) on the ballad of Gil Morrice. Each of these plays was successively rejected by Garrick; but Douglas, brought out at Edinburgh, met with instant and brilliant success, and evoked equal enthusiasm when placed on the London boards. Its production, however, gave such offence to the Presbytery that the author thought fit to resign his ministry, and, withdrawing into England, he became private secretary to the Earl of Bute, who procured him a pension of £300 a year. The success of Douglas induced Garrick not only to accept Home's next play, The Siege of Aquilcia, but to bring out the earlier work, Agis. Home's other works are The Fetal Discovery, Alonzo, Alfred, occasional poems, and, in prose, A History of the Rebellion of 1745. He died in 1808.
Home is the last of our tragic poets whose works for any time held the stage. The drama, purified from the licentiousness of Wycherley and Congreve, had become frigid and lifeless in the hands of Addison, Rowe, and Johnson, and the enthusiasm with which Douglas was greeted was due to the generous warmth of domestic feeling, the chivalrous ardour and natural pathos which Home infused into his work. His writings are remarkable for the interesting character of their plots, for lucidity of language, and for occasional flashes of genuine poetry; but he did not succeed in entirely discarding the pompous declamation of his forerunners. In his day he enjoyed the praise of all and the friendship of the most distinguished; Collins dedicated to him his ode on the Highland superstitions, and Burns, with more zeal than judgment, said that he
Methodised wild Shakspeare into plan.
The taste of his time is not that of ours, but the dramatists who displaced him turned to comedy, and he has had no successor of equal fame. See the Life by Henry Mackenzie, prefixed to his works (3 vols. 1822).