Lowth, ROBERT,

Lowth, ROBERT, a learned English bishop, was born November 27, 1710, at Winchester; his father was rector of Buriton. He was educated at Winchester, whence, with a reputation both as a scholar and poet, he passed to New College, Oxford, in 1730. In 1741 he was appointed professor of Poetry, and hence arose his famous De Sacra Poesi Hebraorum Praelectiones Academice, published in 1753. In 1750 Bishop Hoadley conferred on him the archdeaconry of Winchester, and in 1753 the rectory of East Woodhay in Hampshire. Lowth became D.D. of Oxford in 1754, prebendary of Durham and rector of Sedgefield in 1755, a Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Göttingen in 1765, Bishop of St Davids in 1766, of Oxford a few months after, of London in 1777, and died November 3, 1787. Besides his lectures, his two principal works are Life of William of Wykeham (1758) and Isaiah, a new Translation (1778). Lowth's Praelectiones was one of the first books that treated the Bible poetry as literature, and though most of his criticism, save the doctrine of poetic parallelism, is long since obsolete, he gave a new direction to the biblical criticism of Herder and later critics.