Pollok

Pollok, ROBERT, a minor Scottish poet, was born in 1799 at Muirhouse, in the parish of Eaglesham, Renfrewshire. He studied at the university of Glasgow and the Divinity Hall of the Secession Church, and was licensed to preach in 1827. In the same year he published, by the advice of Professor Wilson, The Course of Time, in ten books, an attempt at a poetical description of the spiritual life and destiny of man. It was warmly received, but its praises fell on a dying ear, for the poet had meantime been seized with a fatal consumption. He set out, accompanied by his sister, in the hope to reach Italy, but found himself unable to leave England, and died at Shirley Common, near Southampton, 18th September 1827. The Course of Time, which is still read in Scotland, is curiously unequal in merit, as we might expect when we remember that its two sources of inspiration were Milton and the Shorter Catechism. It contains eloquent passages, but portions of it read like a dull sermon in poor blank verse. Pollok published Tales of the Covenanters anonymously before his poem. See the memoir by his brother (1843); Rosaline Masson, Pollok and Aytoun ('Famous Scots,' 1899).