Shairp, JOHN CAMPBELL, one of the Shairps of Houston, Linlithgowshire, was born 30th July 1819. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and Glasgow University, whence he went as Snell Exhibitioner to Oxford. There he gained the Newdigate prize for an English poem upon Charles XII., and graduated with second-class honours in 1844. From 1846 to 1857 he was a master at Rugby. From Rugby he went to St Andrews as deputy-professor of Latin. In 1861 he succeeded to the Latin chair, and in 1868, upon the death of Forbes, to the principalship of the United College. In 1877 he was appointed professor of Poetry at Oxford, and reappointed in 1882. He died 18th September 1885.
Shairp was an ideal Scotsman, but with a strong appreciation of English life and thought. His patriotism was almost phenomenal. A summer spent out of Scotland he considered wasted. He explored its loneliest spots and revelled in all its historical associations. The haunts of Jacobites and of Covenanters alike fascinated him, and there are few better companions in the Borderland and the Highlands than his sketches and poems.
His character and thought were moulded by home surroundings, by love of nature and of Wordsworth (his favourite author), by life at Oxford, and by Coleridge, Scott, Keble, Newman, and Erskine of Linlathen. He found the routine work of teaching somewhat irksome, but as a professor he was suggestive, stimulating, and sympathetic. Few have enjoyed the friendship and esteem of so many distinguished men. His singularly lovable and transparent nature, his sense of duty and loftiness of aim, and his sterling unobtrusive Christian principles impressed such men as Norman Macleod, Clough, Matthew Arnold, Lord Coleridge, Archbishop Benson, Professor Veitch, Dr John Brown, and Dean Stanley more than all his writings. It is by these, however, that his name will live. They reveal rare poetic instincts and a keen, though kindly, critical faculty. They aim at promoting high thoughts, at quickening love of nature, at increasing interest in history, literature, and philosophy, and at suggesting at least clues to some of the deeper mysteries of life and religion. His own interest in these subjects is healthily infectious. His prose is clear, simple, and vigorous; his poetry fresh and natural, with a true ring in the lowland Scotch.
His principal works are Kilmahoe (1864), Studies in Poetry and Philosophy (1868), Culture and Religion (1870), The Poetic Interpretation of Nature (1877), Burns (1879), Aspects of Poetry (1881), Glen Desseray (1886), and Sketches in History and Poetry (1887). See Prof. Knight's Principal Shairp and his Friends (1888).