William Wilkie

William Wilkie (1721-1772), the "Scottish Homer," was the author of an epic in the style of the Iliad, entitled the "Epigoniad, a poem in nine books". He was the Professor of Mathematics at St Andrew's University in Scotland, where his pupils included the poet Robert Fergusson.

Wilkie's friends included David Hume, Adam Smith and John Home. According to Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), in his biography of John Home, Wilkie’s friends are said to have spoken of him as "superior in genius to any man of his time, but rough and unpolished in his manners, and still less accommodating to the decorum of society in the ordinary habits of his life."