John Home

John Home (1722-1808), Scottish dramatic poet, was born on the 22nd of September 1722 at Leith, where his father, Alexander Home, who was distantly related to the earls of Home, was town-clerk. He was educated at the grammar school of his native town, and at Edinburgh University, where he graduated with an M.A. in 1742; he studied divinity, and was licensed by the presbytery of Edinburgh in 1745. In the same year he joined as a volunteer against the Pretender, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Falkirk (1746). With many others he was carried to the castle of Doune in Perthshire, but soon escaped. In July 1746, Home was presented to the parish of Athelstaneford, Haddingtonshire, vacant by the death of Robert Blair, the author of The Grave. He became a close friend of David Hume who belonged to the same family as himself. His first play, Agis: a tragedy, based on Plutarch's narrative, was finished in 1747. He took it to London and submitted it to Garrick for representation at Drury Lane, but it was rejected. The tragedy of Douglas was suggested to him by hearing a lady sing the ballad of Gil Morrice, which offered a simple and striking plot. After five years' he completed his play, which he took to London for Garrick's opinion. It also was rejected, but on his return to Edinburgh his friends resolved that it should be brought out in that city. It was produced on the 14th of December 1756 with overwhelming success, in spite of the opposition of the presbytery, who summoned Alexander Carlyle to answer for having attended it. Home resigned his charge in 1757, after a visit to London, where Douglas was brought out at Covent Garden on the 14th of March. David Hume summed up his admiration for Douglas by saying that his friend possessed "the true theatric genius of Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one and licentiousness of the other." Gray, writing to Horace Walpole (August, 1757), said that the author "seemed to have retrieved the true language of the stage, which has been lost for these hundred years," but Samuel Johnson held aloof from the general enthusiasm, and averred that there were not ten good lines in the whole play (Boswell, Life, ed. Croker, 1848, p. 390). In 1758 Home became private secretary to Lord Bute, then secretary of state, and was appointed tutor to the prince of Wales. Garrick produced Agis at Drury Lane on the 21st of February 1758, but it kept the stage for just eleven days. In 1760 his tragedy, The Siege of Aquileia, was put on the stage, Garrick taking the part of Aemilius. In 1769 his tragedy of The Fatal Discovery had a run of nine nights; Alonzo also (1773) had fair success; but his last tragedy, Alfred (1778), was so coolly received that he gave up writing for the stage. In 1778 he joined a regiment formed by the duke of Buccleuch.

He sustained severe injuries in a fall from horseback which permanently affected his brain, and was persuaded by his friends to retire. From 1767 he resided either at Edinburgh or at a villa which he built at Kilduff near his former parish. It was at this time that he wrote his History of the Rebellion of 1 745, which appeared in 1802. Home died at Merchiston Bank, near Edinburgh, on the 5th of September 1808, in his eighty-sixth year.

The Works of John Home were collected and published by Henry Mackenzie in 1822 with "An Account of the Life and Writings of Mr John Home," which also appeared separately in the same year, but several of his smaller poems seem to have escaped the editor's observation. These are - "The Fate of Caesar," "Verses upon Inveraray," "Epistle to the Earl of Eglintoun," "Prologue on the Birthday of the Prince of Wales, 1759" and several "Epigrams," which are printed in vol. ii. of Original Poems by Scottish Gentlemen (1762)., See also Sir W. Scott, "The Life and Works of John Home" in the Quarterly Review (June, 1827). Douglas is included in numerous collections of British drama. Voltaire published his Le Cafe, ou l'Ecossaise (1760), Londres (really Geneva), as a translation from the work of Mr Hume, described as Pasteur de l'eglise d'Edimbourg, but Home seems to have taken no notice of the mystification.