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Richard Jago

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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RICHARD JAGO (1715-1781), English poet, third son of Richard Jago, rector of Beaudesert, Warwickshire, was born in 1715. He went up to University College, Oxford, in 1732, and took his degree in 1736. He was ordained to the curacy of Snitterfield, Warwickshire, in 1737, and became rector in 1754; and, although he subsequently received other preferments, Snitterfield remained his favourite residence. He died there on the 8th of May 1781. He was twice married. Jago's bestknown poem, The Blackbirds, was first printed in Hawkesworth's Adventurer (No. 37, March 1 3, 1 753), and was generally attributed to Gilbert West, but Jago published it in his own name, with other poems, in R. Dodsley's Collection of Poems (vol. iv., 1 755). In 1767 appeared a topographical poem, Edge Hill, or the Rural Prospect delineated and moralized; two separate sermons were published in 1755; and in 1768 Labour and Genius, a Fable. Shortly before his death Jago revised his poems, and they were published in 1784 by his friend, John Scott Hylton, as Poems Moral and Descriptive. See a notice prefixed to the edition of 1784; A. Chalmers, English Poets (vol. xvii., 1810); F. L. Colvile, Warwickshire Worthies (1870); some biographical notes are to be found in the letters of Shenstone to Jago printed in vol. iii. of Shenstone's Works (1769).