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=                            Robert_Lowth                            =
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                            Introduction
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Robert Lowth  ( ; 27 November 1710 - 3 November 1787) was an English
clergyman and academic who served as the Bishop of Oxford, Bishop of
St Davids, Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most
influential
textbooks of English grammar.


                                Life
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Lowth was born in Hampshire, England, Great Britain, the son of Dr
William Lowth, a clergyman and Biblical commentator. He was educated
at Winchester College and became a scholar of New College, Oxford in
1729. Lowth obtained his BA in 1733 and his Master of Arts degree in
1737. In 1735, while still at Oxford, Lowth took orders in the
Anglican Church and was appointed vicar of Ovington, Hampshire, a
position he retained until 1741, when he was appointed Oxford
Professor of Poetry.

Bishop Lowth made a translation of the Book of Isaiah, first published
in 1778. The Seventh-day Adventist theologian E. J. Waggoner said in
1899 that Lowth's translation of Isaiah was "without doubt, as a
whole, the best English translation of the prophecy of Isaiah".

In 1750 he was appointed Archdeacon of Winchester. In 1752 he resigned
the professorship at Oxford and married Mary Jackson. Shortly
afterwards, in 1753, Lowth was appointed rector of East Woodhay. In
1754 he was awarded a Doctorate in Divinity by Oxford University, for
his treatise on Hebrew poetry entitled 'Praelectiones Academicae de
Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum' ('On the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews'). This
derives from a series of lectures and was originally published in
Latin. An English translation was published by George Gregory in 1787
as '"Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews"'. This and
subsequent editions include the life of Bishop Lowth as a preface.
There was a further edition issued in 1815. This was republished in
North America in 1829 with some additional notes. However, apart from
those notes, the 1829 edition is less useful to a modern reader. This
is because the editor of that edition chose to revert to citing many
of the scriptural passages that Lowth uses as examples, and some of
the annotations by Michaelis) and others, in Latin.

Lowth was appointed a fellow of the Royal Societies of London and
Göttingen in 1765. He was consecrated bishop of St Davids in Wales in
1766; however, before the end of the year he was translated to the
English see of Oxford. He remained Bishop of Oxford until 1777 when he
was appointed Bishop of London as well as dean of the chapel royal and
privy councillor. In 1783 he was offered the chance to become
Archbishop of Canterbury, but declined due to failing health.

Lowth was good friends with the Scottish Enlightenment figure David
Hume, as noted by the prominent Scottish bookseller Andrew Millar.
Millar commented that "Hume and he are very great, tho' one orthodox
and ye other Hedretox".

Lowth wrote a Latin epitaph, 'Cara, Vale' ("Dear one, farewell!") on
the death of his daughter Maria. Much admired in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries, it was set to music by the English composer John
Wall Callcott.

Funerary monument, All Saints, Fulham, London

Lowth died in 1787, and was buried in the churchyard of All Saints
Church, Fulham. Lowth's library was sold by auction by R. H. Evans on
15 January 1823 and five following days, along with the books of his
son (also Robert, Rector of Hinton Ampnor, d. 1822). There is a copy
of the catalogue at Cambridge University Library (shelfmark
Munby.c.126(1)).


                     Old Testament scholarship
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Lowth seems to have been the first modern Bible scholar to notice or
draw attention to the poetic structure of the Psalms and much of the
prophetic literature of the Old Testament. In Lecture 19 he sets out
the classic statement of parallelism, which remains the most
fundamental category for understanding Hebrew poetry. He identifies
three forms of parallelism, the synonymous, antithetic and synthetic
(i.e., balance only in the manner of expression without either
synonymy or antithesis). This idea has been influential in Old
Testament Studies to the present day.


                      Work on English grammar
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Lowth is also remembered for his publication in 1762 of 'A Short
Introduction to English Grammar'.  Prompted by the absence of simple
and pedagogical grammar textbooks in his day, Lowth set out to remedy
the situation.  Lowth's grammar is the source of many of the
prescriptive shibboleths that are studied in schools, and established
him as the first of a long line of usage commentators who judge the
English language in addition to describing it.  An example of both is
one of his footnotes: "'Whose' is by some authors made the possessive
case of 'which', and applied to things as well as persons; I think,
improperly."

His most famous contribution to the study of grammar may have been his
tentative suggestion that sentences ending with a preposition--such as
"what did you ask for?"--are inappropriate in formal writing. (This is
known as preposition stranding.) In what may have been intentional
self-reference, Lowth used that very construction in discussing it.
"This is an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to; it
prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar
style in writing; but the placing of the Preposition before the
Relative is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees
much better with the solemn and elevated Style."2 Others had
previously expressed this opinion; the earliest known is John Dryden
in 1672.

Lowth's method included criticising "false syntax"; his examples of
false syntax were culled from Shakespeare, the King James Bible, John
Donne, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and other famous
writers.  His understanding of grammar, like that of all linguists of
his period, was influenced by the study of Latin, though he was aware
that this was problematic and condemned "forcing the English under the
rules of a foreign Language"1.  Thus Lowth condemns Addison's sentence
"Who should I meet the other night, but my old friend?" on the grounds
that the thing acted upon should be in the "Objective Case"
(corresponding, as he says earlier, to an oblique case in Latin),
rather than taking this example and others as evidence from noted
writers that "who" can refer to direct objects.

Lowth's dogmatic assertions appealed to those who wished for certainty
and authority in their language.  Lowth's grammar was not written for
children; however, within a decade after it appeared, versions of it
adapted for the use of schools had appeared, and Lowth's stylistic
opinions acquired the force of law in the schoolroom. The textbook
remained in standard usage throughout educational institutions until
the early 20th century.


                          Literary critic
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Lowth has been regarded as the first imagery critic of Shakespeare's
plays and highlighted the importance of the imagery in the
interpretation of motives and actions of characters and dramatic
movement of the plot and narrative structure.3


                              See also
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*Linguistic prescription
*Lindley Murray


                               Notes
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*1'A Short Introduction to English Grammar', p. 107, condemning
Richard Bentley's "corrections" of some of Milton's constructions.
*2'A Short Introduction to English Grammar'., pp. 127-128.
*3"Notes & Queries (OUP)" in 1983 Vol. 30, pp. 55-58 by Sailendra
Kumar Sen, 'Robert Lowth :the first imagery critic of Shakespeare'.


                          Further reading
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*Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, "The anonymity of Lowth's grammar".
In: 'Ontheven aan de tijd. Linguïstisch-historische studies voor Jan
Noordegraaf bij zijn zestigste verjaardag'. Ed. by Lo van Driel &
Theo Janssen. Amsterdam: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU, Amsterdam &
Münster: Nodus Publikationen 2008, 125-134.
* Tieken-Boon van Ostade, I. M. (2010), 'The Bishop's Grammar: Robert
Lowth and the Rise of Prescriptivism'. Oxford: OUP


                           External links
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* [http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/authors/pers00031.shtml
Robert Lowth] at the [http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)]
*
[https://books.google.com/books?id=V0AAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1&dq=editions:ISBN0766188558#PPR1,M1
1815 Edition of '"Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews"']
*
* [http://www.millar-project.ed.ac.uk/manuscripts/html_output/1.html
Circulating Enlightenment] University of Edinburgh.]
*


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