BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD

born 1654, Corsham, Wiltshire, Eng. died 1729, Boxted, Essex English physician and writer, physician in ordinary to King William III (who knighted him in 1697 for professional services) and Queen Anne. Though he regarded poetry as merely the entertainment of his idle hours, he wrote four epics in 10 or more books, Prince Arthur (1695), King Arthur (1697), Eliza (1705), and Alfred (1723). To each poem he wrote a preface censuring the lewdness and impiety of modern wits, a subject also treated in his verse Satyr Against Wit (1700). These and other writings in prose provoked retorts from Alexander Pope and his friends and earned Blackmore his reputation as father of the Bathos, and indeed the Homer of it.