William Wilkie
William Wilkie [1]
a Scotch clergyman and poet, was born at Echlin, Linlithgowshire, in 1721. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he had entered at the age of thirteen, but was compelled to leave that institution before completing the course on account of the death of his father; turned his attention to farming, where he continued his studies, and took orders in the Church of Scotland; published The Epigoniad, a Poem in Nine Books, in 1757, which gained for him the title of "the Scottish Homer;" printed a new edition of this work, accompanied by A Dream in the Manner of Spenser, in 1759; was chosen professor of natural philosophy at St. Andrew's the same year; published a volume of Moral Fables in verse in 1768; and died Oct. 10, 1772.
