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Richard Jago (1715 - May 8, 1781), was an English poet, third son of Richard Jago, rector of Beaudesert, Warwickshire, was born in 1715. He was educated at Solihull School, where his name is immortalised as one of the school's five houses, and he went up to University College, Oxford, in 1732, taking 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 favorite residence and he died there. He was twice married.
Jago's bestknown poem, The Blackbirds, was first printed in Hawkesworths Adventurer (No. 37, March 13, 1753), and was generally attributed to Gilbert West, but Jago published it in his own name, with other poems, in Robert Dodsley's Collection of Poems (vol. iv., 1755). 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 Labor 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 William Shenstone to Jago printed in vol. iii. of Shenstones Works (1769). -
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
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