biography
pronunciation:
[lawder]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (c.1680–1771)
|
| biography:
| Scottish scholar and forger. He was a classical scholar, and studied at Edinburgh, but after a series of failures, he sought to prove by forgeries (1747–50) that Milton in writing Paradise Lost had plagiarized various 17th-c poets writing in Latin. He was exposed by Bishop John Douglas (1750), and regarded thereafter with contempt. He retreated in poverty to Barbados, where he became a store-keeper. |
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