Item NN/5/19 - Miscellaneous poems

BOURNE, VINCENT, son of Andrew Bourne, St. Martins in the Fields, Westminster, wig maker, and Ann --- (IGI); bapt. St. Martin’s in the Fields 22 Jul 1694 (IGI); adm.; Min. Can. (aged 14) 1709; QS 1710; elected to Trinity Coll. Cambridge 1714, adm. pens. 27 May 1714, scholar 13 May 1715, matr. 1715; BA 1717/8; MA 1721; Minor Fellow, Trinity Coll., 6 Sep 1720, Major Fellow 5 Jul 1721; an Usher at the School 1720 - Sep 1747; kept a boarding house in Cowley Street 1731-40 and in College Street 1741 to death 2 Dec 1747, where he was succeeded by Mrs.Porten. First of thirty-one recorded boarders adm. Jan.1735/6, last recorded boarder adm. Oct 1745. Five further boarders, adm. between Jun 1749 and Jan 1751/2, are described in Dr.Nicoll’s admission book as boarding with “Bourne”, and it may be that these were boarders with Bourne’s widow Lucia, presumably at a different address from that in College Street; Housekeeper and Deputy Serjeant-at-Arms, House of Commons, Nov 1734; an indolent teacher and a lax disciplinarian; William Cowper (qv), who loved “the memory of Vinny Bourne” and translated a number of his old master’s Latin poems into English verse, relates seeing the Duke of Richmond “set fire to his greasy locks and box his ears to put it out again” (Southey, Life and Works of William Cowper, iv, 98); a Latin poet of great charm, “sucking from every flower, making a flower of everything, his diction all Latin and his thoughts all English” (Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, 1905, vi, 457); published his Poemata, Latine partim reddita partim scripta, 1734; m. 25 Mar 1727 Lucia, widow of George Jewell (qv); d. 2 Dec 1747. DNB.