Pollok, Robert

POLLOK, ROBERT: Scotch poet; b. at North Moorhouse, Eaglesham Parish (8 m. s. of Glasgow), Renfrewshire, Oct. 19, 1798; d. at Shirley Common, near Southampton, Sept. 18, 1827. He graduated at Glasgow University (M.A., 1822); and studied theology at Union Secession Hall and Glasgow University (1822–27). He is famous for The Course of Time, a religious poem, projected on a stupendous scale, in ten books, on the destiny of man (London, 1827; seventy-eighth thousand, 1868; many editions in the United States). He was the author, also, of Helen of the Glen (Glasgow, 1830), The Persecuted Family (3d ed., Edinburgh, 1829), and Ralph Gemmell (1829); the three republished separately and together under the title, Tales of the Covenanters (Edinburgh, 1833; later ed., 1895).

Bibliography: D. Pollok, The Life of Robert Pollok, . . . with Selections from his Correspondence, Edinburgh, 1843; a Memoir prefixed to later issues of The Course of Time; and DNB, xlvi. 69–70.