This poet is generally known as 'Scott of Amwell.' This arises from the
fact that his father, a draper in Southwark, where John was born in
1730, retired ten years afterwards to Amwell. He had never been
inoculated with the small-pox, and such was his dread of the disease,
and that of his family, that for twenty years, although within twenty
miles of London, he never visited it. His parents, who belonged to the
amiable sect of Quakers, sent him to a day-school at Ware, but that too
he left upon the first alarm of infection. At seventeen, although his
education was much neglected, he began to relish reading, and was
materially assisted in his studies by a neighbour of the name of
Frogley, a master bricklayer, who, though somewhat illiterate, admired
poetry. Scott sent his first essays to the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and
in his thirtieth year published four elegies, which met with a kind
reception, although Dr Johnson said only of them, 'They are very well,
but such as twenty people might write.' He produced afterwards 'The
Garden,' 'Amwell,' and other poems, besides some rather narrow 'Critical
Essays on the English Poets.' When thirty-six years of age, he submitted
to inoculation, and henceforward visited London frequently, and became
acquainted with Dr Johnson, Sir William Jones, Mrs Montague, and other
eminent characters. He was a very active promoter of local improvements,
and diligent in cultivating his grounds and garden. He was twice
married, his first wife being a daughter of his friend Frogley. He died
in 1783, not of that disease which he so 'greatly feared,' but of a
putrid fever, at Radcliff. One note of his, entitled 'Ode on Hearing the
Drum,' still reverberates on the ear of poetic readers. Wordsworth has
imitated it in his 'Andrew Jones.' Sir Walter makes Rachel Geddes say,
in 'Redgauntlet,' alluding to books of verse, 'Some of our people do
indeed hold that every writer who is not with us is against us, but
brother Joshua is mitigated in his opinions, and correspondeth with our
friend John Scott of Amwell, who hath himself constructed verses well
approved of even in the world.'