John Langhorne (poet)

From the age of 18, he supported himself by teaching at various places in Yorkshire and finally was appointed tutor to the nine sons of Robert Cracroft at Hackthorn Hall in Lincolnshire.

Langhorne brought out a first edition of his collected poems in 1765, subsequent re-editions of which eventually helped establish Collins' reputation.

Now at last he was in a position to marry Ann Cracroft, with whom he had been corresponding since his employment at Hackthorn Hall, but she died giving birth to a son - John Theodosius Langhorne - on 4 May 1768.

[2] John Langhorne wrote with great diligence and produced a large number of works in both prose and verse which were much read at the time but very quickly went out of fashion again.

His poetry was summed up by a later writer as characterised by "a delicious sweetness, an harmonious flow of diction, tender and lovely sentiment, and a pathos, mild, delicate, graceful and elegant.".

Another critic, however, sees Langhorne as anticipating something of Wordsworth's nature mysticism too, as it is foreshadowed in his "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey".