Robert Nicoll (7 January 1814 – 7 December 1837) was a Scottish poet and lyricist whose life, although short, left a lasting impact.
His mother, Grace Fenwick, was able to compensate for his father's inability to give his son more than a slight education by teaching Robert and his siblings to read and write.
Hearing of his death, Robert wrote to his mother, lamenting, "In fine, he was a young man who has left few equals.
When I came to Perth, I bought Cobbett's English Grammar, and by constant study soon made myself master of it, and then commenced writing as before; and you know the result.
Due to this circumstance, and his precocity as a writer of verse and prose, Nicoll was often compared to fellow Scottish poet Robert Burns.
[8][9] Though the marriage was happy, the couple were under immense financial stress to pay off Nicoll's debts, support themselves, and care for Alice's mother, Mrs. Suter, who came to live with them.
[10] Espousing pronounced Radical opinions, Nicoll overtaxed his slender physical resources in electioneering work for Sir William Molesworth in the summer of 1837.
[11] He died on December 7, 1837, at the house of his friend William Tait, at Trinity, near Edinburgh, after a long battle with an illness caused by stress, exhaustion and lack of proper appetite and rest.
An appreciation of Nicoll's character and his poetry was included in Charles Kingsley's article on Burns and his School in the North British Review for November 1851.