William Hall (1748–1825) was an English poet and antiquary.

Life

William Hall was born on 1 June 1748 at Willow Booth, a small island in the fen district of

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

. His parents were very poor, and he himself at a very early age married a girl named Suke or Sukey Holmes, and became a gozzard, or keeper and breeder of geese. But the floods swept away his flock, which (he complains) were appropriated by his neighbours, and after much wandering he settled in Marshland in

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

, where he gained for some time a living as an auctioneer and " cow-leech", while his wife practised midwifery and

phlebotomy Phlebotomy is the process of making a puncture in a vein, usually in the arm, with a cannula for the purpose of drawing blood. The procedure itself is known as a venipuncture, which is also used for intravenous therapy. A person who performs a ph ...

. Here he asserts (in verse) that his arm broke on account of rheumatic throbbing, whereupon he removed to

Lynn Lynn may refer to: People and fictional characters * Lynn (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Lynn (surname) * The Lynns, a 1990s American country music duo consisting of twin sisters Peggy and Patsy Lynn * Lynn ( ...

, and commenced business as a dealer in old books. "The Antiquarian Library", as he called his shop, did fairly well, though he was obliged to sell, as opportunity offered, many other things besides books. He died in 1825.

Works

Hall published a considerable number of strange rough rhymes, dealing with the fens, fen life, and the difficulties of his calling. "Low-Fen-Bill", as he sometimes styled himself, had a perception of his own faults, which he describes when mentioning

John Taylor John Taylor, Johnny Taylor or similar may refer to: Academics *John Taylor (Oxford), Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, 1486–1487 *John Taylor (classical scholar) (1704–1766), English classical scholar *John Taylor (English publisher) (178 ...

the "Water Poet", But, according to the ''

Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

'', his doggerel is not without a certain

Hudibrastic Hudibrastic is a type of English verse named for Samuel Butler's ''Hudibras'', published in parts from 1663 to 1678.Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2004, For the poem, Butler ...

force, and it frequently contains graphic touches descriptive of modes of fen life now passed away. He published at Lynn: # ''A Sketch of Local History, being a Chain of Incidents relating to the state of the Fens from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time'', 1812. # ''Reflections upon Times, and Times, and Times! or a more than Sixty Years' Tour of the Mind'', 1816; a second part was published in 1818.Watt 1890, p. 94.

References

Sources

* Watt, Francis; Mills, Rebecca (2004)
"Hall, William (1748–1825), poet and antiquary"
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 10 September 2022. * '' Sketches of Obscure Poets: With Specimens of Their Writings''. London: Cochrane & McCrone, 1833. pp. 156–177. Attribution * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, William 1748 births 1825 deaths 18th-century English poets 19th-century English poets 18th-century antiquarians 19th-century antiquarians English antiquarians