MICKLE, WILLA Jumus, 1734-88, b. Scotland; son of a Presbyterian clergyman, who had been assistant to Dr. Watts, and had been one of the translators of Bayle's Dic tionary. After his father's death Mickle entered the business of his uncle, an Edinburgh brewer, who finally admitted him as a partner. He had, however, little business apti tude, and in 1755 he went up to London to'get a commission in the navy. His efforts in this direction were unsuccessful, but he made the acquaintance in London of the first lord Lyttelton, who advised him to continue those poetiml studies to which he had already given much of his time. He secured employment for a time as a corrector for the Clar endon press in Oxford. This was abou'i 1765, and between that y-ear and 1770 he pub lished a number of minor pieces, one of which, an elegiac ode called Pollio, attracted considerable attention. Concubine, a poem in the Speuserian manner, appeared in 1767, and again, with many alterations and additions, as Sir Martyr, some ten years later. In his Letter to Dr. Harwood, and his Voltaire in the Shades, he attacked Arianism and deism; and about the same time he wrote a tragedy called The Siege of Marseilles, which war; refused by all the managers, and was not represented. He had long projected au
English version of- the Lusiad of Camans; and his translation of the first book of that work appeared in 1771. He now left Oxford, though still maintaining himself by his work as a. corrector there, and removed to the country, where he continued his transla tion of Cartmens, which was completed in 1775. This translation, though severely criti -cised in England on account of its diffuseness and inexactness, secured for Mickle the honor of an election to the royal academy of Portugal, during his residence in that country, where he had gone in 1779 as secretary to gov. Johnstone, and prize-agent. Ile published, while in Portugal, a poem called Almada Hill. On his return to England he wrote a number of pieces in verse and prose; the last of his productions was a ballad called Eskdale Braes.