Dobell, Sydney Thompson

Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin

(1824-1874)

Poet, b. at Cranbrook, Kent, s. of a wine-merchant, who removed to Cheltenham, where most of the poet's life was passed. His youth was precocious (he was engaged at 15 and m. at 20). In 1850 his first work, The Roman, appeared, and had great popularity. Balder,

Part I. (1854), Sonnets on the War, jointly with Alexander Smith (q.v.) (1855), and England in Time of War (1856) followed. His later years were passed in Scotland and abroad in search of health, which, however, was damaged by a fall while exploring some ruins at Pozzuoli. D.'s poems exhibit fancy and brilliancy of diction, but want simplicity, and sometimes run into grandiloquence and other faults of the so-called spasmodic school to which he belonged.

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