Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/201

 was certainly of Bury's way of thinking, and was one of those who took part in Pecock's condemnation in 1457 [see under, 1404?–1486].

 LOWE, JOHN (1750–1798), Scottish poet, was born in 1750 at Kenmure, parish of Kells, East Galloway, his father being gardener at Kenmure Castle. After leaving the parish school he was apprenticed in New Galloway with John Heron, handloom weaver, father of (1764–1807) [q. v.] He improved his education at Carsphairn parish school, and with the help of friends entered Edinburgh University in 1771 to prepare for the church. He studied for two sessions, being tutor in the interval in the family of Mr. M'Ghie of Airds on the Dee, East Galloway. He became attached to one of the Misses M'Ghie, and found the subject for ‘Mary's Dream,’ his chief lyric, in the grief of her sister, whose lover, a ship surgeon, had been recently drowned. Near the house he had constructed an arbour in which he studied, and which, known as ‘Lowe's seat,’ Burns piously visited when he was in the neighbourhood in 1793 (, Burns, iv. 18).

Doubtful of success in the Scottish church, Lowe in 1773 went to the United States as tutor to the family of a brother of George Washington. Afterwards he conducted for a time a private school at Fredericksburgh, Virginia, where he presently took orders and obtained a living as a clergyman of the church of England. For a time he was, at least poetically, faithful to Miss M'Ghie, but he was at length fascinated by a beautiful Virginian lady, whose indifference impelled him to marry her more accommodating sister ‘from a sentiment of gratitude.’ The marriage was unhappy, Lowe became dissipated and died in 1798.

The remaining fragments of his poems (quoted from manuscript by Gillespie and Murray in their notices of Lowe) show a true, though undeveloped, love of natural beauty, and a vein of deep genuine feeling. His command of pathos is fully displayed in ‘Mary's Dream,’ his only complete lyric, which seems to have circulated in Galloway in a printed form before appearing in any collection. It has kinship with the story of Ceyx and Alcyone (as told from Ovid in Chaucer's ‘Deth of Blaunche’), and with Gay's ‘'Twas when the seas were roaring.’ When [q. v.] was preparing his ‘Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song,’ 1810, Allan Cunningham foisted upon him as an antique an ingenious Scottish paraphrase of ‘Mary's Dream.’ Cromek gives both versions, and discourses with amusing seriousness on the superior merits of the pseudo-legendary strains.

 LOWE, MAURITIUS (1746–1793), painter, born in 1746, was reputed to have been a son of the Earl of Sunderland, from whom he had a small annuity, but he claimed connection with the family of John Lowe, bishop of Rochester in 1444. He was a pupil of, R.A. [q. v.], and one of the first students in the school of the Royal Academy. In 1769, through the interest of [q. v.], Lowe was the first to obtain the gold medal awarded by the Royal Academy for an historical painting, his subject being ‘Time discovering Truth,’ and in 1771 he was the first student selected to receive the travelling allowance for study at Rome. He was, however, insolent in manner and irregular in his habits, and, as he failed to comply with the regulations of the Academy, he was recalled from Rome in 1772. He exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1776 and 1779, sending miniatures and a picture of ‘Venus.’ Lowe enjoyed the friendship and protection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who left him a small legacy. In 1783 he sent a huge picture to the Academy, entitled ‘The Deluge—there were Giants on the earth in those Days.’ This was justly rejected, but at the earnest solicitation of Dr. Johnson it was ultimately admitted, though it was hung in an empty room by itself, and universally condemned. In 1777 he exhibited a drawing of ‘Homer singing the Iliad to the Greeks.’ Lowe married a servant-girl, and had a large family, to one of whom Johnson stood god-father. Madame d'Arblay in her ‘Diary’ (ii. 41) describes Johnson's efforts to obtain work as a portrait-painter for Lowe, and the state of filth and misery to which Lowe and his family were reduced. Lowe resided for some time in Hedge Lane, and later in a miserable lodging in Westminster, where he died on 1 Sept. 1793, leaving, by his wife Sarah, one son and two daughters. (For Johnson's god-daughter see Examiner, 28 May 1873.) In the print room at the British Museum there are three 