Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/479

 Works, ed. Grosart, 1876, iii. 333), but in his sonnet, ‘Iona (upon landing),’ he adopted from Russell, as conveying his feeling better than any words of his own could do (''Poet. Works, 1869, p. 356), the four concluding lines:   And ‘hopes, perhaps, more heavenly bright than thine,    A grace by thee unsought and unpossest,    A faith more fixed, a rapture more divine    Shall gild their passage to eternal rest.’ Another sonnet of Russell's seems to have suggested an exquisite passage in Byron's ‘O snatch'd away in beauty's bloom;’ of a third, ‘supposed to be written at Lemnos,’ Landor wrote that it alone authorised Russell to join the shades of Sophocles and Euripides. Coleridge, Cary, and Bowles applaud this ‘Miltonic’ sonnet, which finds a place in the anthologies of Dyce, Capel Lofft, Tomlinson, Main, Hall Caine, and William Sharp. Southey in his ‘Vision of Judgment’ associated Russell with Chatterton and Bampfylde among the young spirits whom the muses ‘marked for themselves at birth and with dews from Castalia sprinkled.’ He lacked the originality of genius, but, says Cary, ‘his ear was tuned to the harmonies of Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, and fragments of their sounds he gives us back as from an echo, but so combined as to make a sweet music of his own’ (, Memoir'', 1847, ii. 297–8). The Oxford edition of Russell's sonnets is scarce, but his remains are printed in Thomas Park's ‘Collection of British Poets,’ 1808, vol. xli., in Sanford's ‘British Poets,’ 1819, xxxvii., and in the Chiswick edition of the ‘British Poets,’ 1822, lxxiii.

[Gent. Mag. 1788 ii. 752, and 1847 i. 358; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Kirby's Winchester Scholars, p. 270; Hutchins's Dorset, ii. 321–2; Lounger's Common Place Book, 1805, iii. 121; Brydges's Censura Literaria, i. 320; Southey's Poetical Works, 1845, p. 784; Bowles's Clifden Grove; Forster's Life of Landor, 1869, i. 194, ii. 8; Warton's Hist. of Poetry, ed. Mant, and also ed. Hazlitt; Dyce's Specimens of English Sonnets, 1833; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. x. 472, xi. 23, 8th ser. ix. 145, 214, 450; family papers through Captain Thomas Russell of Beaminster; notes kindly furnished by Mr. C. W. Holgate of The Close, Salisbury; Wykehamist, 31 July 1888 (containing a memoir by Mr. C. W. Holgate).] 

RUSSELL, THOMAS (1767–1803), United Irishman, was born at Betsborough, in the parish of Kilshanick, co. Cork, on 21 Nov. 1767. His father, John Russell, entered the army, was present at the battle of Dettingen in 1743, commanded a company in the infantry at the battle of Fontenoy in 1745, and in 1761–2 served in Portugal in the foreign auxiliary force. Returning to Ireland, he was appointed to a situation in the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham. He died, at a very advanced age, in December 1792, and is described by Wolfe Tone as a gentleman of charming manners and conversation. A portrait of him is prefixed to Madden's ‘United Irishmen,’ 3rd ser. vol. ii.

Like his father, Russell was originally intended for the church, and consequently received a fairly good education in classics and mathematics, but like him, too, he became a soldier, and in 1782 accompanied his eldest brother, Captain Ambrose Russell (1756–1798), of the 52nd regiment, as a volunteer to India. He was commended for his conduct in the field by Sir John Burgoyne and given a commission in his brother's regiment, but afterwards transferred to one newly raised. The regiment was one of those subsequently reduced, and so after five years' service Russell quitted India, disgusted, it is said, with the rapacity and cruelty of English officials. Returning to Ireland, he resumed his project of entering the church, but again relinquished it on receiving a commission in the 64th regiment. In 1789, while listening to a debate in the House of Commons, he made the acquaintance of Theobald Wolfe Tone [q. v.] The acquaintance thus formed speedily ripened into friendship. ‘P.P.,’ or ‘parish priest,’ as Tone called him in playful allusion to his sedate and clerical demeanour, figures largely in the earlier pages of Tone's ‘Journal.’ In 1791 Russell's regiment was quartered at Belfast, and in this way he became acquainted with the leading men of liberal politics in the town, notably with Samuel Neilson [q. v.] and Henry Joy McCracken [q. v.] Accordingly, when Tone visited Belfast in October, the nucleus of the United Irish Society was already in existence, and only required organising. About this time Russell was forced to sell his commission, having gone bail for an American swindler named Digges. Through the friendly interest of Colonel Knox, he was on 21 Dec. appointed seneschal of the manor court of Dungannon and a J.P. for co. Tyrone. But, finding it, as he said, impossible ‘to reconcile it to his conscience to sit as magistrate on a bench where the practice prevailed of inquiring what a man's religion was before inquiring into the crimes with which a prisoner was accused,’ he resigned his post on 15 Oct. 1792. Possessing no means of livelihood, he was bent on seeking his fortune in