Philip Francis (translator) Francis, and numerous letters to and from him are in the son's memoir; he resented his son's marriage, but they were later reconciled. Of his rendering of Horace, Samuel Johnson said: ‘The lyrical part of Horace never can be perfectly translated. Francis has done it the best. I'll take his five out of six against them all.’ The first part, consisting of the ‘Odes, Epodes, and Carmen Seculare of Horace in Latin and English,’ in which he was assisted by William Dunkin, was issued at Dublin in two volumes in 1742. It was republished in London in the next year,
John Ker (Latin poet) John Ker (Latin poet) John Ker (died 1741) was a Scottish schoolteacher and academic, a classical scholar known as a neo-Latin poet. Ker was born at Dunblane, Perthshire, and was for a time schoolmaster at Crieff. About 1710, after examination by ministers and professors, he became a master in the Royal High School, Edinburgh. In 1717 he was appointed professor of Greek in King's College, Aberdeen, the first specialist teacher of the subject there, despite his admiration for the uncompromising Jacobite Archibald Pitcairne. On 2 October 1734 Ker succeeded Adam Watt in the Latin chair at Edinburgh University. He studied