Blackmore, Richard (1654–1729)

English writer and physician to William III and Queen Anne. He wrote dull and turgid epics, ridiculed by the satirical poet Alexander Pope in his Dunciad, though they were praised by the essayist Joseph Addison.

His long Creation: a philosophical poem (1712) expounded John Locke's philosophy as against the ‘infidelity’ of Thomas Hobbes. Blackmore's work was originally selected by Samuel Johnson to appear in the collection of the British poets for which Johnson wrote the biographies that became his Lives of the English Poets.