Item talk:Q387557

Career: private teacher of Latin, unsuccessfully applied for the professorship of humanity at Edinburgh 1734, unsuccessfully applied for the keepership of the university library, the heads of the university awarded him a testimonial on 22 May 1734 and he taught his private school and at the university, narrowly failed in his application to become one of the masters of the high school in Edinburgh 1739, In 1742 Lauder applied for the rectorship of Dundee grammar school, supported by the Edinburgh professors Peter Cumming and Colin McLaurin, scholar and literary forger, later in life he emigrated to Barbados where he taught at a grammar school in Bridgetown, ran a huckster's shop, in which he was helped by a slave woman he had bought

Patrons: Lauder sent his work on Milton and plagiarism to the secretary of the Young Pretender (Charles Edward Stuart), thinking that this discovery would be of serious propaganda use for the Jacobite cause and asking for money, Samuel Johnson often wrote on Lauder's behalf but Lauder quickly fell out of favor with him

Coteries: William King, Samuel Johnson

Periodicals etc.: wrote a series of articles in the Gentleman's Magazine (January–August 1747)

Overall: Lauder seems to have been a poor (in the monetary sense of the word, at least) scholar, and he held some teaching posts. The DNB says he ‘appears to have entered the world, with only his literature to support him.’ Interestingly, he appended an advertisement trumpeting his abilities as a private teacher of Latin to his Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns. His poetry was mainly produced in his early years--he translated a poem into English and published a collection of sacred poems by Scots authors. Much of his career was devoted to trying to prove that Milton plagiarized his work, and Lauder got himself embroiled in a number of controversies over this. The attacks were so furious that Lauder's booksellers interrogated him about the accusations against him and put out an advertisement denouncing him in 1750. Lauder is said to have died in miserable poverty about 1771 in Barbados.

Jacob Sider Jost/ Mary Naydan/ Noah Fusco, “Poets of the 1730s: A Digital Humanities Seedling” (2017/ 2021)