Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Leigh, Richard

1423518Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 32 — Leigh, Richard1892Thomas Bailey Saunders

LEIGH, RICHARD (fl. 1675), poet, born in 1649, was younger son of Edward Leigh of Rushall, Staffordshire. He entered Queen's College, Oxford, in Lent term 1666, and proceeded B.A. on 19 June 1669. He afterwards went to London and became an actor in the company of the Duke of York, where other actors bearing the same surname [see Leigh, Anthony and John], from whom he is to be carefully distinguished, were engaged at the same time. He attacked Dryden in 'A Censure of the Rota in Mr. Dryden's Conquest of Granada,' Oxford, 1673. He also wrote 'The Transposer Rehearsed, or the Fifth Act of Mr. Baye's Play; being a Postscript to the Animadversions on the Preface to Bishop Bramhall's Vindication,' Oxford, for 'the assigns of Hugo Grotius and Jacob van Harmine, on the North Side of Lac Lemane,' 1673, which Lowndes describes as scurrilous and indecent. It is wrongly ascribed by Andrew Marvell to Dr. Sam Parker. Leigh also published 'Poems upon Several Occasions and to several Persons,' 1675.

[Gent. Mag. 1848, pt. ii. p. 270; Lowndes's Bibl. Manual; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 533; Scott's Life of Dryden; Biog. Brit. art. 'Dryden,' p. 1751; Foster's Alumni Oxon.]

T. B. S.