baptised at St. Dionis Backchurch, London, on 25 May 1572 (Register). Otherwise he is known only through a very rare volume entitled ‘The Archs of Triumph Erected in honor of the High and mighty prince, James, the first of that name, King of England, and the sixt of Scotland, at his Maiesties Entrance and passage through his Honorable Citty & chamber of London, vpon the 15th day of march 1603. Invented and published by Stephen Harrison Joyner and Architect: and graven by William Kip.’ It is a thin folio, and ends with the colophon: ‘Imprinted at London by Iohn Windet, Printer to the Honourable Citie of London, and are to be sold at the Authors house in Lime-street, at the signe of the Snayle. 1604.’ An engraved title-page is followed by seven full-page engravings of the triumphal arches and nine leaves of descriptive text, contributed probably by Thomas Dekker and John Webster, whose names are attached to the odes with which the volume opens. The arches were seven in number, though only five were originally intended, and all except those erected by the ‘merchant strangers’ were designed by Harrison and erected under his supervision. Three hundred or more workmen were employed on them from the beginning of April to the end of August 1603, when, on account of the plague which was then raging in London, the state entry of the king was postponed, and the preparations discontinued until February 1604. The arches at West Cheap and Temple Bar were then added, and the whole completed within six weeks. Harrison's book is extremely rare, especially in the first state before the words ‘Are to be sould at the white horse in Popes head Alley, by John Sudbury, and George Humble,’ were added at the foot of the title-page. There are copies of the first issue in the Grenville Library, at the British Museum, and in the Huth and Britwell Libraries.
[Nichols's Progresses of King James the First, 1828, i. 328–99; Corser's Collectanea Anglo-Poetica, 1860–83, iii. 134–9; Cat. Huth Library, 1880, ii. 655.]
HARRISON, SUSANNAH (1752–1784), religious poetess, probably born at Ipswich in 1752, of poor parents, entered domestic service when sixteen. Four years after illness permanently invalided her. Although without regular education, she taught herself to write, and developed much poetic power and piety, calling her verses ‘Songs in the Night’ (after Job xxxv. 10). She reluctantly consented to their publication. In the first edition, 1780, they are stated to be ‘by a young woman under deep afflictions,’ and were edited by Dr. John Conder [q. v.] A second edition was issued in 1781, with eleven additional pages. Dr. Conder supplied several pages of ‘Recommendation,’ and Susannah added an acrostic to show her name. The fourth edition (Ipswich, 1788) was augmented with twenty-two pages of posthumous verses, and twelve more recounting her resignation and giving admonitions to her friends before she died. She died 3 Aug. 1784, and was buried in Tacket Street burial-ground, Ipswich, with an inscription recording that ‘she wrote “Songs in the Night.”’
Susannah Harrison's poems reached a fifteenth edition in 1823. All that she wrote is strongly tinctured with religious enthusiasm. Her versification is smooth, although sometimes defaced by grammatical blunders. The influence of Ken is apparent in her earlier pieces, and that of Cowper and Newton afterwards. It is evident that she had read Milton's ‘Ode on the Nativity.’
A portrait (a silhouette) of the authoress forms the frontispiece of the first edition. She also wrote ‘A Call to Britain,’ seemingly a broadside, of which many thousands were sold in a short time.
[S. Harrison's Songs, and the Recommendation, Preface, &c., by Dr. Conder; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
HARRISON, THOMAS, D.D. (1555–1631), biblical scholar, was born in London in 1555 of respectable parents, entered Merchant Taylors' School in 1570, where he is stated to have been second in learning only to Lancelot Andrewes, afterwards bishop of Winchester; he proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1576. At Cambridge his scholarship attracted the notice of Dr. Whitaker, who for the excellence of his verses used to call him 'suum poetam.' He apparently became a fellow and tutor of Trinity College. Harrison was a puritan, and in 1589 is mentioned as attending a synod at St. John's College, along with Cartwright and others (Baker, History of St. John's College, ii. 601). He was a noted Hebraist and among the revisers of the bible assembled by James I; he belonged to the company of eight who met at Cambridge, and were allotted the 'first of Chronicles, with the rest of the story and the Hagiographs.' For the last twenty years of his life he was vice-prefect of Trinity College. He died in 1631 and was buried with some pomp in the chapel of his college. A Latin volume in his honour was written by Caleb Dalechamp; it is titled 'Harrisonus Honoratus: Id est Hono-
