Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Park, Andrew
PARK, ANDREW (1807–1863), poet, was born in Renfrew on 7 March 1807. Educated in the parish school and at Glasgow University, he entered in his fifteenth year a commission warehouse in Paisley. When about twenty years of age he became a salesman in a hat manufactory in Glasgow, and there he shortly afterwards started in business for himself. Unsuccessful in this venture, he for a time tempted fortune in London as a man of letters, but he returned to Glasgow in 1841, and, buying the book stock of Dugald Moore (1805–1841) [q. v.], made another fruitless experiment in business. Thenceforth he devoted himself mainly to literature. In 1856 he made an oriental tour, publishing the following year ‘Egypt and the East.’ Park died at Glasgow on 27 Dec. 1863, and was buried in the Paisley cemetery, where a monument, consisting of a bronze bust on a granite pedestal, was erected to his memory in 1867.
Park, while a lad in Paisley, published a sonnet sequence, ‘The Vision of Mankind.’ In 1834 appeared his ‘Bridegroom and the Bride,’ which enhanced his reputation. In 1843, under the pseudonym of ‘James Wilson, druggist, Paisley,’ he published ‘Silent Love,’ a graceful and effective poem, which was reissued in small quarto in 1845, with illustrations by Sir J. Noel Paton. The poem was translated into French by the Chevalier de Chatelain, and was very popular in America. ‘Veritas,’ a poem which appeared in 1849, is autobiographical in character. A collective edition of Park's works, with a quaint preface descriptive of a dream of the muses, was published in London in 1854. Although somewhat lacking in spontaneity and ease of movement, several of Park's lyrics have been set to music by Auber, Donizetti, and others.
[Rogers's Scottish Minstrel; Wilson's Poets and Poetry of Scotland.]