John Snell (1628/9-1679) was born in Ayrshire, the son of a blacksmith, and died in Oxford, where his brother-in-law was the university registrar. During his lifetime he had been a benefactor of his Alma Mater, Glasgow University but he left the proceeds of his estate in trust for the "mayntenance and education in some Colledge or Hall" at Oxford of at least five of his countrymen who had spent at least one year at the "Colledge of Glascow." Among the beneficiaries are James Stirling, Adam Smith, Matthew Bailie, John Gibson Lockhart, Archibald Campbell Tait, John Campbell Shairp, William Young Sellar, Edward Caird, Andrew Lang, William Paton Ker and George Douglas Brown

Addressed to all readers of poetry, this is a wide-ranging book about the poet's role throughout the last three centuries. It argues that a conception of the poets as both primitive and sophisticated emerged in the 1750s. Encouraged by the classroom when English literary works began to be studied in universities, this view continues to shape our own attitudes towards verse. Whether considering Ossian and the Romantics, Victorian scholar-gipsies, Modernist poetries of knowledge, or contemporary poetry in Britian, Ireland, and America, The Modern Poet shows how many successive generations of poets have needed to collaborate and to battle with academia.