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Elphinston, James (1721 — 1809)
Born in Edinburgh, he kept a boarding school in Kensington London, described by Alexander Carlyle as 'a Jacobite seminary'. He was a friend of Samuel Johnson. Elphinston made a translation of the Latin poet Martial's Epigrams, of which Johnson said 'there are in these verses too much folly for madness, I think, and too much madness for folly.' Burns mentioned him in a letter to Clarinda, dated 14th January 1788: 'The poetry of Elphinstone can only equal his prosenotes'' Burns wrote an epigram on Elphinston on a copy of Elphinston's the Epigrams of M. Val Martial, in twelve books, with a comment, while he was waiting for somebody in 'a merchant's shop of my acquaintance'. Burns enclosed the epigram in his letter to Clarinda: "O thou whom Poesy abhors,
Whom Prose has turned out of doors!
Heard'st thou yon groan? Proceed no further;
'Twas laurell'd Martial calling Murther!"
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