author
John Robert Scott
An Irish clergyman and essayist of the late 18th century, he wrote on religion, civil society, politics, and the fine arts. His surviving works show a curious, wide-ranging mind interested in how culture and public life shape one another.
1 Audiobook
Dissertation on the Progress of the Fine Arts
by John Robert Scott
About the author
Active between 1777 and 1804, John Robert Scott was an Irish writer and cleric associated with Trinity College Dublin. Contemporary records describe him as the Rev. John Robert Scott, and one of his early published works identifies him as an LL.B. of T.C.D.
His known books reveal a strikingly broad range of interests. In 1777 he published A Dissertation on the Influence of Religion on Civil Society, a prize-winning university composition addressed to the Provost and Senior Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin. He also wrote political and occasional works, including A Review of the Principal Characters of the Irish House of Commons and a sermon preached before the Dublin Volunteers in 1780.
Scott is also remembered for A Dissertation on the Progress of the Fine Arts (1800), a thoughtful study of art, society, and patronage. The Royal Academy records him as "Rev. John Robert Scott D.D." and dates his period of activity as 1777–1804, but beyond those published traces, biographical details appear to be scarce.