John Wolcot, dit Peter Pindar , est un poète satirique anglais.
Né à Dodbrooke dans le Devon, il acheva ses études en France. Il fut médecin du gouverneur de la Jamaïque et s'établit à son retour à Truro . Il habita ensuite successivement à Exeter, Londres, et Londres, où il mourut.
Il a laissé des poésies, principalement de odes et des satires, dirigées contre les grands du jour. Il publia ses premières poésies sous le pseudonyme de Peter Pindar.
Wikipedia
“What rage for fame attends both great and small!
Better be damned than mentioned not at all.”
To the Royal Academicians; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grin so merry draws one out.”
Expostulatory Odes, Ode xv; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“People may have too much of a good thing:
Full as an egg of wisdom thus I sing.”
Subjects for Painters, The Gentleman and his Wife; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 617.
“A fellow in a market town,
Most musical, cried razors up and down.”
Farewell Odes, Ode iii; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“No, let the monarch’s bags and others hold
The flattering, mighty, nay, al-mighty gold.”
To Kien Long; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Ode iv. Compare: "Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold,
And almost every vice,—almighty gold", Ben Jonson, Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland.