Thomas Aird
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Thomas Aird (August 28, 1802 - April 28, 1876), Scottish poet, was born at Bowden, Roxburghshire.
He was educated at Edinburgh University, where he made the acquaintance of Wilson, Carlyle and James Hogg, and he decided to devote himself to literary work. He published Martzoufle, a Tragedy, with other Poems (1826), a volume of essays, and a long narrative poem in several cantos, The Captive of Fez (1830).
For a year he edited the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, and for twenty-eight years the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Herald. He also contributed to Blackwood's Magazine. In 1848 he published a collected edition of his poems, which met with much favor. Carlyle said that he found in them "a healthy breath as of mountain breezes." In prose he wrote Religious Characteristics, and The Old Bachelor in the Old Scottish Village (1848). Among Aird's other friends were De Quincey, Lockhart, Stanley (afterwards dean of Westminster) and Motherwell.