GRAINGER, JAMES, author of an Ode on Solitude, and other poems, and the translator of Tibullus, was born about the year 1721 of "a gentleman's family in Cumberland" (his own statement); but Dunse in Berwickshire is said to have been the place of his birth. In 1759 he accompanied a rich West India proprietor to St Christopher's, where he resided about five years. He there wrote a poem on the "Sugar Cane," in which he dignified the poor negroes with the name of swains. He died in London in 1766. Johnson considered the opening lines of his Ode a "noble" passage, and many parts of the poem are highly picturesque. Grainger was a learned and worthy man, much esteemed by the Johnson circle of wits.