He worked first in stipple and afterwards in line, sometimes in conjunction with others, keeping a large number of pupils working under his direction. He re-engraved the existing set of Hogarth's plates, and completed the engraving of Stothard's ‘Canterbury Pilgrims,’ left unfinished by Schiavonetti at his death. He also engraved numerous portraits. Heath amassed a considerable fortune, but lost much property by a fire in 1789. About 1822 he retired from his profession, and his stock of proofs and other engravings was dispersed by auction in that year. He married about 1777 Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Thomas, a Welsh clergyman, by whom he had one son, George Heath, afterwards serjeant-at-law. Charles Heath (1785–1848) [q. v.] was an illegitimate son. Heath died in Great Coram Street, London, on 15 Nov. 1834. A portrait of Heath by Sir Joshua Reynolds is in the collection of Mr. Samuel Parr at Nottingham; another by J. Lonsdale is in the National Portrait Gallery; others, by W. Behnes, L. F. Abbott, and T. George, have been engraved, and a small oval portrait was engraved for the ‘Monthly Mirror’ of 1796. He exhibited in 1834 at the Royal Academy ‘Children playing with a Donkey,’ but it is not stated to have been an engraving.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Dodd's manuscript Hist. of English Engravers (Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 33401); Memoirs of Abraham Raimbach; Sandby's Hist. of the Royal Academy; Pye's Patronage of British Art; Catalogues of the Royal Academy, &c.; private information.]
HEATH, JOHN (fl. 1615), epigrammatist, was born at Stalls, Somersetshire, and entered at Winchester School in 1600 at the age of thirteen (Kirby, Winchester Scholars, p. 159). He matriculated at New College, Oxford, on 11 Oct. 1605, when his age is given as twenty, was admitted perpetual fellow in 1609, and proceeded B.A. 2 May 1609, and M.A. 16 Jan. 1613 (Reg. Univ. Oxon. ii. pt. i. 271, iii. 286, Oxf. Hist. Soc.). He resigned his fellowship in 1616. In 1610 he published ‘Two Centuries of Epigrammes,’ inscribed to Thomas Bilson, the bishop of Winchester's son, and claims that his work is free from ‘filthy and obscene jests.’ Many epigrams are addressed to well-known literary men of the day. He contributed verses to the volume issued on the death of Sir T. Bodley, and to other collections of the kind. He translated Peter du Moulin's ‘Accomplishment of the Prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation,’ in defence of King James against Bellarmine, 1613, and Wood says he translated some works out of Spanish. He was possibly the author of ‘The House of Correction, or certayne Satyrical Epigrams written by J. H., Gent.,’ London, 1619, which was republished with a different title-page in 1621, but it is very doubtful whether he is the ‘I. H.’ who wrote ‘The Divell of the Vault or the Unmasking of Murther’ (1606). John Davies of Hereford has an epigram to Heath in the ‘Scourge of Folly,’ p. 252, and Ben Jonson in his ‘Discoveries’ (lxx) says contemptuously, ‘Heath's epigrams and the skuller's (i.e. John Taylor's) poems have their applause.’
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 168; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. 1859, ii. 1029; Brit. Mus. Cat. of Books before 1640; Hazlitt's Collections, 2nd ser. 1882, p. 274; notes supplied by Mr. A. H. Bullen.]
HEATH, JOHN (1736–1816), judge, was son of Thomas Heath, alderman of Exeter, author of an ‘Essay on Job’ (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. ii. 276), and nephew of Benjamin Heath [q. v.] He was educated at Westminster School, and in 1754, at the age of eighteen, he matriculated at Christ Church, and took the degrees of B.A. in 1758 and M.A. in 1762. For a time he filled the office of town-clerk of Exeter. He was admitted a member of the Inner Temple in May 1759, and was called to the bar in June 1762. In 1775 he became a serjeant-at-law and recorder of Exeter; and, being an intimate friend of Thurlow, he was appointed, though he had no great practice at the bar, to succeed Sir William Blackstone in the court of common pleas, 19 July 1780. Here he sat for thirty-six years. He refused to be knighted on his elevation, saying that he preferred to remain ‘plain John Heath,’ but, although chargeable with great judicial severity (see Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, iv. 33 n., vi. 154), his learning, which was much esteemed by Lord Eldon, and his fairness made him a good judge. He tried the Bishop of Bangor and others for riot, when Erskine procured their acquittal in spite of an adverse summing-up. After being long infirm, on 16 Jan. 1816 he died of an apoplexy, but whether at Hayes or at 36 Bedford Square is uncertain (see ‘Reminiscences’ by R. W. Blencowe in Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. i. 276). He was buried at Hayes in Middlesex, where he had a farm and country house. His tombstone there states his age as eighty-five, but the parish register, with probably greater authority, gives it as eighty. He was not married.
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; State Trials, xxvi. 523; Gent. Mag. 1816, p. 186; Polson's Law and Lawyers, ii. 214; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. ii. 11; Woolrych's Eminent Serjeants, p. 691; Foster's Alumni Oxon.]
