William Knox was born August 17, 1789, in Lillieslief, Roxburghshire, and educated there and at Loretto Academy in Musselburgh. He took up farming from his parents but abandoned it for journalism, and especially poetry.
Reid, Hugh. "Warton, Thomas (1728–1790)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2006.