George Berkeley

George Berkeley (1685–1753), born in County Kilkenny, was an Anglo-Irish philosopher and clergyman, Bishop of Cloyne from 1734. He is best known for his philosophical idealism, set out in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and for his scheme of founding a college in Bermuda.

His one famous poem, the verses on the prospect of planting arts and learning in America, was written about 1726 while he waited for support for that scheme. Its last stanza, "Westward the course of empire takes its way," became one of the most quoted lines of the eighteenth century.