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Richard Glover

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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RICHARD GLOVER (1712-1785), English poet, son of Richard Glover, a Hamburg merchant, was born in London in 1712. He was educated at Cheam in Surrey. While there he wrote in his sixteenth year a poem to the memory of Sir Isaac Newton, which was prefixed by Dr Pemberton to his View of Newton's Philosophy, published in 1728. In 1737 he published an epic poem in praise of liberty, Leonidas, which was thought to have a special reference to the politics of the time; and being warmly commended by the prince of Wales and his court, it soon passed through several editions. In 1739 Glover published a poem entitled London, or the Progress of Commerce; and in the same year, with a view to exciting the nation against the Spaniards, he wrote a spirited ballad, Hosier's Ghost, very popular in its day. He was also the author of two tragedies, Boadicea (1753) and Medea (1761), written in close imitation of Greek models. The success of Glover's Leonidas led him to take considerable interest in politics, and in 1761 he entered parliament as member for Weymouth. He died on the 25th of November 1785. The Athenaid, an epic in thirty books, was published in 1787, and his diary, entitled Memoirs of a distinguished literary and political Character from 1742 to 1757, appeared in 1813. Glover was one of the reputed authors of Junius; but his claims - which were advocated in an Inquiry concerning the author of the Letters of Junius (1815), by R. Duppa - rest on very slight grounds.