Richard Glover (poet)

Richard Glover (1712 – November 25, 1785), English poet, son of Richard Glover, a Hamburg merchant, was born in London. 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, "Hosiers Ghost", very popular in its day. It was also the year that he became one of the founding governors for the Foundling Hospital, a charity dedicated to saving children from the plight of abandonment.

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 and Melcombe Regis.

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" (1825), by R Dupparest on very slight grounds.

References

*1911
*R.H. Nichols and F A. Wray, "The History of the Foundling Hospital" (London: Oxford University Press, 1935).