Duke, Richard

(1658-1711)

   Born in London, he was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was awarded his M.A. in 1682. He took holy orders and became rector of Blaby in Leicestershire in 1687. He was chaplain to Queen Anne and to Dr. Jonathan Trelawney, bishop of Winchester. He died at his residence in Witney, Oxfordshire. A small volume of fifteen sermons was published in 1714. Poems upon Several Occasions (1717), was published in conjunction with those of Roscommon, including the fragmentary beginning of The Review. Samuel Johnson's praise of Duke was mixed with derision of his qualities. Some of his poems: "A Panegyric upon [Titus] Oates," "Floriana a pastoral upon the death of Her Grace the Duchess of Southampton," "Funeral Tears," "Funeral Tears Upon the Death of Captain William Bedloe," "Idylls of Theocritus," "On the Death of King Charles the Second and the Inauguration of King James the Second," "On the Marriage of George Prince of Denmark and the Lady Anne," "The Fifth Elegy of the First Book of Ovid," "To Caelia."

   Sources: Anthology of Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714. George de F. Lord, ed. Yale University Press, 1975. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, 1779-1781 (http://www2.hn.psu.edu/Faculty/KKemmerer/poets/preface.htm). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Classical Verse in Translation. Adrian Poole, and Jeremy Maule, ed. 1995.