RICHARD

See also:

• RICHARD GLOVER (1712-1785)
• GLOVER, SIR JOHN HAWLEY (1829-1885)

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 .