Stephen Duck was the son of a peasant in Wiltshire, and worked as a day labourer and thresher on a farm at Charlton. He must have had some ability and a good deal of application, for when his day’s work was done, he taught himself the rudiments of grammar and a smattering of history and science. These labours bore fruit in poetry; but the poems remained unpublished until Duck reached the age of thirty, when he had the good fortune to attract the notice of a country clergyman named Spence, who not only lent him books, but found the means for him to print some of his poems in pamphlet form, including _The Thresher’s Labour_, a poem descriptive of his own life, and _The Shunamite_. These poems found their way into the hands of Lord Tankerville and Dr. Alured Clarke, Prebendary of Winchester, who thought so highly of their merits that they got up a subscription to aid the author. Dr. Alured Clarke did more; he wrote to his friend Mrs. Clayton telling her the story of Duck’s life, and begging her to bring his poems before the notice of the Queen. By this time Duck had quite a little coterie of admirers in his own county, who, as Dr. Alured Clarke wrote, thought “the thresher, with all his defects, a superior genius to Mr. Pope”.[83] Caroline was much interested in the fact that these poems were written by a poor thresher, and when the court was at Windsor she commanded that Duck should be brought there. She was so pleased with his manner and address that she settled a small annual pension on him, and in 1733 made him one of the yeomen of the guard. Dr. Alured Clarke, by this time one of the royal chaplains, and Mrs. Clayton acted as the sponsors of the poet, whose work now became well-known. The most extravagant ideas were formed concerning it, some considering _The Thresher’s Labour_ superior to Thomson’s _Seasons_, and others declaring that the author of _The Shunamite_ was the greatest poet of the age. Thus encouraged, Duck wrote more poems, and the Queen’s patronage secured for them a large sale. Naturally many were in praise of his generous benefactress. Duck in due time took holy orders, to which he had always a leaning--he was ordained, as a literate, by the Bishop of Salisbury. Shortly after his ordination, the Queen appointed him keeper of Merlin’s Cave, a fanciful building she had erected at Richmond. Both Merlin’s Cave and Duck came in for a great deal of satire from “the epigrammatic Mæcenases,” as Dr. Alured Clarke calls them, who regarded both the cave and the patronage of the poet as proofs of the Queen’s folly rather than her wisdom. Pope wrote:-- Lord! how we strut through Merlin’s Cave, to see No poets there, but Stephen, you and me. Swift, writhing under neglect, penned a very caustic epigram:--