The fourth Earl of Chesterfield, on seeing a whole-length portrait of Nash between the busts of Sir Isaac Newton and Pope in the rooms at Bath, wrote as follows:-- "Immortal Newton never spoke More truth than here you'll find; Nor Pope himself e'er penn'd a joke More cruel on mankind. The picture, plac'd the busts between, Gives satire all its strength: Wisdom and Wit are little seen, But Folly at full length." Stephen Duck's poetry and progress in life gave rise to some lively lines by the lampooners of the eighteenth century. He was an agricultural labourer, having a thirst for knowledge and some skill as a writer of verse. This humble and self-taught student was brought under the notice of Queen Caroline, who was much interested in his welfare, and pleased with his poetry; she granted him a pension of £30 a year. He was next made a yeoman of the guard, an appointment he did not long retain, for he was advanced to the position of a clergyman in the Church of England, and presented to the living of Byfleet, Surrey. It is to be feared that his education was not sufficiently liberal for a clerk in holy orders. Dean Swift assailed the poor poet as follows:-- "The thresher Duck could o'er the Queen prevail; The proverb says 'No fence against a flail.' From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains, For which Her Majesty allows him grains. Though 'tis confess'd that those who ever saw His poems, think them all not worth a straw. Thrice happy Duck, employed in threshing stubble! Thy toil is lessen'd and thy profits doubled." The want of dignity displayed in the foregoing is unworthy of Swift, and the reply as follows made by Duck is certainly much to his credit:-- "You think it, censor, mighty strange That, born a country clown, I should my first profession change And wear a chaplain's gown! If virtue honours the low race From which I was descended, If vices your high birth disgrace Who should be most commended?" Duck wrote the epitaph for the tombstone over the remains of Joe Miller of mirthful memory. The following is a copy of the lines:-- "If humour, wit, and honesty could save The hum'rous, witty, honest from the grave; The grave had not so soon this tenant found Whom honesty, and wit, and humour crowned. Or could esteem and love preserve our breath, And guard us longer from the stroke of death, The stroke of death on him had later fell, Whom all mankind esteem'd and lov'd so well." The poet-preacher was advanced to the chaplaincy of a regiment of Dragoon Guards. Sad to relate, in the year 1756, in a fit of insanity, he took his own life. During the Gordon riots on the 7th of January, 1780, Lord Mansfield's house in Bloomsbury Square was burnt, and in the flames perished his valuable library, which he commenced collecting when a lad at school. It included many valuable volumes and materials for memoirs of his times. Cowper thus wrote on the subject:--