John Lathrop, Jr., poet, lawyer, essayist, editor, orator, and educator, is best known for his lengthy visionary poem The Speech of Caunonicus (1802).

Lathrop was born in Boston, son of John and Mary Wheatley Lathrop. His father was pastor of the Second Church in Boston, and a descendant of the Puritan clergyman John Lothropp (1589-1653), first minister of Scituate. He attended Harvard from 1786 to 1789, and two months before graduation published his first poem in the Massachusetts Magazine (May 1789). At his commencement, 12 July 1789, he read a poem composed for the occasion. After receiving the baccalaureate degree, Lathrop began his legal training in the office of Christopher Gore, the same office where Daniel Webster later read law. From this time on, however, Lathrop was more successful as a poet than as an attorney, writing occasional verse for friends and for the Boston periodicals. In 1791 his verse was included in The Beauties...