Although now largely ignored, Richard Glover was in his own time one of England's most famous poets. In addition to his substantial literary reputation, he acquired a formidable body of classical learning, participated in the growing commercial activities of mid-eighteenth-century London, and made himself a man of considerable political influence. When Glover is remembered today, it is chiefly for his blank-verse epic Leonidas, a recounting of Greece's defense of Thermopylae during the war with Persia in the fifth century B.C., a poem viewed by his contemporaries as an attack on the ministry of Robert Walpole.

Glover was born in London at St. Martins Lane, Cannon Street, in 1712, the son of Mary and Richard Glover, a merchant engaged in the trade with Hamburg. He was later to follow his father into this profession. His attainments as a scholar are remarkable considering his education, solid enough for a trader...