Everything about George Duckett totally explained
George Duckett (
February 19,
1684 –
October 6,
1732) was a
British Member of Parliament (MP),
attorney, and literary combatant of
Alexander Pope's. He was the heir of a wealthy Member of Parliament,
Lionel Duckett (1511-1587), attended
Trinity College, Oxford before being admitted to the
Middle Temple and becoming an MP for
Calne,
Wiltshire in
1705. He was re-elected in
1708 and
1722, and between 1722 and
1732 he was a commissioner of excise. He married Grace Skinner (cir 1690-1755) on
1711-03-23, and the couple had nine children - eight of whom survived to adult life.
Duckett was a
Whig who was a friend of
Joseph Addison's, and he entertained Addison and some of Addison's "little senate" at his estates in Wiltshire. He was also a close friend of
Thomas Burnet, and he and Burnet would collaborate on numerous
satirical and political writings. In particular, the two teamed up to oppose Alexander Pope after the latter's disaffection with Addison and dispute with
Ambrose Philips.
In
1715, Burnet and Duckett wrote
Homerides, or, a letter to Mr. Pope, occasion'd by his intended translation of Homer; by Sir Iliad Doggerl, and in
1716 they wrote
Homerides, or, Homer's First Book Moderniz'd. Pope accused them of attacking his translation of
Homer prior to anything even being written, and with some justice, and Duckett continued the battle with
An Epilogue to a Puppet Show at Bath Concerning the same Iliad by himself.
Edmund Curll, in his battle against Pope, published the
Epilogue. Pope's revenge appeared in
The Dunciad of
1728, and in particular in the
Dunciad Variorum. Because of their positions in government, Pope didn't attack Duckett and Burnet by name in
Dunciad itself, and he didn't directly impugn them until the
Variorum. Duckett and Burnet also funded and contributed to two weekly journals,
The Grumbler and
Pasquin. He was also the
patron of one of Pope's other enemies,
John Oldmixon.
In
1717, Duckett published an apolitical, professional work entitled
A Summary of All the Religious Houses in England and Wales. It was an accounting of the values of each of the
monasteries and convents at the time of the
dissolution and their present value, if they were still available. It was this work that got Duckett made a commissioner of excise.
In
1729, Duckett and
John Dennis combined in an anti-Pope booklet called
Pope Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility Examin'd.
He died at home on his Calne estate in 1732.
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