Ere her own was laid low, had exalted your head,
And since our good Queen to the wise is so just,
To raise heads from such as are humbled in dust,
I wonder, good man, that you are not envaulted;
Pr’y thee, go and be dead, and be doubly exalted.
Whereto the dean wittily replied:—
Her Majesty never shall be my exalter;
And yet she would raise me I know, by—a halter.
Stephen Duck’s poetry was popular in its day, but it owed its popularity to the favour of the Queen rather than to its intrinsic merit. His talent was not sufficient to overcome the defects of his early education. Duck realised this far more than his friends, and he was keenly sensitive to the satire which great writers like Swift and Pope thought it worth their while to pour upon him. The Queen remained his constant friend, and preferred him successively to a chaplaincy at Kew and the rectory of Byfleet in Surrey. But Duck was not a happy man; his education began too late in life, and he could never accommodate himself to his altered circumstances. He ended his career by committing suicide, a few years after the death of his royal patroness.