DUCK, Stephen, originally a common thrasher in a barn, was born about the beginning of the eighteenth century. By his poetical talents he first attracted the notice of some gentlemen at Oxford; and having been recommended to Queen Caroline, he, under her patronage, took orders, and was preferred to the living of Byfleet in Surrey. Swift, who, one would have thought, might have overlooked such an object as Duck, but whose splenetic humour prompted him to be satirical for any reason or none, chose to feel piqued at the generosity displayed by the queen, and under the influence of this feeling wrote the following bitter Epigram "on Stephen Duck the thrasher and favourite poet:"
The thrasher 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, employ'd in threshing stubble!
Thy toll is lessened, and thy profits double.
Duck's abilities, however, were much more conspicuous in his primitive station than in his advancement, though it is said he was not disliked as a preacher. At length, having fallen into a low-spirited melancholy way, probably owing to his change of life, and the cessation of his usual labour, he in a fit of insanity threw himself from a bridge near Reading, into the Thames, and was drowned. This unhappy accident occurred in the year 1756.