Page "Robert Gould" Paragraph 22

If Abingdon was not the one who encouraged the poem's composition, he at least enjoyed having the celebrated poet in his household.

At around this time, Gould also became a friend of Fleetwood Sheppard's, who appeared to treat the poet with great generosity.

The next poems from Gould continued the misogyny of Love Given O ' er ( e. g. A Satyr on Wooing, Epistle to One Made Unhappy in Marriage, A Scourge for Ill Wives, inter al.

) and attempted to broaden out the satire into an attack on human vanity in particular and mankind in general.

Gould's A Satyr on Mankind was, in its own day, noted for its excellence, and Alexander Pope paraphrases it.

Additionally, Jonathan Swift uses some of the same satirical figures, and it is likely that both authors had read Gould in the 1709 version of his poems.

Also in 1683 ( on June 17 ), Gould married Martha Roderick, and the two would later have a daughter named Hannah.

Between 1683 and 1689, Gould produced a number of satires, some of them providing unique insight into the English Restoration.

Satyr Upon the Play-House ( 1688 ), for example, attacked the parentage and pretense of Elizabeth Barry and Thomas Betterton, as well as the dissipate, drunken, whoring patrons of the theater.

It records the life of London around Covent Garden, complete with demobbed soldiers, thieves, prostitutes, and the nobility who only cover their filth in gold, cosmetics, and perfumes.

He also produced a few topical satires, such as To Julian, Secretary of the Muses, which attacks an anonymous lampoon author and gives specific detail about the personalities and personages of some of the dramatists of the day.

He even wrote a poem in honor of a retarded villager of Lavington before, two years later, writing a violent attack on the stupidity and obdurancy of all the " simple folk " of the country.