[3] Martin was highly regarded by contemporary critics and is considered as Guyana's first major poet, despite his death from tuberculosis at the age of 29.
Guyanese poet[4] and essayist A. J. Seymour described him as "a fair Mulatto" (implying a mixture of White and Afro-Guyanese ancestry) who from his early youth was "confined to an invalid's bed, as a result of illness.
[7] In 1887, he won an kingdom-wide competition at an event organised by the London Standard to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, for appending two verses to the British national anthem.
Similarly, The Berbice Gazette considered Martin a poet "whose works plainly bespeak talent and ability of a high order", while the Guiana Herald pointed out "the name and merits of Leo are so well known that comments are scarcely requisite".
However, Martin's works have also been viewed as a "weak imitation of Wordsworth, mixed with Tennyson, with a flavouring of Edgar Allan Poe".