His father died in 1766, leaving him a legacy of debt amounting to £50,000, and the burning of the family home further increased his difficulties.

Although he had no command of language and was destitute of poetic feeling, his ambition was to obtain recognition as a poet, and he published many volumes of verse.

He was made poet laureate in 1790, perhaps as a reward for his faithful support of William Pitt the Younger in the House of Commons.

[1] The 20th-century British historian Lord Blake called Pye "the worst Poet Laureate in English history with the possible exception of Alfred Austin".

A man, who, born in 1745, could write "Sir Charles Grandison is a much more unnatural character than Caliban," may have been a poetaster but was certainly not a fool.