Richard Jago

Both became part of the likeminded circle about Henrietta Knight, Lady Luxborough which also included other literary friends, William Somervile and Richard Graves, rector of Claverton.

The first, "The Cause of Impenitence Considered" (1755), was published for the benefit of Harbury Free School; the second was a funeral sermon, "The nature and grounds of a Christian's happiness in and after death" (1763).

[3] They were particularly praised by Dr. John Aikin in his "Essay on the application of Natural History to poetry",[4] who also noted that there were soon imitations among other minor poets, including Samuel Jackson Pratt's "The Partridges, an elegy" (1771)[5] and James Graeme's "The Linnet" (1773).

The poem intermingles description with legendary, historical and antiquarian particulars, principally the battle at the start of the English Civil War.

Imaginary excursions are made to Warwick, Coventry, Kenilworth, Solihull, and industrial Birmingham (under the name Bremicham), as well as many "flattering descriptions of all the great houses and seats of important people which come within his survey".

The critic already quoted finds the poem "really interesting; with the scene before us, it is impossible not to admire the ingenuity and scrupulous thoroughness with which the author has performed his task," although ultimately it is lacking in poetic execution.

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature judges that "his catalogues have little picturesqueness or colour; while his verse, although it is not without the accent of local association, is typical, as a whole, of the decadence of the Miltonic method of natural description in the 18th century.

[8] Particular examples of hackneyed diction include Latin-derived adjectives, as in "Honington's irriguous meads", or else 18th century circumlocutions such as "the woolly tribes" when sheep are meant.

[9] In the following year Jago published "Labour and Genius, or the mill-stream and the cascade", a humorous fable in octosyllabic verse written in memory of William Shenstone and his landscaped grounds at the Leasowes.