Encouraged by the village squire, schoolmaster and rector, he read Milton, Dryden, Prior, and The Spectator, as well as the Holy Bible, according to Joseph Spence.
Clarke and Spence (the Professor of Poetry at Oxford University and friend of Alexander Pope) promoted Duck as a sincerely pious man of sober wit.
The poem was celebrated throughout London society, and he soon wrote The Shunammite, which reflected Duck's piety and religious imagination.
In 1733, Duck was made a Yeoman of the Guard by the queen, and that year he met and married Sarah Big, Caroline's housekeeper at Kew.
In 1735, Caroline made him keeper of Merlin's Cave (a thatched folly containing waxworks) in Richmond Park, where he had previously worked as a gardener.
When Duck was rumoured to be a candidate for the Laureate, this distinction between the private man and the quality of the verse made him a worthy target.
More charitably, George Crabbe rhetorically asks "Save honest DUCK, what son of verse could share/ The poet's rapture and the peasant's care?"
On 21 March 1756 Duck, apparently overwhelmed by the strain caused by his change in social status, committed suicide by drowning.