He associated with Thomas Tickell, Ambrose Philips, Leonard Welsted, Richard Steele, and John Dennis.
That same year, he published an essay in the Daily Journal examining the Thersites section of Pope's Iliad which showed many faults of translation.
In response, Cooke reissued The Battle of the Poets and the Daily Journal essay in 1729 in his Tales, Epistles, Odes, Fables, &c. He also wrote several letters for the London Journal in 1729–1730 and issued those as a book dedicated to Horace Walpole (son of the divisive prime minister) in 1731.
In 1731, he published The Triumphs of Love and Honour, with a long essay on the usefulness of the English stage.
Later, he wrote a book of Odes, a Life of King Edward III of England in 1734, and essays for the Weekly Oracle on Phalaris.
In 1734, he produced a three-volume translation of the plays of Terence, and in 1737 an edition of Cicero's De natura deorum with an extensive critical apparatus.
Two years later, he wrote and published a play called The Mournful Nuptials which was not acted until 1743 (as Love the Cause and Cure of Grief).
In 1744, he adapted his Le Lutrin piece as The Battle of the Poets as a one-act play to be inserted into Henry Fielding's Tom Thumb.