Profile of Robert Lloyd on Famous Like Me

Robert Lloyd (1733-1764) was an English poet and satirist. He was educated at Westminister School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, from where he graduated in 1758. He was author of the popular poem "The Actor" (1760) and the comic opera "The Capricious Lovers" (1764), which was first performed at Drury Lane just a few weeks before his death. He was co-author, with George Colman, of Ode to Obscurity and Ode to Oblivion, both published in the early 1760s, and both satires on the works of the poets Mason and Thomas Gray. He was also co-editor of St. James Magazine (1762-3), and member of the infamous Nonsense Club of Old Westminster men with Bonnell Thornton, George Colman, William Cowper and others.

Lloyd was often in debt, and apparently died in Fleet Prison on December 15, 1764, shortly after the death of his lifelong friend Charles Churchill, to whose sister, Patty, he was engaged. The Dictionary of National Biography reads that Lloyd joined Charles Churchill in a "reckless career of dissipation", and Vulliamy, in his biography of Boswell, wrote that "Lloyd died when he was thirty-one, ruined by his friendship with Churchill".

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.

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