ABSTRACT
Robert Tatersal was aware of Stephen Duck's celebrity and had read his pirated poems; the epigraph to both his volumes makes clear that Duck was the catalyst that induced Tatersal to publish: 'Since Rustick. Tatersal appears to have had an attentive patron in Lord Onslow, but nevertheless was envious of Duck's royal support. 'The Bricklayers Labours', Tatersal's contribution to an occupation-specific plebeian poetics emerging in the 1730s after Duck's success with 'The Thresher's Labour', is a lively, accomplished portrayal of the workaday life of a bricklayer in the period. An additional volume of The Bricklayer's Misccellany, styled The Second Part, containing all new poems, appeared in 1735. It contains more didactic poetry than the previous volume, and includes 'Elegy on a Bricklayer; written by himself', a piece which prefigures Gray's Elegy in allowing the speaker to write his own epitaph at the end.
