Capel Lofft 

Capel Lofft (1751-1824) studied at Eton, Cambridge, and later at Lincoln’s Inn, after which he became a successful barrister. In 1781 he settled on his family lands around Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, and devoted himself to his legal practice, to politics, and to literature; he was a strong supporter of Charles James Fox and the reform-minded Whigs of the late 1780s and early 1790s. He was also the primary patron of Robert Bloomfield, the agrarian poet. Among his friends were Mary Scott’s brother, Russell, and many of her Unitarian friends in London, including Theophilus Lindsey. The quotation is taken from Eudosia, or A Poem on the Universe (London, 1781).