Leonard Welsted

Leonard Welsted (baptised 3 June 1688 – August 1747) was an English poet and "dunce" in Alexander Pope's writings (both in The Dunciad and in Peri Bathos). Welsted was an accomplished writer who composed in a relaxed, light hearted vein. He was associated with Whig party political figures in his later years (the years in which he earned Pope's enmity), but he was tory earlier, and, in the age of patronage, this seems to have been more out of financial need than anything else.

He was the son of a Church of England priest and was orphaned at six. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge but left without a degree. He married Frances Purcell, the orphaned daughter of Henry Purcell, around 1707, and the couple had a daughter, also named Frances. However, the mother died in 1712, and Welsted married Anna Maria Walker, the sister of an admiral, that year. In his poetry, he referred to her as Zelinda. Frances Welsted, the daughter, died in 1726, seventeen years old, and Welsted mourned her loss in Hymn to the Creator the next year.