Robert Merry

Robert Merry (1755–1798) was an English poet and dilettante, born in London into a family with ties to the Hudson's Bay Company; his mother was a daughter of Sir John Willes, Lord Chief Justice. He lived for some years in Italy, where he was admitted to the Accademia della Crusca of Florence, and he took the name "Della Crusca" from it when he began printing verse in the London newspapers.

As "Della Crusca" he conducted the celebrated verse correspondence with Hannah Cowley's "Anna Matilda" in The World (1787–88), the high point of the sentimental, ornate manner later mocked as the Della Cruscan school. The poems here are only his contributions as printed in The Poetry of Anna Matilda (London: John Bell, 1788); they are attributed by the signature at the end of each piece. He emigrated to America in the 1790s and died at Baltimore in 1798.