In his Elegy on the Death of David Garrick (1779) Tasker celebrates the artistic genius of Garrick, Shakespeare and Reynolds, and implicitly links it to the warlike genius of the nation.[9] In his Ode to the Warlike Genius of Great Britain (1780) he urged Britain to wake up and defeat the aggressors.[10] The ‘Ode to the Warlike Genius’ was dedicated to Lord Amherst. Some new stanzas were spoken before the king at Weymouth.[11] The Gentleman's Magazine said the poem was "well-calculated to rouse the martial spirit of the nation".[7] He complemented the Duchess of Devonshire in the poem for wearing riding dress at the Cox-heath military camp, calling her the "Genius of Britain".[12]