MR. JOHN THELWALL.

JOHN THELWALL is descended from a family of that name, formerly of Crosby, in Lancashire, where they were possessed of some landed property.

His grandfather, Walter Thelwall, was a Roman Catholic by persuasion, and a surgeon by profession. He served in that capacity in the Royal Navy; and, after some adventures, which involved eventually the loss of his real estate, settled in Northampton, where he died intestate, leaving an only son, of the name of Joseph, then only two years old, and a young widow, who, by a second marriage and some subsequent acts of imprudence, suffered the personal property (which appears to have been somewhat considerable) to be alienated in as irregular a way as the real had formerly been.*

Joseph was educated in Yorkshire by his paternal grand-mother, and was afterwards a silk-mercer in London; in the first instance in partnership with his uncles, the Hinchliff's, of Henrietta-Street, mercers to his Majesty's wardrobe, and afterwards in KingStreet, Covent-Garden, where he died in his 42d year; while the person who is the subject of these memoirs was but about ten years of age.

* The landed estate might probably have been recovered during the minority of the son, but for the selfish apathy of certain relations, who alone had the power and opportunity to have exerted themselves in the affair.

1800-1801.

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Of

Of this Joseph, John is the youngest of three surviving children. He was born in Chandos-Street, in the parish of St. Paul, Covent-Garden: he was baptised and educated in the religion of the church of England, which both his parents professed.

His father had a house at Lambeth, where the family mostly resided till within a year or two of the death of that parent. At an academy in that neighbourhood he received the first rudiments of his education. He was afterwards some years under the care of the late Mr. Dick, of Hart-Street, CoventGarden, of whose ferocious and brutal severity he was never able to speak but with vehement indigna. tion. He was afterwards removed to another dayschool in St. Martin's Lane, and from thence to a boarding-school at Highgate; where, to use his own expression," he lost his time in something worse "than indolence," till he had nearly completed his fourteenth year. [See his Peripatetic, in which he describes at large many of his juvenile adventures and propensities.] From this censure, however, he cxcepts about three months of the time he spent in that seminary; during which time a young clergymen of the name of Harvey was usher there, his intellectual obligations to whom seemed to have left a very singular impression on his mind, as he never mentions him but with an enthusiasm of gratitude and friendship.

This young man indeed had left the school sometime before Thelwall was taken from it. But he seems to have sown in the mind of this pupil, at least

the

the seeds of literary ambition. These seeds, indeed, seemed to wither after the departure of Harvey; but they revived again, in spite of the unfavourable circumstances and the incapacity of the tutors that surrounded him, before he was taken from the school; and he began to enter with so much ardour upon the business of self-tuition, that nothing but a continuation of the leisure for improvement, and a few properly selected books, seem to have been necessary to have enabled him to make considerable progress.

These opportunities were, however, refused him. He was called home to different scenes and different pursuits, and he did not quit the studies he was beginning so much to relish without some remonstrance, and many tears.

With respect to the pursuits of life, his first and very early attachment was to the arts; and his father, who formed great expectations of him from the activity of his mind, had fed his ambition with the hope of making him an historical painter. But his father was now no more, and left him in the power of those who were not capable of the same enlarged and liberal views. Sorely against his own inclination, and in violent opposition to every indication of his mind, he was placed behind the shop counter, where he continued till he was turned of sixteen.

During this time he occupied his leisure, and, in fact, much of that time which ought to have been devoted to business, in the perusal of such books as the neighbouring circulating library could furnish. In novels, indeed, he took very little delight: plays,

poetry, and history, were his favourites; and moral philosophy, metaphysics, and even divinity were not entirely neglected. That he might lose no opportunity of pursuing these various compositions, it was his constant practice to read as he went along the streets, upon whatever business he might be employed a practice which, originating in a sort of necessity, settled into habit, and was not entirely laid aside till his political exertions brought him into notoriety, and produced several remonstrances from his friends on its singularity and apparent affecta

tion.

But a distaste for business was not the only cause of his discontent. He had the misfortune to live in a state of perpetual discord with an unhappy brother whose vehement and tyrannical temper was aggravated by a discase (the epilepsy) notorious for its ravages on the intellectual system, and by the progress of which his faculties have at last become entirely disarranged.

The ardent and independent spirit whose memoirs we are writing, found the yoke of this tyranny, and the stripes and violence with which it was enforced, utterly insupportable. Circumstances also arose out of some other parts of the conduct of the elder brother, which made him equally desirous of a separation. John accordingly turned his intention again to his favourite art, and a painter of some eminence was applied to: but the mistaken economy of his mother made the premium and expences an insurmountable bar. He then made a fruitless effort

to

to get upon the stage: but his written application to the late Mr. Colman was answered only by a moral expostulation against the design, and a declaration that he had no room in his company for any new ad

venturer.

His present situation was, however, absolutely insupportable; and rather than live in that terrible state of domestic discord which tore his over irritable nerves, and embittered every moment of his life, he yielded to the proposal of being apprenticed to an eminent master taylor at the west end of the town.

This was one of those projects of narrow and miscalculating policy by which the dictates of nature are so frequently violated, and the prospects and happiness of youth so inhumanly blighted, for the sake of enabling two brothers to play into each other's hands, as it is called, and promote each other's interests. It ended as such projects usually do.

Young Thelwall had now changed his residence, indeed, and his nominal profession; but his pursuits were still the same. The shop-board, like the shop counter, was a feat, not of business but of study. Plays (particularly tragedies) were perpetually in his hands and in his mouth. From thence he foared to epic poetry; devoured with insatiable avidity Pope's translation of Homer, and committed several hundred verses to memory, meditating the herculean labour of getting the whole Iliad by heart. His opportunities of study were, however, so inadequate to his wifhes, that he even carried a wax taper in his pocket,

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