MEMOIRS OF THE LATE THOMAS HOLCROFT, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF; AND CONTINUED TO THE TIME OF HIS DEATH, FROM HIS DIARY, NOTES, AND OTHER PAPERS. IN TWO PARTS. PART I. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 1852. B. 1725 2005 pt.l PREFACE. THE difficulties with which genius has frequently to contend in the varied trials of life have rarely been so strikingly exemplified as in the life of Thomas Holcroft. Cradled in poverty, with no education save what he could pick up for himself, amid incessant struggles for bare existence,-by turns a pedlar, a stable boy, a shoemaker, and a strolling player, he yet contrived to surmount the most untoward circumstances, and at last took his place, among the most distinguished writers of his age, as a novelist, a dramatist, and a translator. The "Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft" has long been a scarce book; and it has been thought that this most entertaining biography of a remarkable man cannot fail to be acceptable to the readers of the "Traveller's Library." ADVERTISEMENT. MR. HOLCROFT had intended, for several years before his death, to write an account of his own life. It is now only to be regretted that he did not begin to execute this design sooner. Few lives have been marked with more striking changes; and no one possessed the qualities necessary for describing them with characteristic liveliness in a greater degree than he did. It often happens that what we most wish done we fail to do, either through fear lest the execution should not answer our expectations, or because the pleasure with which we contemplate a favourite object at a distance, makes us neglect the ordinary means of attaining it. This seems to have been the case with Mr. Holcroft, who did not begin the work he had so long projected, till within a short time of his death. How much he had it at heart may, however, be inferred from the extraordinary pains he then took to make some progress in it. He told his physicians that he did not care what severity of treatment he was subjected to, provided he could live six months longer to complete what he had begun. By dictating a word at a time, he succeeded in bringing it down to his fifteenth year. When the clearness, minuteness, and vividness of what he thus wrote, are compared with the feeble, half-convulsed state in which it was written, it will be difficult to bring a stronger instance of the exertion of resolution and firmness of mind, under such circumstances. The whole of this account is given literally to |