[394] William Bellenden, a Scotch professor at the University of Paris, who died about 1633. His textbooks are now forgotten, but Parr edited an edition of his works in 1787. The Latin preface, Praefatio ad Bellendum de Statu, was addressed to Burke, North, and Fox, and was a satire on their political opponents.
[395] As we have seen, he had been head-master before he began taking "his handful of private pupils."
[396] The story has evidently got mixed up in the telling, for Tom Sheridan (1721-1788), the great actor, was old enough to have been Dr. Parr's father. It was his son, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), the dramatist and politician, who was the pupil of Parr. He wrote The Rivals (1775) and The School for Scandal (1777) soon after Parr left Harrow.
[397] Horner (1785-1864) was a geologist and social reformer. He was very influential in improving the conditions of child labor.
[398] William Cobbett (1762-1835), the journalist, was a character not without interest to Americans. Born in Surrey, he went to America at the age of thirty and remained there eight years. Most of this time he was occupied as a bookseller in Philadelphia, and while thus engaged he was fined for libel against the celebrated Dr. Rush. On his return to England he edited the Weekly Political Register (1802-1835), a popular journal among the working classes. He was fined and imprisoned for two years because of his attack (1810) on military flogging, and was also (1831) prosecuted for sedition. He further showed his paradox nature by his History of the Protestant Reformation (1824-1827), an attack on the prevailing Protestant opinion. He also wrote a Life of Andrew Jackson (1834). After repeated attempts he succeeded in entering parliament, a result of the Reform Bill.
[399] Robinson (1735-1790) was a Baptist minister who wrote several theological works and a number of hymns. His work at Cambridge so offended the students that they at one time broke up the services.
[400] This work had passed through twelve editions by 1823.
[401] Dyer (1755-1841), the poet and reformer, edited Robinson's Ecclesiastical Researches (1790). He was a life-long friend of Charles Lamb, and in their boyhood they were schoolmates at Christ's Hospital. His Complaints of the Poor People of England (1793) made him a worthy companion of the paradoxers above mentioned.
[402] These were John Thelwall (1764-1834) whose Politics for the People or Hogswash (1794) took its title from the fact that Burke called the people the "swinish multitude." The book resulted in sending the author to the Tower for sedition. In 1798 he gave up politics and started a school of elocution which became very famous. Thomas Hardy (1752-1832), who kept a bootmaker's shop in Piccadilly, was a fellow prisoner with Thelwall, being arrested for high treason. He was founder (1792) of The London Corresponding Society, a kind of clearing house for radical associations throughout the country. Horne Tooke was really John Horne (1736-1812), he having taken the name of his friend William Tooke in 1782. He was a radical of the radicals, and organized a number of reform societies. Among these was the Constitutional Society that voted money (1775) to assist the American revolutionists, appointing him to give the contribution to Franklin. For this he was imprisoned for a year. With his fellow rebels in the Tower in 1794, however, he was acquitted. As a philologist he is known for his early advocacy of the study of Anglo-Saxon and Gothic, and his Diversions of Purley (1786) is still known to readers.
[403] This was the admiral, Adam Viscount Duncan (1731-1804), who defeated the Dutch off Camperdown in 1797.