At this crisis, the munificence which had protected him through various vicissitudes did not fail to exert itself; with the result of his own frugality, it enabled him and his wife to settle themselves in a shop of grocery, where mutual and rigid industry decently maintained a numerous family of children, and where a life of domestic virtue engaged private patronage, and merited public imitation.
In December, 1780, a series of complicated disorders destroyed him.
Of a Negro, a Butler, and a Grocer, there are but slender anecdotes to animate the page of the biographer; but it has been held necessary to give some sketch of the very singular man, whose letters, with all their imperfections on their head, are now offered to the public.
The display those writings exhibit of epistolary talent, of rapid and just conception, of wild patriotism, and of universal philanthropy, may well apologize for the protection of the great, and the friendship of the literary.
The late Duchesses of Queensberry and Northumberland pressed forward to serve the author of them. The former intrusted to his reformation a very unworthy favourite of his own complexion.—Garrick and Sterne were well acquainted with Ignatius Sancho.
A commerce with the Muses was supported amid the trivial and momentary interruptions of a shop; the Poets were studied, and even imitated with some success;—two pieces were constructed for the stage;—the Theory of Music was discussed, published, and dedicated to the Princess Royal;—and painting was so much within the circle of Ignatius Sancho’s judgement and criticism, that several artists paid great deference to his opinion.
Such was the man whose species philosophers and anatomists have endeavoured to degrade as a deterioration of the human; and such was the man whom Fuller, with a benevolence and quaintness of phrase peculiarly his own, accounted
“God’s Image, though cut in Ebony.”