Commencing his London residence in 1781, soon after the publication of his first book of lyric odes, he lived in many different houses, in Southampton Row (1793); Tavistock Row (1794); Chapel Street, Portland Place (1800); 8, Delany Place, Camden Town (1802); 94, Tottenham Court Road (1807); and Latham Place, Somer’s Town, where he died on the 14th January, 1819.
Of his personal appearance much has been said. He has been described as “a thick, squat man with a large, dark and flat face and no speculation in his eye.” There are many portraits of him published, most of them by his protégé, Opie, the “Cornish boy,” as he calls him, whom he both educated and boomed in the press, a genius of undoubted merit as a painter. Unless these pictures outrageously flatter him, his must have been a fine physiognomy. We have seen eight or nine portraits, taken at different periods of his life, and in all he appears like a well-bred and handsome man of the style and period of George the Fourth. There is a miniature of him, however, in the National Portrait Gallery, which is said with candour to express many of the disagreeable features of his character. Our own portrait appended to this sketch is from a painting by Opie, engraved by C. H. Hodges, and reproduced in photography by Bailey, of Kingsbridge. One of his most faithful portraits is a miniature by Lethbridge, a Kingsbridge artist of some fame, who was born at Goveton, a little hamlet not far from the town.
Probably the last public compliment ever received by Peter Pindar was the dedication by his scholarly neighbour to him of the well-known History of Kingsbridge, published in 1819 (the year of Pindar’s death) by A. Hawkins, Esq., F.H.S. With the terms of that dedication we might fitly close our notice:—
To John Wolcot, M.D., long accredited at the Court of Apollo as Peter Pindar, Esq., these pages commemorative of the History and Topography of the vicinity of his native earth, are by his permission dedicated as a mark of sincere respect for his superior genius and talents.
If in our sketch of Peter Pindar we have “extenuated aught,” we have been wishful to “set down naught in malice,” and can only endorse the universal opinion as to his talent, with the unconcealed wish that such great power had been allowed to exert itself on a higher plane and to a nobler purpose.
O quantum est in rebus inane!
—Pers. I. 1.
How vain are all his cares!
And oh! what bubbles, his most grave affairs.
—Gifford.