Besides several controversial tracts, Olivers wrote a number of hymns, and is known as the composer of a number of Psalm-tunes.[142] He continued his ministry in London till March, 1799, when he died at the age of seventy-four. He was buried in John Wesley’s tomb, in the City Road Chapel Yard, London, as a token of the esteem in which he was held by Wesley and his friends.
THOMAS HOLCROFT, DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, ETC.[143]
Thomas Holcroft was a much more noteworthy man. At the time of the State Trials he had made a considerable name as a writer of political novels. In his “Anna St. Ives” and “Hugh Trevor” he had exposed the follies and vices of society around him, and had set forth his own political views in a manner well calculated to captivate the fancy of young and ardent reformers. When the trial of Hardy began, Holcroft surrendered himself in court, deeming it base and unmanly to refuse to share the fate of those whose political views he had warmly espoused. Both friends and foes honored him for his chivalrous conduct in the affair. On the acquittal of his friends he was discharged without a trial.
The life of Holcroft is as full of romance as any of those depicted in his novels. He was born in London in 1745. During the first six years of the boy’s life, his father was a shoemaker. Giving up this occupation in 1751, Holcroft, senior, “took to the road” as a hawker and peddler, and his poor child led a vagrant, gypsy-like life, and passed through privations which he could never afterward think of without shame and sorrow. And yet he managed to turn this worst period of his life to some account. The first-hand knowledge it afforded him of nature and human affairs gave freshness and power to the comedies and dramas written in later years. During these early years his father taught him to read out of the Bible, and such was his progress, that in a little while the daily task consisted of eleven chapters. These, he tells us, he could often have missed by telling a falsehood, which his conscience never would allow; and, besides this, he had no wish to evade the task, for the stories of the Old Testament were so full of interest to his boyish mind, that he was eager to go on to the end. While his father and mother were engaged as hawkers, young Holcroft was sent out to beg. In this miserable employment he became quite an expert; and, like many another unfortunate beggar, he was led to draw on his imagination for tales to answer his purpose. On returning home he would recount his adventures, and repeat the marvellous stories he had invented, until his father, who at first admired the lad’s gift as a romancer, came to be ashamed of allowing him to lead such an idle and mischievous life, and put a stop to his escapades.
After this he was employed as a stable-boy and jockey at Newmarket. The change in his circumstances thus brought about was a very happy one, for he had now good fare, a comfortable bed to sleep on, decent or rather smart clothes, of which he was not a little proud; and, added to all this, a certain position in respectable society! His father had a friend at Newmarket who had a taste for reading, and followed the “profession” of feeder and trainer of gamecocks for the pit. This man was struck with Thomas Holcroft’s natural ability, and lent him books to read, such as the “Spectator” and “Gulliver’s Travels.” While at Newmarket he was one day passing a church, and stopped to listen to the music of the choir, then engaged in practice. He ventured to enter the church, and feeling a strong desire to learn to sing, spoke to the leader. Mr. Langham, who, finding the stable-boy had a good voice, admitted him into the choir. He threw himself so heartily into this new and fascinating study, that it was not long before he could read music and sing in good style.
At the age of sixteen, he again went to live with his father, who had once more returned to the shoemaker’s stall, and lived in London. Here he learned enough of the trade to earn a livelihood, but he involved himself in premature cares by an imprudent marriage when only twenty years of age.
And now the passion for a roving life got the better of him, and quitting the monotony of a cobbler’s room, he betook himself to the stage. For seven years he led the life of a strolling player, “and sounded all the depths and shoals” of misery incident to such a precarious existence.
It was not till after his thirtieth year that he began to acquire settled habits of study, to learn the languages—French, German, and Italian—in which he afterward became a ready translator, and to set about any kind of literary work. The first products of his pen appeared in the Whitehall Evening Post. He was in his thirty-fifth year when his first novel, “Alwyn, or the Gentleman Comedian,” appeared. The year after this saw the issue of his earliest comedy, Duplicity, which was put on the stage at Covent Garden Theatre, and had a good run of success. This was followed by some thirty dramatic pieces of one kind or other, in poetry or prose, comedies and comic operas, dramas and melodramas, which last he had the credit of introducing into England. The Road to Ruin is accounted, by some judges of note, the best of his dramas. Holcroft was a man of versatile powers and great industry. His natural gifts were remarkable, and his extensive knowledge was almost entirely self-acquired. As already indicated, he was a very prolific author. Besides the three novels and the plays referred to above, he issued translations from the French of Toucher d’Obsonville and Pierre de Long; from the German, Goethe’s “Herman and Dorothea;” and from the Italian. He spent much of his time in Germany and France, and his interesting work, “Travels into France,” is one of his most valued productions. Thomas Holcroft died 23d March, 1809, at the age of sixty-four, having crowded as much work into his eventful life as most of the leading men of his time.