BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR. IN presenting to the public this new edition of the Miscellaneous Works of ANDREW BECKET, it may be reasonably supposed that some of his readers will be desirous to become acquainted with a few particulars of his life, his early occupations and studies, and those literary productions in which he successively engaged. The Editor, at the same time, begs to observe, that the Biographical Notice here prefixed, is not to be considered as a succinct narrative, but only as embodying a few prominent features in the author's life, such as bear more particularly on the subject of his prose and dramatic works. Mr. Becket's family is of Irish extraction, the elder branch of which was once in possession of landed estates in the county of Galway. The subject of this memoir is the only son of the late Thomas Becket, of Pall Mall, who was brought up as a bookseller in London, and began his career in the Strand, where our author was born on the 11th of September, 1749. For the better cultivation of his mental powers, which began to develop* themselves at an early period of youth, his father placed him under the personal care of Dr. Rose, then master of an eminent school at Chiswick, where he made such progress in the rudiments of classic literature, as fully to realize the promise held out from the first dawn of his talents. After this initiatory process, which continued several years, young Becket was taken home, and sent to complete his education under the Rev. Dr. Pollock, at his academy in Great Windmill-street, once the house of the celebrated William Hunter, and where the meetings of the Westminster Medical Society are now held. Here he evinced the same assiduity and quickness of intellect, and the same amiable disposition, which won the favourable opinion of all his masters, and the lasting regard of his juvenile companions. In French-a language but little cultivated at that period-he made such progress as to be able, not only to converse in it with fluency, but to compose various sonnets and epigrams, both graceful and pointed, and evincing an intimate knowledge of the genius of the language. And here it may be mentioned, that when only in his fourteenth year, he wrote a comedy, founded on the "Emile" of Rousseau, of which his father's partner, De Hondt, thought so favourably as to have it trans * Between the ages of 10 and 13, he composed two fables, entitled "The Bee and the Butterfly," and "The Poet," which afford abundant evidence of the facility with which, even at that stage of the infant mind, his ideas flowed in numbers which would have done no discredit to a much older head. These two fables were neatly printed by "Andrew Strahan with his own hand," (as the inscription commemorates,) who became afterwards printer to the king, and died at an advanced age. |