[William]. Author of considerable ability, the son of a citizen of London, and brought up, it is said, to a mechanical employment. This, however, he seems early to have abandoned, and to have devoted his talents to the cultivation of letters, by which he supported himself during the rest of a life which might be said to have passed in a state of warfare, as he was seldom without an enemy to attack or to defend himself against. He was for some time a student at Leyden, where he received the degree of doctor in both laws. Not long after his return to England, he attracted some notice as a poet by Epistles Philosophical and Moral, 1759, addressed to Lorenzo; an avowed defence of infidelity, written whilst under confinement for debt, and with a declaration that he was “much less ambitious of the character of a poet than of a philosopher.” From this period he became a writer by profession; and the Proteus shapes under which he appeared it would be a fruitless attempt to trace. He was for a considerable time a writer in the Monthly Review; but having quarrelled with his principal, he began a new review of his own. When Dr. Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare first appeared in the year 1765, it was followed in a fortnight by a pamphlet, entitled A Review of Dr. Johnson’s new Edition of Shakspeare, in which the ignorance or inattention of that editor is exposed, and the poet defended from the persecution of his commentators. This pamphlet was followed by an examination of it, and that by a Defence in 1766, in which year he produced his pleasant comedy of Falstaff’s Wedding, at first intended to have been given to the public as an original play of Shakespeare retrieved from obscurity, and which, it must be acknowledged, is a happy imitation of the great dramatic bard. With the celebrated English Roscius Dr. Kenrick was at one time on terms of the strictest intimacy; but he took occasion to quarrel with him in print, and in a mode too unmanly to be mentioned. In politics also he made himself not a little conspicuous, particularly in the dispute between his friends Wilkes and Horne. He was the original editor of the Morning Chronicle; but being ousted for neglect, he set up a new one in opposition. He translated in a very able manner the Émile and the Héloïse of Rousseau; the Elements of the History of England by Millot; and produced several dramatic performances, together with an infinite variety of publications both original and translated. To him also the public are indebted for the collection, imperfect as it is, of the poetical works of Robert Lloyd, 1774, in two vols. 8vo. See also Literary Criticism.
