on 17 Nov. 1852, and occasionally went circuit, but was chiefly known as the writer of a series of burlesques and extravaganzas. His first piece, ‘Macbeth Travestie,’ was originally produced at Henley-on-Thames during the regatta on 17 June 1847, and was afterwards brought out at the Strand Theatre on 10 Jan. 1848, and at the Olympic on 25 April 1853. He wrote for many of the theatres, and his pieces, though light and ephemeral, were in their day very popular. Among his best known pieces were ‘Alcestis, the original Strong-minded Woman,’ a burlesque brought out on 4 July 1850; ‘The Rule of Three,’ a comedietta, 20 Dec. 1858; ‘Tell and the Strike of the Cantons,’ 26 Dec. 1859, an extravaganza, in which Marie Wilton played Albert, and Patty Oliver Lisetta; all these were at the Strand Theatre. At the Olympic he brought out ‘Ganem, the Slave of Love,’ on 31 May 1852, and ‘Shylock, or the Merchant of Venice preserved,’ on 4 July 1853. In this burlesque Thomas Frederick Robson [q. v.] gave his very remarkable tragi-comic representation of the Jew. For the Haymarket he wrote ‘Pluto and Proserpine’ on 5 April 1858, and ‘Electra, in a new Electric Light,’ on 25 April 1859, in which Miss M. Ternan was seen as Orestes. On 26 Dec. 1854 he brought out at the St. James's ‘Abou Hassan, or the Hunt after Happiness,’ in which John Laurence Toole made one of his earliest appearances. With Henry James Byron he collaborated in bringing out his last piece, ‘The Miller and his Men,’ at the Strand Theatre on 9 April 1860. He died at Mentone on 9 March 1862, in his thirty-fourth year. He married, on 5 Nov. 1861, Frances Louisa Morgan, second daughter of Josiah Towne, a solicitor of Margate.
[Gent. Mag. April 1862, p. 520; Athenæum, 15 March 1862, p. 365.]
TALFOURD, Sir THOMAS NOON (1795–1854), judge and author, was born at Reading, Berkshire, on 26 May 1795. In the biographical notices published on occasion of his death the place of his birth was given as Doxey, a suburb of Stafford, and the date as 26 Jan. 1795; but the former statement appears to be negatived by his own testimony, and the latter by the entry in the Reading parish register. His father, Edward Talfourd, was a brewer; his mother was a daughter of Thomas Noon, minister of the independent chapel at Reading. After receiving some instruction at private schools, Thomas was sent to the recently founded dissenting school at Mill Hill, where he remained from 1808 to 1810. He was then placed at Reading grammar school under Dr. Richard Valpy [q. v.], of whom he speaks with gratitude and veneration, and under whom he continued until the middle of 1812. He had already, in 1811, published a volume of didactic ‘Poems on Various Subjects’ (London, 1811, 8vo), designed ‘to advance the cause of religion and morality,’ of which he afterwards, in conversation with Crabb Robinson, professed himself ashamed. ‘His lines,’ observes the ‘Monthly Review,’ ‘are smooth, but some of his opinions are rather enthusiastic,’ by which philanthropic rather than poetical enthusiasm seems to be denoted. In March 1813 he made his first appearance as a public speaker by a speech at a meeting of the Reading branch of the Bible Society, which was printed along with others delivered on the same occasion. In the same year, having made choice of the legal profession, by the advice, as is asserted, of Brougham, he became the pupil of Joseph Chitty [q. v.], the special pleader, and read law with him until 1817. Although no inattentive student of law, he gave more of his time to literature, especially in alliance with philanthropy and politics. He became connected with the ‘Pamphleteer,’ printed by the brother of his Reading schoolmaster, and at that time the vehicle for the opinions of many earnest thinkers; in that periodical appeared essays by Talfourd on the Roman catholic question, on the Royal Marriage Act, and on the punishment of the pillory. To the last-named of these ‘idle scribblings’ he himself, rightly or wrongly, ascribed a considerable share in effecting the abolition of the barbarous penalty it denounced. Through William Evans, the proprietor of the ‘Pamphleteer,’ he made at the beginning of 1815 the acquaintance of Charles Lamb, of whose writings he was already a votary, having hunted London for a copy of ‘Rosamund Gray.’ Another essay in the ‘Pamphleteer,’ (‘An Attempt to estimate the Poetical Talent of the present Age,’ in vol. v.), naming Lamb among the chief poets of the day, procured for Talfourd through Lamb the acquaintance of Wordsworth, to whom Lamb introduced him as ‘my one admirer.’ ‘My taste and feeling, as applied to poetry,’ Talfourd afterwards said, ‘underwent an entire change, consequent on my becoming acquainted with the poetry of Wordsworth.’ Intimacy with Coleridge followed; Godwin and Hazlitt he already knew, and he became an accepted member of a circle including most of the rising names in poetry and elegant literature, holding a sort of general retainer to champion it in the press. His essays in belles-lettres usually appeared in the ‘New Monthly Magazine,’ where, besides articles on Scott,
