meetings and assemblies received the royal assent, he thought it wisest to leave London; and Mathias, in the ‘Pursuits of Literature,’ mentions how
Thelwall for the season quits the Strand,
To organise revolt by sea and land
(Dial. iv. l. 413). But he continued for nearly two years denouncing the government to the provinces, and commenting freely upon contemporary politics through the medium of ‘Lectures upon Roman History.’ He was warmly received in some of the large centres; in the eastern counties, especially at Yarmouth (where he narrowly escaped capture by a pressgang), King's Lynn, and Wisbech, mobs were hired which effectually prevented his being heard.
About 1798 he withdrew altogether from his connection with politics and took a small farm near Brecon. There he spent two years, gaining in health, but suffering a great deal from the enforced silence; and about 1800 he resumed his career as a lecturer, discarding politics in favour of elocution. His illustrations were so good and his manner so animated that his lectures soon became highly popular. At Edinburgh during 1804 he had a fierce paper war with Francis Jeffrey [q. v.], whom he suspected of inspiring some uncharitable remarks about him in the ‘Edinburgh Review.’ Soon after this he settled down as a teacher of oratory in Upper Bedford Place, and had many bar students among his pupils. He made the acquaintance of Southey, Hazlitt, and Coleridge (who spoke of him as an honest man, with the additional rare distinction of having nearly been hanged), and also of Talfourd, Crabb Robinson, and Charles Lamb. From the ordinary groove of elocutionary teaching, Thelwall gradually concentrated his attention upon the cure of stammering, and more generally upon the correction of defects arising from malformation of the organs of speech. In 1809 he took a large house in Lincoln's Inn Fields (No. 57) so that he might take the complete charge of patients, holding that the science of correcting impediments involved the correcting and regulating of the whole mental and moral habit of the pupil. His system had a remarkable success, some of his greatest triumphs being recorded in his ‘Treatment of Cases of Defective Utterance’ (1814) in the form of a letter to his old friend Cline. Crabb Robinson visited his institution on 27 Dec. 1815, and was tickled by Thelwall's idea of having Milton's ‘Comus’ recited by a troupe of stutterers, but was astonished at the results attained. Much as Charles Lamb disliked lectures and recitations, his esteem for Thelwall made him an occasional visitor at these entertainments in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Reports of some cases of special interest were contributed by him to the ‘Medical and Physical Journal.’
Thelwall prospered in his new vocation until 1818, when his constitutional restlessness impelled him to throw himself once more prematurely into the struggle for parliamentary reform. He purchased a journal, ‘The Champion,’ to advocate this cause; but his Dantonesque style of political oratory was entirely out of place in a periodical addressed to the reflective classes, and he soon lost a great portion of his earnings. He subsequently resumed his elocution school at Brixton, and latterly spent much time as an itinerant lecturer, retaining his cheerfulness and sanguine outlook to the last. He died at Bath on 17 Feb. 1834.
He married, first, on 27 July 1791, Susan Vellum, a native of Rutland, who died in 1816, leaving him four children. She supported him greatly during his early trials, and was, in the words of Crabb Robinson, his ‘good angel.’ He married secondly, about 1819, Cecil Boyle, a lady many years younger than himself. A woman of great social charm and some literary ability, she wrote, in addition to a ‘Life’ of her husband, several little works for children. She died in 1863, leaving one son, Weymouth Birkbeck Thelwall, a watercolour artist, who was accidentally killed in South Africa in 1873.
Talfourd and Crabb Robinson testify strongly to Thelwall's integrity and domestic virtues. His judgment was not perhaps equal to his understanding; but, apart from a slight warp of vanity and self-complacency, due in part to his self-acquired knowledge, few men were truer to their convictions. In person he was small, compact, and muscular, with a head denoting indomitable resolution. A portrait engraved by J. C. Timbrell, from a bust by E. Davis, forms the frontispiece to the ‘Life of John Thelwall by his Widow,’ London, 1837, 8vo. A portrait ascribed to William Hazlitt [q. v.] has also been reproduced. The British Museum possesses two stipple engravings—one by Richter.
Apart from the works already mentioned and a large number of minor pamphlets and leaflets, Thelwall published: 1. ‘The Peripatetic, or Sketches of the Heart of Nature and Society,’ London, 1793, 3 vols. 12mo. 2. ‘Political Lectures: On the Moral Tendency of a System of Spies and Informers, and the Conduct to be observed by the Friends of Liberty during the Continuance of such a System,’ London, 1794,
