HOLCROFT, THOMAS, was born December 10, 1745 (old style). His father kept a shoemaker's shop in Leicester Fields, and occasionally dealt in horses. The first six years of his life were spent at his birth place, but some change in his father's circumstances brought him into Berkshire, and at last to a vagrant life. When very young he became a stable-boy in racing-stables at Newmarket, and continued in the service of training-grooms till his seventeenth year, after which time he lived a desultory life as shoemaker, tramper, or schoolmaster till twenty, when he' married. About this time he had proceeded far enough in self-education to venture to commit his performances to the columns of the Whitehall Evening Post,' but this whim soon gave way to others, and in a short time he found himself an actor. In 1780, having been some time on the London stage, he turned author, producing first a novel, then a comedy, and afterwards some poems, which were followed in their turn by a series of plays, and by trans lations of various French-works, of which those most remembered at present are—' Tales of the Castle,' and The Marriage of Figaro.' In 1789 he lost his son, and in 1790 his third wife. Four years afterwards
ho was implicated in the political trials relative to the Society for Constitutional information. From this time his life presents no tangible points : he seems to have spent the greater part of his time in writing, and in cultivating the fine arts.
He lived much in Germany and occasionally in Paris, and of this residence his Travels into France' was the fruit, a book which has probably been depreciated below its real merit, as his plays were doubtless raised above theirs. He died March 23, 1809.
Holcroft's chief merit lay in translation. As a translator he will probably be remembered ; as an author, probably he will not. His style bears all the marks of that of a half-educated man. Holcroft's life has been published, partly from diaries of his own. It is a perform ance the form of which private friendship has had a large share in determining. Lengthy quotations and needless talk fill three volumes, where one would have amply sufficed; divested of its superfluous matter it forms a volume of Longman's Traveller's Library,' and in that shape is a much more entertaining work than as it originally appeared.