“May it, therefore, please your Honourable House to protect him in said happy and long-doubtful event, and (by passing your Copyright Bill), forbid all Thomas Teggs, and other extraneous persons entirely unconcerned in this adventure of his, to steal from him his small winnings, for a space of sixty years, at shortest. After sixty years, unless your Honourable House provide otherwise, they may begin to steal. “And your petitioner will ever pray. “THOMAS CARLYLE.” Tegg did not confine his business to these cheap reprints, but issued many books which were altogether beyond the popular taste and purse, such as “Blackstone,” edited by Price; Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” Locke’s Works, (in ten volumes), Bishop Butler’s Works, and Hooker’s “Ecclesiastical Polity,” &c. Out of Dr. Adam Clarke’s “Family Bible” he is said to have made a small fortune; the work was stereotyped, and re-issue after re-issue was published. In 1835 he was nominated Alderman of his Ward, but was not elected; in the following year he was chosen Sheriff, and paid the fine to escape serving, having resolved to forego any further civic distinctions. To the usual fine of £400 he added another hundred, and the whole went to found a “Tegg Scholarship” at the City of London School, and he still further increased the value of the gift by adding thereto a very valuable collection of books. On 21st April, 1845, Thomas Tegg died, after a long and painful illness, brought on by over-exertion, mental and physical. His third son, Alfred Byron Tegg, a youth of twenty, then studying at Pembroke College, Oxford, was so affected by the shock of his father’s death that he died almost on receipt of the news, and was buried the same day as his father at Wimbledon--Thomas Tegg’s native village. At the commencement of his autobiography, Tegg says, and the narrative bears the veracity of the statement upon every page:--“In sitting down to write some account of my past life, I feel as if I were occupied in making my will. I feel at a loss to express fully my emotions. I write in a grateful spirit. What I have acquired has been acquired by industry, patience, and privation,” and he adds elsewhere, “I can say in passing through life, whether rich or poor, my spirit never forsook me so as to prevent me from rallying again. I have seen and associated with all ranks and stations in society. I have lodged with beggars, and had the honour of presentation to Royalty. I have been so reduced as to plead for assistance, and, by the goodness of Providence, I have been able to render it to others.” He was generally believed to have been the original of Twigg in Hood’s “Tylney Hall.”