I have spoken of Joseph Bartlett, who lived on the corner of Court street and Court square, but there was another Joseph Bartlett of whom probably few of my readers have ever heard. He was a man of diversified talents, of diversified traits of character, and led a diversified life. He was author, poet, orator, lecturer, lawyer, merchant, gambler, prisoner for debt, and generally an adventurer. He was son of Sylvanus and Martha (Wait) Bartlett, and was born in Plymouth in 1761. His father was a well to do merchant, who owned real estate in the neighborhood of the present junction of High and Russell streets. He had a sister, Sophia, who married Benjamin Drew, the father of our late deceased friend, Benjamin Drew, and I have always supposed that our friend inherited his brilliant talents from his mother’s side of the house. Mr. Bartlett graduated at Harvard in 1782, and studied law in Salem, and was recommended to be sworn as attorney in 1788. Soon after the close of the revolution he went to England, and in London, attracted by his eccentricities and wit much attention. One evening at the theatre during the performance of a play in which American soldiers were caricatured as cobblers, tailors and tinkers, he stood up in the pit and called for cheers for the army of cobblers, tailors and tinkers who had defeated the British. The interference so far from being resented, was taken in good part, and the young Londoners took him into their companionship and invited him to the clubs where he was for a time made much of. He afterwards fell into gambling habits, and finally was imprisoned for debt. He wrote a play, and from the proceeds of its sale obtained a release, after which for a short time he appeared on the stage. After his return home he opened a law office in Woburn, and painted it black, calling it “the coffin” to attract notice. He afterwards removed to Cambridge, and in 1799 delivered a poem before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Society on “Physiognomy,” in which some of his allusions, like the following, were believed to be personal: “First on the list observe that woman’s form, Who looks a very monster in a storm. Her skinny lips, her pointed nose behold, And say if nature’s marked her for a scold; Observe her chin, her every feature trace, And see the fury trembling in her face; By nature made to mar the joys of life; And damn that man who has her for a wife.” In 1823 he delivered a Fourth of July oration in Boston, and recited a poem entitled, “The New Vicar of Bray.” At one time in his varied career he was a member of the Maine legislature, and at another had a law office in Portsmouth, N. H. In 1823 he published a collection of “Aphorisms on men, manners, principles and things,” and also an essay on “The blessings of poverty,” prefaced by the following lines: