It will be seen that a delay of six years took place between the date of Hazlitt’s _Advertisement_ and the publication of the volumes. Mr W. C. Hazlitt writes: ‘These _Memoirs_ were never, in spite of all the lapse of time, completely printed; only three volumes out of four were printed.’ Every endeavour to find this fourth volume has failed. The _Memoirs_ were reprinted, abridged, in Longman’s ‘Travellers’ Library,’ 1852. The present issue reproduces the first edition. ADVERTISEMENT Mr Holcroft had intended, for several years before his death, to write an account of his own life. It is now only to be regretted that he did not begin to execute this design sooner. Few lives have been marked with more striking changes; and no one possessed the qualities necessary for describing them with characteristic liveliness in a greater degree than he did. It often happens, that what we most wish done, we fail to do, either through fear lest the execution should not answer our expectations, or because the pleasure with which we contemplate a favourite object at a distance, makes us neglect the ordinary means of attaining it. This seems to have been the case with Mr Holcroft, who did not begin the work he had so long projected, till within a short time of his death. How much he had it at heart, may however be inferred from the extraordinary pains he then took to make some progress in it. He told his physicians that he did not care what severity of treatment he was subjected to, provided he could live six months longer to complete what he had begun. By dictating a word at a time, he succeeded in bringing it down to his fifteenth year. When the clearness, minuteness, and vividness of what he thus wrote, are compared with the feeble, half-convulsed state in which it was written, it will be difficult to bring a stronger instance of the exertion of resolution and firmness of mind, under such circumstances. The whole of this account is given literally to the public. This part comprises the first seventeen Chapters, or Book I. The remainder of the Life has been compiled from Mr Holcroft’s Letters; from Journals and other papers to which I had access; from conversations with some of his early and most intimate friends; and from passages in his printed works, relating to his own history and adventures, pointed out to me by them. Some of the anecdotes I have also heard mentioned by himself; but these are comparatively few. I first became acquainted with Mr Holcroft about ten years ago; my chief intercourse with him was within the last three or four years of his life. WILLIAM HAZLITT. _January, 1810._ THE LIFE OF THOMAS HOLCROFT BOOK I CHAPTER I [_This and the remaining Chapters of the first Book are in Mr Holcroft’s own words._]