At Stockton-upon-Tees, Mr Holcroft first became acquainted with Ritson, the antiquarian, and author of the Treatise on animal food, who was afterwards one of his most intimate friends. He was at that time articled to an attorney in the town; but was, like most other young men of taste or talents, fonder of poetry than the law. The poet Cunningham was an actor in the same company. He was the intimate friend of Shield. He was, it seems, a man of a delicate constitution, of retired habits, and extreme sensibility, but an amiable and worthy man. The parts in which he acted with most success were mincing fops and pert coxcombs,—characters the most opposite to his own. He played Garrick’s character of Fribble, in Miss in her Teens. He also excelled in Comus. He was often subject to fits of absence; as a proof of which, he once forgot that he had played the Duke of Albany in King Lear, and had returned to the door of the theatre for the second time, before he recollected himself.—Besides his descriptive poems, he wrote several prologues; and an opera called “The Lass with Speech,” which was offered to the theatres, but never acted, and from which the Lying Valet was taken. He dedicated his poems to Garrick, who sent him two guineas on the occasion, which he returned, begging that they might be added to the theatrical fund. It seems he either did not want pecuniary remuneration for the compliment he had paid to Garrick, or he thought this a very inadequate one. When he was writing anything, his room was strewed with little scraps of paper, on which he wrote down any thought as it occurred; and afterwards he had some difficulty in connecting these scattered, half-forgotten fragments together, before he could make out a fair copy. At the time that Mr Shield was most with him, he had been long in ill health, apparently in a decline; and this had given a deeper tinge of melancholy to the natural thoughtfulness of his disposition. A little before his death, he wrote the following lines, which seem to convey a presentiment of his fate. ‘Sweet object of the zephyr’s kiss, Come rose, come, courted by the hours, Queen of the banks, the garden’s bliss, Come, and abash yon tawdry flow’rs. “Why call us to revokeless doom,” With grief the op’ning buds reply, “Scarce suffer’d to expand our bloom, Scarce born, alas! before we die.” ‘Man, having pass’d appointed years, (Years are but days) the scene must close: And when Fate’s messenger appears, What is he but a withering rose?’