Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/110

 established not only by the dedications and other personal details, but by allusions to them in the acknowledged works of the author.

The works published in Poole's own name are: 1. ‘A Journey from London to France and Holland, or the Traveller's Useful Vade-mecum, by R. Poole, Dr. of Physick,’ vol. i. 2nd edit. London, 1746; vol. ii. 1750. This work contains a minute journal of the author's travels, with interesting remarks on the Paris hospitals, freely interspersed with religious and moral reflections. The bulk is made out with a French grammar, a sort of gazetteer of Europe, and other information for travellers. 2. ‘The Beneficent Bee, or Traveller's Companion: a Voyage from London to Gibraltar, Barbados, Antigua, &c., by R. Poole, M.D.,’ London, 1753. This is a traveller's journal of the same character as the former. All Poole's works display minute accuracy, a thirst for information of all kinds, and a passion for statistics, besides the personal characteristics already mentioned.

[Poole's Works; cf. a fuller account of some of them by Dr. W. S. Church in St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, xx. 279, and xxi. 232; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. i. 77.]  POOLE, SOPHIA (1804–1891), author of the ‘Englishwoman in Egypt,’ was the youngest child of the Rev. Theophilus Lane, D.C.L., prebendary of Hereford, where she was born on 16 Jan. 1804, and the sister of Edward William Lane [q. v.] In 1829 she married Edward Richard Poole, M.A. of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, barrister-at-law, but recently admitted to holy orders, a notable book-collector and bibliographer, an intimate of Thomas Frognall Dibdin [q. v.], and anonymous author of ‘The Classical Collector's Vade Mecum’ (1822). In 1842 Mrs. Poole and her two sons accompanied her brother to Egypt, and lived in Cairo for seven years, where she visited some of the harîms of Mohammad 'Ali's family, and obtained a considerable knowledge of domestic life in Mohammadan society, as yet but slightly modified by western influences. The results of her experiences were embodied in a series of letters, published, under the title of ‘The Englishwoman in Egypt,’ in Knight's weekly volumes (2 vols. 1844, and a second series forming vol. iii. 1846). The book supplies a true and simple picture of the life of the women of Egypt, together with historical notices of Cairo—these last were drawn from Lane's notes and revised by him. After Mrs. Poole's return to England with her brother in 1849, she collaborated with her younger son, Reginald Stuart Poole [q. v.], in a series of descriptions of Frith's ‘Photographic Views of Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine’ (1860–1). After the early education of her children, her life was mainly devoted to her brother, Edward Lane, up to his death in 1876; and her last years were spent in her younger son's house at the British Museum, where she died, 6 May 1891, at the age of eighty-seven.

The elder son, (1830–1867), was an Arabic scholar, and edited the new edition of his uncle Lane's ‘Thousand and One Nights’ (3 vols. 1859), and the fifth edition of ‘The Modern Egyptians’ (1860); he also wrote many articles for Smith's ‘Dictionary of the Bible,’ besides contributing to the eighth edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ and occasionally to periodical literature. He became chief clerk of the science and art department, and died prematurely on 12 March 1867, leaving two sons, Stanley Lane-Poole and Reginald L. Poole.

[Private information.]  POOLE, THOMAS (1765–1837), friend of Coleridge, eldest son of Thomas Poole, tanner, of Nether Stowey, Somerset, was born at Nether Stowey on 14 November 1765. The father, a rough tradesman, brought up the son to his own business, and thought book-learning undesirable. The younger Thomas was never sent to a good school, and resented his father's system. He managed to educate himself, and learnt French and Latin with the help, in later years, of a French emigrant priest. He stuck to his business not the less; and in 1790 was elected delegate by a meeting of tanners at Bristol, who wished to obtain from Pitt some changes in the duties affecting the trade. He visited London on this errand in 1791, and was afterwards engaged in preparing memorials to Pitt. About 1793 he seems to have carried out a plan for improving his knowledge of business by working as a common tanner in a yard near London. A story that while thus working he made acquaintance with Coleridge, then in the dragoons, seems to be inconsistent with dates (, Thomas Poole and his Friends, pp. 54, 70–84). Upon his father's death in July 1795, Poole inherited the business. He met Coleridge, probably for the first time, in 1794, and describes the ‘Pantisocracy’ scheme. Poole was a whig rather than a Jacobin, but sympathised with the revolution in its earlier phases. Coleridge and his friends were on the same side at this time. An intimacy soon began, and