Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/95

Rh dramatic pieces (The Lying Valet, Lethe, The Guardian, Miss in her Teens, Irish Widow, &c.). and his alterations and adaptation of old plays, which together ﬁll four volumes, evinced his knowledge of stage effect and his appreciation of lively dialogue and action; but he cannot be said to have added one new or original character to the drama. He was joint author with Colman of The Clandestine Illarriage, in which he is said to have written his famous part of Lord Ogleby. The excellent farce, High sze below Stairs, appears to have been wrongly attributed to Garrick, and to be by Townley, a clergyman. As a matter of course he wrote many prologues and epilogues.

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ILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, the founder and leader of the movement for the abolition of slavery in the United States of America, was born in N ewburyport, Massachusetts, December 10, 1805. His parents were from the British province of New Brunswick. The father, a sea- captain, went away from home when William was a child, and it is not known whether he died at sea or on the land. The mother is said to have been a woman of high character, charming in person, and eminent for piety. For her William had the deepest reverence, and he is supposed to have inherited from her the moral qualities that specially ﬁtted him for his career. She was entirely dependent for the support of herself and children upon her labours as a nurse. She was able to give William but a meagre chance for an education, but he had a taste for books, and made the most of his limited opportunities. She first set him to learn the trade of a shoemaker, and, when she found this did not suit him, let him try his hand at cabinet- making. But the latter pleased him no better than the former. In October 1818, however, when he was in his fourteenth. year, he was made more than content by being indentured to Ephraim W. Allen, proprietor of the New- burg/port Herald, to learn the trade of a printer. He found in this occupation a happy stimulus to his literary taste and ambition, as well as some available opportunities for mental culture. He soon became an expert compositor, and after a time began to write anonymously for the Herald. His communications won the commendation of the editor, who had not at ﬁrst the slightest suspicion that he was the author. He also wrote for other papers with equal success. A series of political essays, written by him for the Salem Gazette, was copied by a preminent Philadelphia journal, the editor of which attributed them to the Hon. Timothy Pickering, a distinguished statesman of Massachusetts. His skill as a printer won for him the position of foreman, while his ability as a writer was so marked that the editor of the Herald, when temporarily called away from his post, left the paper in his charge.

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