1828.] 



Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 



207 



truths respecting the dead. There is a 

 class of men abroad who, unfortunately, 

 meddle in the public press only to add fuel 

 to the rage of its enemies, by labouring to 

 afford real ground for the charge of its present 

 degradation ; men who will propagate false- 

 hood for the sake of a paragraph, and defame 

 even their Maker rather than deviate for an 

 instant into the paths of truth and charity, 

 from the high road of slander and malignity. 

 The individual whose name is at the head 

 of this letter, had vices enough to answer 

 for without their being aggravated, as I see has 

 been done in a paragraph copied into the 

 " Times" respecting him, I presume from 

 no very reputable source,* and which those 

 who conduct the most successful journal in 

 this or any other country, would have flung 

 aside with contempt had they known its 

 falsehood. Numbers of men, respectable 

 by rank or talent, or indeed both united, 

 were once among his acquaintance, and 

 admired his talents as much as they latterly 

 abhorred his vices. Most, it is true, saw his 

 headlong career during the last years of his 

 life, and to what it must lead, and avoided 

 him. They saw his conduct with deep re- 

 gret, and remonstrated with him without 

 avail, long ere he reached the brink of the 

 precipice over which he fell. Who would 

 not have pitied such a misapplication of 

 time, and such extensive acquirements neu- 

 tralized and finally blasted by a natural 

 weakness, and want of mental energy in 

 resistance to the temptations of vanity and 

 the gaming table ! 



I have endeavoured to draw up here a 

 brief memoir of Graham's life as far as it is 

 known in this country. It will hence be seen 

 that his conduct aftbrds a singular example 



* The writer was most probably some drunken 

 poltroon, who had shared in the profligacy of 

 this unhappy young man at the cider ceHar or 

 Offleys, but who would not have dared to breathe 

 the softest whisper against him had he been liv- 

 ing, and in this-country we imagine its origin. 

 In this statement there was, however, a shadow of 

 fact for the inventive faculty to work upon ; but a 

 writer in a " Windsor" paper, has closed an article 

 on Graham with the foregoing from the " Times," 

 that far out does it in mendacity. Seemingly 

 prompted by hatred to the Americans for their 

 panegyrical account of this unfortunate young 

 man (of whose career they could have known 

 nothing but what he himself told them), he <cooks 

 up a history of his own. This admirable speci- 

 men of newspaper paragraph-making states that 

 Graham was very "humbly* 1 born (of course the 

 first charge made by vulgar intellect against all 

 those it would vituperate) and was a bookseller's 

 shop boy in Fleet Street, who, possessing some 

 natural talent, was taken under the roof of a Mr. 

 Burnel), with his master's permission. This gen- 

 tleman adopted him, and gave him an education. 

 His vicious propensities first attracted his patron's 

 notice by his being called upon to liquidate a 

 debt of honour, &c. &c. Who can wonder at the 

 charges brought against the press by its enemies, 

 when many of those who conduct it do not exa- 

 mine into the truth of what they receive in the 

 way of communication, if indeed some of them do 

 not invent the most mendacious tales to feed with 

 agrbage the appetite of the canaille. 



in the history of the human mind. Strength . 

 of talent contending with the weakness of 

 nature, and the latter finally victorious. 

 Strictly according to the proverb, "Nemo 

 repente fuit turpissimus," he descended 

 the ladder of vice by degrees till he reached 

 the lowest stave, and was for ever lost. Most 

 of those allegations made against him since 

 his death will be found hereafter stated as 

 they really are, with their truth or false- 

 hood shewn. A correspondent, from Ply- 

 mouth, in the " Morning Herald," who 

 writes what he did not know about him, is 

 also noticed, and, in short, I have endea- 

 voured to "set down nought in malice/' 

 but to give a plain brief narrative of facts, 

 from authorities of which, Mr. Editor, I 

 am ready to afford you due proof of validity. 

 The two-fold advantage of the cause of truth, 

 and the benefit of a warning example against 

 similar temptations, must plead my excuse 

 to you. Our literary brethren on the other 

 side the Atlantic, in common fairness should 

 also be set right upon a subject in which they 

 were deceived by then: countryman, as may 

 be judged from their erroneous statements, 

 respecting him. 



It was just when hostilities were breaking 

 out between this country and America in 

 1812, that a vessel bound from New York 

 to Bordeaux, was either detained at sea 

 and sent in as a prize, or, being driven by 

 stress of weather, put into the port of Pad- 

 stow, in Cornwall. Hostilities had not ac- 

 tually commenced between the two coun- 

 tries, and the crew and passengers were suf- 

 fered to be at liberty. Among them was a 

 young man about seventeen years of age 

 it was William Grenville Graham. At that 

 time his person was exceedingly interesting, 

 and very different in point of manly and 

 vigorous appearance from what it was during 

 the later years of his life. His manners 

 were mild, and his deportment superior to 

 most at that early age, indeed he might 

 well have been taken for one of four or five 

 years older. He stated that he had been 

 guilty of some extravagancies which had 

 displeased his father, and that he had left 

 the parental roof at New York, where his 

 father lived, I think in the Broad Way, and 

 was a merchant.* Graham left Padstow to 

 try and get a passage back to New York 

 by a Bristol or Liverpool vessel ; passing 

 through Plymouth, where accident made 

 him acquainted with the only individual 

 England contained who seemed to take an 

 interest in his story. Being unsuccessful, 

 (the last vessel permitted to clear out from 

 England for America having sailed,) he 

 came back to Plymouth, with a very small 

 store of money, and a gloomy prospect be- 

 fore him. 



The friend whom he had made at Ply.. 



* He died, according to his son, some years ago, 

 while the latter was in London. 



