Beddoes, THOMAS LOVELL

Beddoes, THOMAS LOVELL, eldest son of the above, and nephew of Maria Edgeworth, was born at Clifton, 20th July 1803. From Bath grammar-school he passed in 1817 to the Charterhouse, and thence in 1820 to Pembroke College, Oxford. In 1822 he published The Bride's Tragedy, which achieved a brilliant success. In 1825 he went to Göttingen to study medicine, and thenceforth led a strange wandering life as doctor and democrat, in Germany and Switzerland, with occasional visits to England. From 1825 he was engaged in the composition of a drama, Death's Jest-book, which, with his poems and a memoir by Kelsall, appeared in 1850-51. The story of his death by suicide at Basel (26th January 1849) was told for the first time in Mr Gosse's memoir prefixed to his edition of the Poetical Works (2 vols. 1890). The poems of Beddoes, almost all nominally dramatic, exhibit no power of characterisation, no ability in the conduct of a story; but the fullness of thought and image, the tone of music, and the depth of colour are marvellous.