"As you desire from me some account of the habits and character of the late Mr. John Tobin, I willingly comply with your request. Of the particulars of his early life, I have no knowledge-my intimacy with him not having commenced till the year 1796; but from that time to the period of his death, I lived in great familiarity and daily intercourse with him and his excellent brother, the late Mr. James Tobin. The habits of Mr. John Tobin were retired, and his society in general confined to that of a few friends; nor did his profession controul in this respect his natural dispositions. The hours of the day were given to business, but the interests of his mind flowed wholly in a different channel: his ambition was directed to other objects than professional eminence, and the pursuit of wealth had for him no attractions. His leisure hours were devoted to literature, but more particularly to works of wit; and his leading passion was for our earlier drama, upon which he formed his own taste, and which it was his great ambition to rival in dramatic excellence. This was the main ✓ object of his life; and when the business of the office was over, he regularly retired to his own chambers, shut his door against all intruders, and dedicated the rest of the evening to dramatic compositions. In society he took great delight, entering with warmth into subjects of literature, or into the topics of the day, which in his time possessed a more than common interest; and when, as was not unfrequent, his love of truth engaged him in argument, the real excellence of his understanding appeared more in his full and ready application of the arguments of others, than in those which he himself adduced, owing perhaps to his having given but little of his atten tion to the study of the severer sciences. His disposition was frank and cheerfulhis integrity inflexible, and his disinterestedness appeared equally in the greater and the lesser concerns of life. Above all, he was distinguished by an unaffected scorn of whatever is mean or little-minded, but without any mixture of the austerity which often accompanies this superiority of feeling." Some years after the poet's death, the elder Mr. Tobin visited his son's grave, over which he caused a small tablet to be erected, with the following inscription. SACRED TO THE MEMORY ог JOHN TOBIN, ESQ. OF LINCOLN'S INN, whose Remains are deposited under the adjacent Turf. He died at Sea, near the Entrance of this Harbour, 1804, on his Passage to a milder Climate That, with an excellent Heart, and a most amiable Disposition, He possessed a vigorous Imagination, and a cultivated Understanding, His Dramatic Writings fully evince. |