John Thelwall (1764–1834)

This book requires the patience and ability to inhabit the mind of someone writing over 200 years ago. If those requirements are met, it's immensely rewarding. John Thelwall was a radical and proto-Romantic whose liberal outlook is a refreshing change from the stolid Toryism of Samuel Johnson and his imitators. He champions the equality of all people and rails against the unfairness of contemporary social distinctions. Like Wordsworth, he appreciated the charms of rural life and the natural world. Telling examples of Thelwall's politics are the pleasure he takes in the conversion of royal sites into "useful" farms and cottages, and the diatribes against cruelty to animals.

The Peripatetic is framed by walking journeys to Richmond and St. Albans. The travelogue is broken by digressions on the Rights of Man and poems ranging from a satirical "Battle of the Books" between belles-lettres and the popular press to a beautiful ode inspired by the White Cliffs of Dover. There are character sketches and even a love story which weaves its way through the narrative. The prose is heavy, twenty words serve where one would do, and some of the poems simply don't work, but the uniqueness of this eccentric work more than compensates.… (meer)