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Public Characters, 1799-1800.

WILLIAM SHIELD, ESQ.

(COMMUNICATED BY MR. THOMAS BUSBY.)

GENIUS is not always to be estimated by the precise degree of merit discoverable in its productions: to decide justly on individual talent, it often becomes necessary to take into the account the disadvantages it has encountered, and the obstacles it has overcome; to throw into the same scale the works, and the occasional embarrassments of the author, and to judge by what he has produced in, unfavourable and discouraging situations, what he probably would have effected under eircumstances more auspicious to his views and inclinations. To these considerations the subject of the present memoir is particularly entitled. Mr. Shield, by the intrinsic power of genius, has borne down every opposition of accident or fortune, and has raised himself into high and justly merited distinction in that path to which nature propelled and fitted him...

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Mr. Shield was born in the year 1754, at Swalwell, in the county of Durham. His father, whose profession was that of a singing-master, was a man much and generally esteemed for his personal integrity, and admired by the cognoscenti of his neighbourhood for his professional excellence. Soon after the birth of his son William, he removed to South Shields; and 1799-1800. Dd such

T. Gillet, Printer, Salisbury-Square,

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