Born at
Leeds,
Yorkshire, he was educated at
Harrow School, where he had for contemporaries
Lord Byron and
Robert Peel. On leaving school he was placed in the office of a
solicitor at
Calne,
Wiltshire, remaining there until about 1807, when he returned to
London to study
law. By the death of his father in 1816 he became possessed of a small property, and soon after entered into partnership with a solicitor; but in 1820 the partnership was dissolved, and he began to write under the pseudonym of "Barry Cornwall". After his marriage in 1824 to Anne Skepper, daughter of Mrs Basil Montague, he returned to his profession as a
conveyancer, and was called to the bar in 1831. In the following year he was appointed metropolitan commissioner of
lunacy—an appointment annually renewed until his election as one of the
Commissioners in Lunacy constituted by the
Lunacy Act 1845. He resigned in 1861. Most of his verse was composed between 1815, when he began to contribute to the
Literary Gazette, and 1823, or at latest 1832. His daughter,
Adelaide Anne Procter, was also a poet. His principal poetical works were:
Dramatic Scenes and other Poems (1819),
A Sicilian Story (1820),
Marcian Colonna (1820),
Mirandola, a tragedy performed at
Covent Garden with
Macready,
Charles Kemble and
Miss Foote in the leading parts (1821),
The Flood of Thessaly (1823) and
English Songs (1832). He was also the author of
Effigies poetica (1824),
Life of Edmund Kean (1835),
Essays and Tales in Prose (1851),
Charles Lamb; a Memoir (1866), and of memoirs of
Ben Jonson and
William Shakespeare for editions of their works. A posthumous autobiographical fragment with notes of his literary friends, of whom he had a wide range from
William Lisle Bowles to
Robert Browning, was published in 1877, with some additions by
Coventry Patmore.
Charles Lamb gave the highest possible praise to his friend's
Dramatic Sketches when he said that had he found them as anonymous manuscript in the
Garrick Collection he would have had no hesitation about including them in his
Dramatic Specimens. He was perhaps not an impartial critic. "Barry Cornwall's" songs have caught some notes from the
Elizabethan and
Cavalier lyrics, and blended them with others from the leading poets of his own time; and his dramatic fragments show a similar infusion of the early
Victorian spirit into pre-
Restoration forms and cadences. The results are varied, and lack unity, but they abound in pleasant touches, with here and there the flash of a higher, though casual, inspiration. Rather unknown outside Britain in his times and largely considered to be imitator of greater romantic authors, Barry Cornwall however inspired
Alexander Pushkin to some translations and imitations in 1830. Just hours before his last
duel in 1837 Pushkin sent a collection by Cornwall to a fellow author,
Mrs. Ishimova, suggesting that she should translate some poems selected by him.
William Makepeace Thackeray dedicated
Vanity Fair to B. W. Procter.
Wilkie Collins dedicated
The Woman In White to B. W. Procter.
Thomas Hardy became acquainted with Procter's widow, their friendship is mentioned several times in
The Early Life of Thomas Hardy (1840-1891). ==References==