t in another form. He had many friends,
and considering his rank, very extraordinary interest with the high
officers and commanders in the company's service. This he never failed
to exert in favour of such of his young countrymen as he considered
deserving of it: and in short strained his powers in every way to
increase their comfort and accommodation during that trying ordeal,
their passage to India, and to procure them friends when they got there.

His son Thomas, the subject of this paper, was born in the year 1777,
and received an early liberal education. As doctor Cooper's interest lay
wholly with the East India company, his children were sent to that
emporium of wealth, Bengal, as soon as their ages fitted them for
admission into the world. Had he lived till our hero was of a suitable
age the probability is that the American stage would at this day want
one of its greatest ornaments; and that the hand which now wields the
truncheon of Macbeth, Richard, and Coriolanus on the American boards,
would be grasping a sword or driving a quill in the service of the East
India company in Bengal, whither doctor Cooper at last went himself,
being promoted to a respectable rank on the medical staff of that
settlement, and where at length he died to the deep regret of all who
knew him, and to the irretrievable loss of an amiable family. To the
last will and testament of the generous man there is seldom any great
trouble in administering--doctor Cooper made a great deal of money; but
retained little of it. We do not mention this as a feature in that
worthy man's character to be imitated. On the contrary we wish it, so
far as it goes, to operate as a warning against the indulgence of a
spirit, which, though it be a virtue of the highest order when kept
under the control of discretion, does, like every other virtue,
degenerate into a foible, when carried to excess. Fortunately for that
member of doctor Cooper's family of whom we are writing, he found, when
his youth wanted it, a sincere friend. Mr. Godwin, whose name is well
known in the republic of letters, particularly as the author of a work
the name of which we will not put upon the same page with this
honourable instance of posthumous friendship to doctor Cooper, took the
youth to his own care; adopted, educated, and, as some say, intended him
for an author; a scheme too absurd in our opinion, to be meditated by a
person of Mr. Godwin's sagacity, who would at least postpone su