of Mr.
Thrale's father: 'He worked at six shillings a week for twenty years
in the great brewery, which afterwards was his own. The proprietor of
it had an only daughter, who was married to a nobleman. It was not
fit that a peer should continue the business. On the old man's death,
therefore, the brewery was to be sold. To find a purchaser for so
large a property was a difficult matter; and after some time, it was
suggested that it would be advisable to treat with Thrale, a
sensible, active, honest man, who had been employed in the house, and
to transfer the whole to him for thirty thousand pounds, security
being taken upon the property. This was accordingly settled. In
eleven years Thrale paid the purchase money. He acquired a large
fortune, and lived to be a member of Parliament for Southwark. But
what was most remarkable was the liberality with which he used his
riches. He gave his son and daughters the best education. The esteem
which his good conduct procured him from the nobleman who had married
his master's daughter made him be treated with much attention; and
his son, both at school and at the University of Oxford, associated
with young men of the first rank. His allowance from his father,
after he left college, was splendid; not less than a thousand a year.
This, in a man who had risen as old Thrale did, was a very
extraordinary instance of generosity. He used to say, 'If this young
dog does not find so much after I am gone as he expects, let him
remember that he has had a great deal in my own time.'"

What is here stated regarding Thrale's origin, on the alleged
authority of Johnson, is incorrect. The elder Thrale was the nephew
of Halsey, the proprietor of the brewery whose daughter was married
to a nobleman (Lord Cobham), and he naturally nourished hopes of
being his uncle's successor. In the Abbey Church of St. Albans, there
is a monument to some members of the Thrale family who died between
1676 and 1704, adorned with a shield of arms and a crest on a ducal
coronet. Mrs. Thrale's marginal note on Boswell's account of her
husband's family is curious and characteristic:

"Edmund Halsey was son to a miller at St. Albans, with whom he
quarrelled, like Ralph in the 'Maid of the Mill,' and ran away to
London with a very few shillings in his pocket.[1] He was eminently
handsome, and old Child of the Anchor Brewhouse, Southwark, took him
in as what we call a broomstick clerk, to sweep the yard, &c. Edmund
Halse