this time he chiefly devoted his energies to the promotion of popular education. About May 1849 he undertook the management of the school supported by the National Association. Desirous of having elementary anatomy and physiology taught there, he devoted himself to the study of these subjects, and taught them himself in the association's school and in several Birkbeck schools, and wrote a text-book, ‘Elementary Anatomy and Physiology for Schools’ (1851; 2nd edition, 1853), which passed through two editions with some success. He was now well known as a moderate and representative working-man reformer, was examined before the House of Commons committee on free libraries in 1849 (see Report on Free Libraries, 1850, pp. 176–81), and became, on Wilberforce's invitation, a member of the ‘working-class committee of the Great Exhibition’ in 1850. In 1852 he wrote a book on ‘Social and Political Morality,’ which was published in 1853, and in 1856 a poem called ‘Woman's Mission.’ The National Association's school broke up in 1857, the National Hall (formerly the Gate Street Chapel, and subsequently the Royal Music Hall, Holborn) passed out of their hands, and Lovett became a teacher of anatomy in St. Thomas Charterhouse schools, and in Richardson's grammar school, Gray's Inn Road, and wrote a number of school-books on elementary science. But as age crept on him he found himself less and less able to support himself. ‘Few persons,’ he writes pathetically, ‘have worked harder or laboured more earnestly than I have; but somehow I was never destined to make money.’ He continued to write on scientific subjects, but could not get his writings published; his earlier works were published at his own expense. A portion of his writings on social science appeared in the ‘Beehive’ in 1868. His last years were spent in feeble health. He wrote his ‘Autobiography,’ a garrulous work, containing the full text of his political addresses and manifestoes, but throwing considerable light on the history of the chartist movement, and it was published in 1876. He died at 137 Euston Road, London, on 8 Aug. 1877, and was buried at Highgate. Gammage says of him that he was the ablest writer and best man of business among the London chartists, and had a clear and masterly intellect and great powers of application, but he was suspicious of others, and somewhat impracticable. Francis Place, writing in 1836, described him as a tall, thin, and somewhat hypochondriacal, but ‘honest, sincere, and courageous man.’ He ridiculed him for having been first an Owenite, and then an advocate of ‘opinions no less absurd, respecting the production and distribution of everything which results from the labour of men's hands,’ but anticipated his becoming ‘a reasonable and valuable member of society’—a forecast to some extent verified by the individualistic tone adopted by Lovett in his autobiography (Place MSS., Brit. Mus. Addit. 27791 f. 241).
Besides the works mentioned above, Lovett wrote addresses and broadsheets; ‘An address to the political and social reformers of the United Kingdom,’ 1841; ‘Letter to Donaldson and Mason refusing to be Secretary to the National Charter Association,’ 1843; ‘Letter to Dr. O'Connell,’ 1843; ‘A proposal for the consideration of the Friends of Progress,’ 1847; ‘Justice safer than expediency,’ 1848.
[The principal authority is W. Lovett's Autobiography, but, especially for the later years and on points not immediately connected with his political activity, it is inaccurate, and is corrected by G. J. Holyoake's History of Co-operation and R. G. Gammage's History of Chartism. See, too, Place MSS. in Brit. Mus.; Poor Man's Guardian, 1831–5; Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis; H. B. Stanton's Reforms and Reformers; Examiner, 18 Aug. 1877.]
LOVIBOND, EDWARD (1724–1775), poet, son of Edward Lovibond, a director of the East India Company, who died in July 1737 (Lond. Mag. vi. 397; cf. Chester, London Marriage Licenses, p. 862), was born at Hampton, Middlesex, in 1724. He was educated at Kingston-upon-Thames under Richard Wooddeson [q. v.] and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he matriculated as gentleman-commoner on 15 May 1739 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1715–1888). Inheriting a competence from his father, he was enabled to ‘pass his days in the quiet enjoyment of the pleasures of rural life’ (cf. Ode to Youth). His fame as a poet rests on his contributions to the ‘World,’ a weekly newspaper, started in 1753 by Edward Moore [q. v.], and numbering Horace Walpole and Lord Chesterfield among its original contributors. On 25 July 1754 (No. 82) appeared his best-known piece, ‘The Tears of Old May Day,’ which long maintained a place in English anthologies, and was described at the time as ‘flowing with a plaintive melody which has only been surpassed by the inimitable Churchyard Elegy.’ The comparison indicates the poet from whom, with Mason, and possibly Dyer, Lovibond chiefly drew his inspiration, though in the case of ‘Julia's Printed Letter,’ his most ambitious and best effort, Pope's ‘Eloisa’ is evidently the model. His slighter pieces have the facile, if insipid, prettiness of Ambrose Phillips. Lovibond, who is said to have lived unhappily with his
