"Dernier Homme" is a prose poem, at Amiens—was arrested at Valenciennes, but speedily released, and remained in France from choice till his death. He became acquainted just after his liberation with Lady Mary Hamilton, now a widow, and was her satellite and pensioner for the rest of his life, occupying when not in Paris a cottage near her mansion in the environs of Amiens, for his English vicarage yielded him little if anything. He fancied himself a commentator, and the lady imagined herself a novelist, not only in her native language but in French. Nodier was for two years literary factotum to both, and claims the lion's share in their ostensible productions, not including, perhaps, the verses on the death of the lady's bullfinch, with which Croft responded to the dedication of one of her books. Heedless of political changes, this singular pair died in the same year, 1816, he eighty-five years of age, she seventy-seven. Croft's brother Richard, who succeeded to the baronetcy, was physician to Princess Charlotte, and committed suicide owing to the blame thrown on him for her death.
Richard Chenevix, the chemist and mineralogist, whose uncle or father Malmesbury found at Paris in 1796, and whom he had probably accompanied, seems to have also remained from choice, for as an F.R.S. he could certainly have obtained a passport. He contributed from 1798 to 1808 to the Annales
