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Self-Educated Sussex Men. 145 |
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said that in business matters he was never an adept, trusting to others and neglectful himself. He now had to pay the bitter penalty of this indifference to common things—to pounds, shillings, and pence. He had put confidence in a friend, who, at a moment of need, betrayed him—went oft with a sum of money which poor Richardson depended on to meet an engagement, and, in the despair of the moment, he put an end to his existence. It was a melancholy termination of a career which was to be admired in many respects, especially in the love of knowledge, of literature and science and Art— indeed, of all that was intellectual—it displayed, and in the indomitable will with which the avenues to this knowledge were stormed and captured by a man who had nothing but his own resources to depend on—who, in the many accomplishments that he possessed, had had no instructor but himself. If at any time the history of the Worthies of Brighton should be written, the name of George Frederick Richardson, linguist, author, poet, and a man of science, ought not to be omitted.
In many respects Samuel Simes, though equally a self-educated man—perhaps more so than George Richardson— for Simes was, I believe, originally only a journeyman tailor, and Richardson was a master-draper and had some advantages in the acquisition of knowledge which Simes had not—was the opposite of his contemporary. He, too, was literary in his tastes; but his tastes lay towards politics and theology, for neither of which had Richardson any inclination. Simes was, in fact, a " free-lance "—a Switzer of the Brighton Press. He was, in his heart, I believe, a Radical, if not a democrat; but he began by writing for a Tory journal, the Brighton Gazelle; he then passed on to a Whig or Liberal one, the Brighton Herald; and he ended by editing a Radical one, the Brighton Patriot. When he died he was on the staff of the Brighton Examiner. But the prime of his intellect was certainly given to the Brighton Herald. It was not limited to politics, in which he was, of course, curbed in his extreme opinions by the traditions of the journal, but took in
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