'Giant of a former age': a final note on James Shergold Boone?

The name of James Shergold Boone, author of The Oxford Spy and an ephemeral literary celebrity of the early nineteenth century, is now quite forgotten. Not long after his death in 1859, however, he was the focus of animated discussion in the columns of Notes & Queries. Respondents to a query of June 1863(2) recalled him variously as 'very much distinguished in his early day';(3) 'a man of rare and brilliant talent' and 'extraordinary reputation', 'a man of genius', a 'brilliant scholar and accomplished orator';(4) in short, 'the principal celebrity of his day'.(5) Boone had a spectacular school and university career at Charterhouse and then Christ Church, Oxford, before miscellaneous unsuccessful ventures in poetry and journalism in London. He entered the Anglican ministry in 1826,(6) and after a spell as a school teacher served nearly three decades as the inaugural vicar of St John's, Paddington.(7) Boone died on 24 March 1859, apparently aged fifty-nine; the most prominent of the many sources for his established date of birth on 30 June 1799 is the brass to …