His parents separated after his father's business failed, and Nicholas Pearsall, his mother's guardian and a Unitarian, saw to his education.

Benjamin Carpenter, then returned to Kidderminster where he was at a school founded by Pearsall, and was taught by William Blake.

After some months at Northampton Academy under John Horsey, Carpenter transferred to the University of Glasgow and then joined the ministry.

[3][4][5] After a short time as assistant master at a Unitarian school near Birmingham, in 1802 he was appointed librarian at the Liverpool Athenaeum.

Sloth and Folly shiver and shrink at the sight of toil and danger, And make the impossibilities they fear."

The quotation is originally from a play written in 1700 by Nicholas Rowe and called "The Ambitious Step-mother" and is from Act 1, Scene 1.