William Seward (anecdotist)

He made a western tour of England in August 1781, indulging his hypochondria liberally by consulting "a doctor, apothecary or chemist" in every town where he stopped, according to Fanny Burney.

In March 1777, for instance, she describes him in a letter to another Burney family friend, Samuel Crisp, as "a very polite, agreeable young man.

"[4] On 15 January 1782, her 17-year-old sister Charlotte Ann Burney noted that on her arrival at Mrs Thrale's, "Mr Seward came up to me immediately as he commonly does when I meet him to do the honours to me in his odd way;- lugging a chair into the middle of the room for me, and upon my saying I could not sit there by myself, "oh," he cried, "I'll stand by you, and amuse you.

"[6] Other well-known people whom he knew and helped included the classical scholar Richard Porson, the radical Thomas Paine and the poet Anna Seward (no relation).

He fully expected his end was quickly approaching... he spent almost a whole morning with me in chatting of other times, as he called it – for we travelled back to Streatham, Dr Johnson and the Thrales.

[9] Seward's papers of "Drossiana" in the European Magazine from October 1789 formed the basis of his anonymous five-volume Anecdotes of some Distinguished Persons (1795–1797).

"[10] Thomas James Mathias in his long poem The Pursuits of Literature[11] speaks of Seward as a "publick bagman for scraps", but describes the volumes as entertaining and their author as the best compiler of anecdotes after Horace Walpole.