Soldier. Educated at Christ’s Hospital, where he was a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Obtained an army commission, fought in the Peninsular War and was killed at the battle of Salamanca. There is some confusion over Favell’s first name — with some sources citing it as Joseph or Samuel — see C. A. Prance, Companion to Charles Lamb. A Guide to People and Places 1760–1847 (1983), pp. 112–113 and Duncan Wu, ‘Unpublished drafts of sonnets by Lamb and Favell’, Charles Lamb Bulletin, n.s. 75 (1991), 100.