(Bonnel), a modern poet, the intimate friend of Lloyd and Colman, and justly clasped with them in point of talents, was born in Maidenlane, London, in the year 1724. He was the son of an apothecary; and being educated at Westminster School, was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, in the year 1743. He was thus eight years senior to Colman, who was elected off in 1751. The first publication in which he was concerned was, "The Student, or Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany," which appeared in monthly numbers; and was collected in two volumes 8vo, in 1748. Smart was the chief conductor of the work; but Thornton, and other wits of both universities, assisted in it. He took his degree of master of arts in 1750; and as his father wished him to make physic his profession, he took the degree of bachelor of that faculty in 1754. In the same year he undertook the periodical paper called The Connoisseur, in conjunction with Colman, which they continued weekly to the 30th of September 1756. In the concluding paper, the different ages and pursuits of the two authors are thus jocularly pointed out, in the description of the double author, Mr Town. "Mr Town is a fair, black, middle-sized, very short man. He wears his own hair and a periwig. He is about thirty years of age (literally thirty-two), and not more than four-and-twenty. He is a student of the law and a bachelor of physic. He was bred at the university of Oxford, where, having taken no less than three degrees, he looks down on many learned professors as his inferiors: yet having been there but little longer than to take the first degree of bachelor of arts, it has more than once happened that the censor-general of all England has been reprimanded by the censor of his college, for neglecting to furnish the usual effay, or, in the collegiate phrase, the theme of the week." Engaged in pursuits of this kind, Bonnel Thornton did not very closely follow the profession to which his father destined him, but lived rather a literary life, employing his pen on various subjects. To the daily paper called the Public Advertiser, then in high reputation, he was a frequent contributor; and he once had it in contemplation to treat with Mr Rich for the patent of Covent Garden theatre. In 1764, Mr Thornton married Miss Sylvia Brathwaite, youngest daughter of Colonel Brathwaite, who had been governor of a fort in Africa. In 1766, encouraged, as he says himself, by the success of his friend Colman's Terence, he published two volumes of a translation of Plautus in blank verse; proposing to complete the whole if that specimen should be approved. These volumes contained eleven plays, of which the Capium was translated by Mr Warner, who afterwards completed all that Thornton had left unfinished; and the Mercator by Mr Colman. The remaining five are, the Amphitryon, Miles Gloriosus, Triarius, Aulularia, Rudens. Some parts of the remaining plays which Thornton had translated are preserved by his continuator. There can be no doubt that this is the best way of translating the old comedies, and that Thornton was well qualified for the task; but the work has never been in high favour with the public. Yet Warburton said of it, that "he never read to junk a translation, in so pure and elegant a style." Thornton published in 1767, The Battle of the Wigs, as an additional canto to Garth's Dispensary; the subject of which was the disputes then subsisting between the fellows and licentiates.

The life of Thornton was not destined to attain any great extension: in the prime of his days, while he was surrounded by domestic felicity, the comforts of fortune,