Thomas Tyrwhitt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Tyrwhitt (March 27, 1730–August 15, 1786) was an English classical scholar and critic.

He was born in London, where he also died. He was educated at Eton and Queen's College, Oxford (fellow of Merton, 1755). In 1756 he was appointed under-secretary at war, in 1762 clerk of the House of Commons. In 1768 he resigned his post, and spent the remainder of his life in learned retirement. In 1784 he was elected a trustee of the British Museum, to which he bequeathed a portion of his valuable library.

His principal classical works are:

Fragmenta Plutarchi II. inedita (1773), from a Harleian manuscript
Dissertatio de Babrio (1776), containing some fables of Aesop, hitherto unedited, from a Bodleian manuscript
the pseudo-Orphic De lapidibus (1781), which he assigned to the age of Constantius
Conjecturae in Strabonem (1783)
Isaeus De Meneclis hereditate (1785)
Aristotle's Poetica, his most important work, published after his death under the superintendence of Thomas Burgess, bishop of Salisbury, in 1794.

Special mention is due of his editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1775–1778); and of Poems, supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others in the Fifteenth Century (1777–1778), with an appendix to prove that the poems were all the work of Chatterton.Tyrwhitt's friend the bibliophile Thomas Crofts is credited with introducing Tyrwhitt in 1776 to George Catcott who possessed the 'manuscripts'of the poems. Initially Tyrwhitt had been convinced of the genuineness of them and pressed for publication in 1777. It was only when the third edition was published that Tyrrwhitt recanted and pronounced them forgeries (see LF Powell 'Thomas Chatterton and the Rowley Poems' Review of English Studies Vol 7 July 1931)

In 1782 he published a Vindication of the Appendix in reply to the arguments of those who maintained the genuineness of the poems. While clerk of the House of Commons he edited Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, 1620–1621 from the original manuscript in the library of Queen's College, Oxford, and Henry Elsynge's (1598–1654) The Manner of holding Parliaments in England.