Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3b.pdf/410

THO contains the famous song of Rule Britannia, generally ascribed to Thomson. In 1744 he was appointed by Mr. Lyttelton to the sinecure office of surveyor-general of the Leeward Isles, which brought him £300 a year. His next production was the tragedy of "Tancred and Sigismunda," the most successful of his dramatic efforts, which was performed at Drury Lane in 1745. His last works were "The Castle of Indolence," and the tragedy of "Coriolanus." The former, which had been in progress for fifteen years, is the most highly finished and poetical of his works. It was published in May, 1748. "Coriolanus" was not produced till after his death, which took place at Richmond on the 27th of August, 1748, in consequence of a fever brought on by imprudent exposure to cold, when he had nearly completed his forty-eighth year. He was buried in Richmond church. A monument was erected to his memory, in 1762, in Westminster abbey from the profits of a splendid edition of his works, which were devoted to this purpose by his "much lov'd friend," Mr. Millar the bookseller. The character of Thomson stands high both as a poet and as a man. His taste was not always equal to his genius, and his diction is frequently redundant and ambitious; but, as Johnson observes, "he thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on nature and life with the eye which nature bestows only on a poet—the eye that distinguishes in everything presented to its view whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute." His sentiments are of the purest and most elevating character, and, as Lord Lyttelton has justly remarked, his poems contain

All his friends agree in stating that benevolence, kindliness, amiability, and simplicity were the prominent features of his character. He was careless about money, generous, and unselfish; affectionate and liberal to his relations, and steady in his attachment to his friends. He was, however, fond of repose and somewhat indolent in his habits. In person he was above the middle size and rather stout, and was considered handsome in his youth.—J. T.  THOMSON,, professor of music in the university of Edinburgh, was the eldest son of the Rev. Dr. Andrew Thomson, one of the most eminent divines of the Church of Scotland. He inherited his father's exquisite taste and strong predilection for the science of music. Prudential motives, however, induced Dr. Thomson to discourage this natural bent, and to place his son in the office of one of the first legal establishments in Edinburgh. Here young Thomson served the usual apprenticeship; but while he gave all formal attention to the comparatively dry pursuits of the law, it was evident that his mind took but little share in the task, and that his natural gifts were ardently directed to other and very different studies. His musical criticisms, although their author was known but to a few, attracted general attention, not only by the profound and intimate knowledge they displayed of the science, but by the elegance and beauty of the literary composition. When, according to the will of General Reid, who bequeathed ample funds for the purpose, a chair of music was established in the university of Edinburgh, young Thomson became a candidate, and although opposed by others older than himself, and of great eminence in the science, was elected professor by the trustees of the General. This amiable and gifted young man died, after a protracted illness, in May, 1841. His musical works are three operas, which were performed with success—"The House of Aspen," 1830; "Hermann," 1834; and "The Shadow on the Wall," 1835.—E. F. R.  THOMSON,, a celebrated historical antiquarian, was descended from a family which for three generations had held the office of ministers of the Church of Scotland, and was born in 1768. His younger brother, John, parish minister of Duddingston, was the famous landscape painter. Thomas was educated at the university of Glasgow, where he took the degree of A.M. in 1789. He was at first intended for the church, but he ultimately resolved to study for the bar, and in 1793 was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates. His tastes, however, lay decidedly towards legal and historical antiquarianism, and he speedily earned the reputation in the words of Scott of "understanding more of old books, old laws, and old history than any man in Scotland." In 1806 he was appointed to the newly-established post of deputy-clerk register, and during the remainder of his long life he devoted himself almost exclusively to the arrangement and publication of the ancient records of the kingdom. A complete list of the numerous and valuable works which he prepared and published under the authority of the commissioners of the public records, and for the Bannatyne Club, of which he was vice-president, is given in his life by Mr. Cosmo Innes. "He found our historical muniments almost a chaos," says Lord Cockburn, "and after bringing then into order has left them on a system of which the value will be felt the move every day that they accumulate." He was appointed one of the principal clerks of session in 1828. He died in 1852.—J. T.  * THORBURN,, A.R.A., was born at Dumfries in March, 1818. In 1833 he became a student in the Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, and in 1836 in the Royal Academy, London. Under the active patronage of the duke of Buccleuch and other members of the Scottish aristocracy, Mr. Thorburn established himself in London as a miniature painter. The striking originality and power of his miniatures secured his success. Among his sitters he numbered the queen, the prince-consort, various members of the royal families of England and the continent, and many of our nobility and gentry. Many of his miniatures were on ivory of unusual dimensions. His eminence in his branch of art was acknowledged by his election as A.R.A. in 1848. But whilst holding a foremost place among miniature painters, he seems to have become suddenly anxious to succeed as a painter on a large scale and in oil. In 1858 he sent several life-size oil portraits to the Royal Academy exhibition, the most noticeable being one of the duchess of Manchester. He has since, without altogether giving up his practice as a miniature painter, mostly appeared before the public as a painter in oil; but all his works have not been of life-size—some of the most successful, like the charming portrait of the Baroness Rothschild (1859), being little larger than some of his miniatures. In a few of his oil, as in several of his miniature portraits, Mr. Thorburn has introduced the questionable practice of adapting to his purpose some well-known composition in religious art: as, for example, a "Mother and Child," exhibited in 1859, which was painted in such a manner as at once to recal to the memory a well-known picture of the Mother and Child. In 1862 he made a direct attempt to represent a scriptural subject, "The Annunciation."—J. T—e.  THORDO or THORD, a distinguished Danish lawyer in the reign of Valdemar III., 1340-75. Little is known of his personal history. He collected into a systematic code the Danish laws from the earliest times, and it is this work which has acquired for him his celebrity. The compilation throws much light on the social and political history of Denmark.—J. J.  THORDSON,, an Icelandic author, was the nephew of Snorre Sturleson, and was born in 1218. At the command of the Danish monarch he wrote a history of Iceland, Denmark, and Norway; but the work is only extant in an abridged and mutilated form. He died in 1288.—J. J.  THORER, ), a learned Swiss physician, was born in 1489 at Winterthur. In 1516 he went to Basle where he studied philosophy and classical literature, and obtained the degree of master of arts. He then became master of a school, but he relinquished this position in 1532 for the professorship of rhetoric in the Academy. He subsequently turned his attention to medicine which he studied in France; and having received a doctor's degree at Montpellier he returned to Basle in 1537, where he was chosen to the chair of the theory of medicine. He died on the 23rd February, 1550. He was a laborious scholar and writer, but his works are chiefly translations, and editions of the Greek authors. he was the author of the first Latin translation of Paulus Ægineta; he also translated Polybius and Alexander Trallianus; he republished the Latin translation of Serapion, and edited several of the Hippocratic treatises—Apicius de Re Culinariâ, S. Epiphanius De Prophetarum Vitis, and Chrysoloras' Epitome Grammaticis Græcæ—F. C. W.  THORESBY,, the antiquary and virtuoso, was born at Leeds in August, 1658. His father, a prosperous merchant of Leeds, had served in the parliamentary army under Fairfax, and seems to have been of an antiquarian turn, purchasing the Fairfax coins, which formed the nucleus of his son's museum. Ralph Thoresby was educated for his father's business, but was little fitted for commercial pursuits. When a boy, his topographical enthusiasm was kindled by a reference in a sermon of the vicar of Leeds to the high antiquity of his native town, as one <section end="410Zcontin" />