837 



TALBOT, WILLIAM HENRY FOX. 



TALFOURD, SIR THOMAS NOON. 



693 



the opposing generals, conducted his prisoner to the king, of whom 

 he asked and obtained permission to restore him to liberty without 

 ransom ; English authorities state that he was three years a prisoner, 

 and then exchani>ed for Xaintrailles. After his release, and when the 

 panic occasioned by the deeds of this remarkable woman had passed 

 over, Tulbot, who had then the command of the English army, 

 restored its courage, and by taking Pontoise, Crotoy, beating the 

 French army at Rouen, and other successes, gave a parting lustre to 

 the English arms in this unhappy and foolish contest. In 1442 he 

 was created Earl of Shrewsbury in England, and shortly afterwards 

 Earl of Waterford and Wexford in Ireland, titles that continued in 

 his descendants till 1856. In June 1446 he was appointed Lord 

 Lieutenant of Ireland for the third time, and this office ho held till 

 1449, when he was succeeded by Richard Duke of York, who had been 

 recalled from the command of the army in France, to which country 

 Talbot was immediately sent. On his arrival with a small force he 

 captured Rouen ; but being afterwards besieged there was obliged to 

 surrender, and was retained as a hostage for the performance of certain 

 conditions. In 1450 he was released; and he then made a devotional 

 journey to Rome. On his return to England, Gascony and Guienne 

 having revolted against France, the command of the army sent to 

 support the insurrection was confided to him. In 1452 he reached 

 Guienue with a force of 4000 men, and a number of forts and towns 

 either voluntarily adhered to him or were subdued, Bordeaux, in 

 which he fortified himself, being one. The French however assembled 

 n large army against him, and laid siege to Chatillon. Talbot with 

 his son, the Lord de 1'Isle, proceeded thither with a small force to 

 raise the siege. He attacked the French entrenchments on July 13, 

 1453, but his force was too small. Although upwards of eighty years 

 of age, and so feeble that he was obliged to ride a small hackney, 

 ns Monstrelet states, when all the rest of his force had dismounted, he i 

 rode from rank to rank with the most indomitable valour, exhorting [ 

 his men to fresh effort?, till a ball from a culverin struck down his 

 horse, and a Frenchman slew him as he lay beneath it. His son like- 

 wise was slain on the same field, and the event has given occasion to 

 one of the most pathetic scenes in Shakspere descriptive of the devo- 

 tion of the father and the son to each other. On their death their 

 army was defeated and dispersed, so that but few escaped. The 

 French themselves have done justice to their redoubted antagonist, 

 whom they characterise as a faithful subject, a sincere patriot, a gene- 

 rous enemy, and an exact observer of his word, never having violated 

 his faith in an age when treason was too common. He was interred 

 with his son by the enemies whose respect he had won by his noble 

 qualities, but his remains were subsequently removed to Whitchurch in 

 Shropshire. 



* TALBOT, WILLIAM HENRY FOX, is the son of William Devon- 

 port Talbot, Esq., of Lacock Abbey, Wilts, by the Lady Elizabeth 

 Theresa Fox Strangways, eldest daughter of Henry Thomas, second 

 earl of Ilcbester, and represents maternally a branch of the noble 

 house of Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury. He was born, in February 

 1800, and received his early education at Harrow School under the 

 late Rev. Dr. Butler, dean of Peterborough, whence he was removed 

 to Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he gained the ' Person ' prize 

 for Greek Iambic verse in 1820, and was Chancellor's Medallist on 

 taking his degree in the following year. He did not adopt a profes- 

 sion, but in December 1832, he was elected in the Liberal interest for 

 the borough of Chippenham, which he represented down to the dis- 

 solution consequent on Sir Robert Peel's first accession to power in 

 December 1834, and did not offer himself for re-election. 



Mr. Talbot had devoted himself no less closely to scientific than to 

 literary and antiquarian pursuits, and hence he was led to the discovery, 

 which has resulted in the present art of Photography. In October 

 1S33, whilst amusing himself, aa he has related in his 'Pencil of 

 Nature,' in attempting to draw the scenery along the shores of the 

 Lake of Como by means of a camera-lucida, and tired by hia many 

 failures with that instrument, he was " led to reflect on the inimitable 

 beauty of the pictures of nature's painting, which the glass lens of the 

 camera throws upon the paper in its focus," and to consider the pos- 

 sibility of rendering these pictures permanent. Fully aware that 

 paper might by chemical means be made sensitive to the action of 

 light, he determined to pursue his idea. Following out an elaborate and 

 carefully-planned course of experiments, he gradually arrived nearer to 

 a satisfactory result; but in his anxiety to present his invention to the 

 world in as perfect a state as possible, he waited just so long as to see 

 the first announcement of a parallel method published by another. In 

 his own words : " An event occurred in the scientific world, which 

 in some degree frustrated the hope with which he had pursued during 

 nearly five years, this long and complicated, but interesting series of 

 experiments the hope, namely, of being the first to announce to the 

 world the existence of the new art which has since been named 

 Photography." This event was the publication in January 1839 by M. 

 Daguerre of the process, which he called the ' Me"thode Nie'pce per- 

 fectionne'e/ or as it soon came to be more commonly called, Dageurrco- 

 type [DAGUERUE; NifercE, vol. iv. col. 508.] Mr. Talbot immediately 

 communicated to the Royal Society his method, which he called at 

 first Photogitric Drawing, and afterwards Calotype, but for which Sir 

 David Brewster proposed the term, Talbotype, j n honour of the 

 inventor, and which was generally adopted till it merged in the more 



comprehensive term, Photography. In Daguerre's process, as is well 

 known, the image was produced upon metal plates; in Talbot's, the 

 image was obtained upon paper. Neither, it is scarcely necessary to 

 say, claimed to be the first who had obtained sun-pictures upon a 

 surface previously rendered sensitive, the principle having been per- 

 ceived and announced by Thomas Wedgwood in ' An Account of a 

 Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of making Profiles by 

 the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver ; with Observations by 

 Humphry Davy,' published in the ' Journal of the British Institution, 1 

 in 1802; by Thomas Young; and later by Nicdphore Nie'pce, who 

 made his researches known in London in 1827, having several years 

 before distinctly announced in Paris the possibility of obtaining sun- 

 pictures ; but in none of these was the image either distinct or 

 permanent. M. Daguerre and Mr. Talbot were undoubtedly the first 

 to apply the principle practically, and from them the art may fairly be 

 said to date its origin. The pi-ocess of Daguerre in the first instance 

 produced much the more definite images, and from the zeal with 

 which M. Arago and other of his eminent scientific countrymen 

 proclaimed its merits, it obtained for awhile a much larger share of 

 public attention, though the greater ease, economy, and applica- 

 bility of the paper process have now caused it almost to supersede 

 that of metal-plates e.ven in France. Mr. Talbot's method remained 

 however for some time in a very imperfect state, but he continued 

 his experiments, and in September 1840 he made the discovery which 

 laid the foundation of the present form of the photographic art : 

 this was the fact, that sensitive paper, during the first few seconds of 

 exposure to the light, receives an invisible image perfect in all respects, 

 and that in order to render the Image visible, it is sufficient to wash 

 the paper over with gallic acid or some similar astringent liquid. 

 When this fact became established and generally known, the images of 

 most objects were very rapidly obtained, it being only necessary for 

 the purpose to obtain an invisible image, which was often effected in 

 an instant. Subsequent photographic methods have all adopted this 

 process as a principle, and must, in fact, be regarded as, in the main, 

 refinements and modifications of it. In 1842 the medal of the Royal 

 Society was presented to him for his discovery. 



In 1844 Mr. Talbot published a series of specimens obtained by 

 his process, and multiplied by the now well-known method of photo- 

 graphic printing. In this work, which he entitled ' The Pencil of 

 Nature,' he gave sun-pictures not only of landscape scenery, figures, 

 portraits, and ' still-life,' but copies of engravings, and fac-similes of 

 old printed books and of drawings by ancient masters, examples, in 

 short, amply sufficient to show the wide application of the infant art, 

 and though, in the copy now lying before us, many of the pictures are 

 greatly fkded, many are at least in parts scarcely exceeded in 

 brilliancy and delicacy by the most successful photographs of the 

 present day. In 1841 Mr. Talbot, following the example ofM. 

 Daguerre in England, had secured his right to the commercial use of 

 his invention by a patent, and granted licences to use the process in 

 the usual way. But when the wide application of photography to 

 scientific, antiquarian, and artistic purposes led to its extended prac- 

 tice by private persons, it was found that the patent rights greatly 

 interfered with the free progress of the art, and Mr. Talbot was induced, 

 chiefly on the representations of various members of the Royal Society, 

 to throw open his patents, with a reservation against taking portraits 

 for sale. Soon after the discovery of the very beautiful ' Collodion 

 process,' the question arose whether that process was embraced 

 within the specifications of Mr. Talbot's patents, and ultimately the 

 question was brought for adjudication before Lord Chief Justice 

 Jervis and a special jury in the Court of Common Pleas, December 20, 

 1854, when a verdict was returned that " the plaintiff (Mr. Talbot) 

 was the first inventor, but that there was no infringement of his 

 patent by the defendant" Mr. Talbot ultimately acquiesced in the 

 finding of the jury, and in the following year he announced his inten- 

 tion not to apply for a renewal of his patent, but to leave it fr< e for 

 any one to practice the art at his pleasure. In 1851 Mr. Talbot pre- 

 sented to the Royal Society and to the Acaddmie des Sciences 

 an account of experiments for obtaining absolutely instantaneous 

 photographic images; and in April 1853 he published a notice of 

 some successful experiments for engraving photographically on steel 

 plates an art in which M. Niepce de Saint Victor has however 

 obtained much more important results. 



During the last few years Mr. Talbot appears to have devoted much 

 attention to the decyphering of Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions and 

 to cognate studies. He had previously published ' Legendary Tales/ 

 8vo, 1830; ' Hermes, or Classical and Antiquarian Researches/ 8vo, 

 1838-39 ; ' The Antiquity of the Book of Geoiesis illustrated by some 

 New Arguments/ 8vo, 1839 ; and 'English Etymologies, 8vo, 1847. 



TALFOURD, SIR THOMAS NOON, KNT., was born January 20, 

 1795, at Doxey, a suburb of the town of Stafford, where his mother 

 was then on a visit. His birth was premature. His father was a 

 brewer at Reading in Berkshire. His mother was a daughter of 

 Thomas Noon, minister of a congregation of Independents in that 

 town, to which sect his father also belonged. Thomas Noon Talfourd 

 was educated at the grammar-school of Reading, under Dr. Valpy, for 

 whom he always entertained an affectionate respect. In the year 1813 

 he was placed for legal instruction under Mr. Chitty, the special 

 pleader, and in 1817 commenced practice as a special pleader ou his 



