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TEIGNMOUTH, LORD. 



TELEMACHUS. 



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arrive at the opinion that the ' Frithiofs Saga ' has been considerably 

 overrated. The eame conviction baa been arrived at by several English 

 readers, among others the writer of this article, on the perusal of the 

 original. The poem of 'Frithiof' has no deep pathos, no vivid 

 eloquence. Its g'-neral character is that of neatness and prettiuess 

 rather than anything superior. It sinks often into tameness, and never 

 rises to sublimity. The story, which follows too closely the original 

 saga, is that of a young Northern warrior who is enamoured of the 

 sister of two young kings, who is denied her hand by her brothers, 

 who, in his indignant proceedings thereupon, accidentally burns the 

 sacred grove of Balder, leaves the country on a warlike expedition, on 

 his return finds his beloved married to an old king, who generously 

 puts an end to his existence when he discovers he is in the lovers' 

 way, and finally obtains the hand of the lady after having humbly 

 expiated the sacrilege against Balder of which he has been guilty. 

 This story is told in four-and-twenty cantos, of which some are as 

 short as ballads, and each one is in a different measure, one in blank 

 verse, another in hexameters, &c. That an epic poem would be 

 improved by a variety of metre, was a proposition laid down long ago 

 by Dr. Watts, if not before him ; but this mechanical variety of four- 

 aud-twenty different metres, not one repeated, has somewhat of a 

 childish appearance. TegneYs poem of 'Axel' is in what may be 

 called the Byronic metre, and in tone and structure strongly reminds 

 the reader of Byron'8 ' Mazeppa,' on which it was doubtless modelled. 

 The story is slight and commonplace a maiden who follows her 

 lover to the wars in .male attire, and whose death in combat drives 

 her lover distracted but the spirit with which it is told atones for 

 every deficiency. Those who are fond of ' Mazeppa ' are sure to like 

 this poem, either in the original, or its excellent English translation 

 by R. G. Latham. > There are two others, one by Oscar Baker, who has 

 also translated ' Svea,' and another in ' Blackwood's Magazine.' The 

 ' Children of the Lord's Supper ' has been admirably translated by 

 Professor Longfellow, who has also rendered various passages from 

 ' Frithiof and ' Axel.' 



TEIGNMOUTH, JOHN SHORE, LORD, was the eldest son of 

 Thomas Shore, Esq., sometime of Melton in Suffolk. The family was 

 originally of Derbyshire, Lord Teignmouth's great-grandfather having 

 been a Sir John Shore, M.D., of Derby, who was knighted in 1667. 

 Lord Teignmouth was born, it is believed, in Devonshire, on the 8th 

 of October 1751 ; his father died in 1759, his mother in 1783, and his 

 only brother, the Rev. Thomas William Shore, who was vicar of 

 Sandal in Yorkshire, and of Otterton in Devonshire, in 1822. 



Mr. Shore went to Bengal in 1769 as a cadet in the Company's civil 

 service, and was first stationed at Moorshedabad as an assistant under 

 the council of revenue. In 1773 his knowledge of that language pro- 

 cured him the appointment of Persian translator and secretary to the 

 Provincial Council of Moorshedabad ; and this was followed the next 

 year by a seat at the Calcutta revenue board, which he retained till 

 the dissolution of the board in 1781, when he was appointed second 

 member of the general committee of revenue, established by the new 

 charter granted that year. While holding this situation, Mr. Shore 

 lived in terms of intimacy with Warren Hastings, the governor-general; 

 and when Hastings came home in 1785 he accompanied his friend to 

 England. During this visit to his native country he married Charlotte, 

 only daughter of James Cornish, Esq., a medical practitioner at Teign- 

 mouth ; and a few weeks after, in April 1786, he set out again for 

 Calcutta, having been appointed one of the members of the Supreme 

 Council under the new governor-general, Lord Cornwallis. To his 

 activity and ascendancy in the council is mainly attributed the 

 adoption of Cornwallis's great measure, the new settlement, in 1789, 

 of landed property in the^ presidency of Bengal, by which the zemin- 

 dars, hitherto only the revenue agents or tax-gatherers of the govern- 

 ment, were made the hereditary proprietors of the estates which they 

 farmed, and the ryots, or peasantry, who had till now a right of occu- 

 pation so long as they paid their asseesruents, were declared the tenants 

 of the zemindars, and made removable at the will of their landlords. 

 The new judicial system which was introduced towards the close of 

 Lord Cornwallis's government in 1793 also owed its establishment in a 

 principal degree to Shore, who had been made a baronet the preceding 

 year. On the retirement of Cornwallis, in August 1793, Sir John 

 Shore was appointed to succeed him as governor-general ; and he held 

 that high office till the close of the year 1797, when he resigned it to 

 the Earl of Mornington, and was created an Irish peer by the title of 

 Baron Teignmouth. 



Upon the death of Sir William Jones, in April 1794, Sir John Shore 

 was elected president of the Asiatic Society, and, taking his seat in 

 that capacity on the 22nd of May, he delivered a discourse on the 

 merits of the late president, which is printed in the fourth volume of 

 the Society's 'Transactions.' After his return home, Lord Teignmouth 

 published, in 1804, a quarto volume entitled 'Memoirs of the Life, 

 Writings, and Correspondence of Sir William Jones;' and in 1807 he 

 produced an edition, in 13 vols 8vo, of Jones's Works, with this Life 

 prefixed. Upon his leaving India, Lord Teignmouth had been suc- 

 C( eded as president of the Asiatic Society by Sir Robert Chambers, in 

 a discourse bv whom, delivered at a meeting of the society on the 18th 

 of January 1798, and printed in the sixth volume of their 'Trans- 

 actions,' there is a sketch of the character and career of his predecessor. 

 In 1804, on the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 



Lord Teignmouth was elected its first president, and this situation he 

 retained till his death, though for some years before that event he was 

 obliged to devolve its active duties upon his successor, Lord Bexley. 

 In the prosperity of the society he at all times took the liveliest 

 interest. 



On the 4th of April 1807 Lord Teignmouth was appointed one of 

 the commissioners for the affairs of India, or, in other words, a mem- 

 ber of the Board of Control ; and on the 8th of the same month he 

 was sworn of the Privy Council. He retained his seat at the Board of 

 Control for some years, and his death took place on the 14th of 

 February 1834. 



Besides the publications already mentioned, Lord Teignmouth is 

 the author of 'A Letter tb the Reverend Christopher Wordsworth, 

 D.D., on the subject of the Bible Society,' Svo, London, 1810; and 

 ' Considerations on communicating to the Inhabitants of India tho 

 Knowledge of Christianity,' Svo, London, 1811. 



TEISSIER, ANTOINE, was born at Montpellier, on the 28th of 

 January 1632. His family, which was originally of Nirnes, was Pro- 

 testant ; and his father was receiver -general of the province of 

 Languedoc, but he was deprived of that appointment, and also of 

 whatever else he possessed, a few months after the birth of his son, 

 for having joined the revolt of Henri, due de Montmorenci, or at least 

 given up to him, the public money which was in his hands. Montmo- 

 renci was taken prisoner at the affair of Castelnaudari, on the 1st of 

 September 1632 ; his insurrection was suppressed, and on the 30th of 

 October he was beheaded. After the ruin of his family it was deter- 

 mined that Autoine Teissier should be educated for the ministry of 

 the Protestant Church, and with that view he studied theology for 

 some time at the Protestant seminaries of Nimes, Montauban, and 

 Saumur. But in the end he made up his mind to adopt the profession 

 of the law, induced, it is said, by the weak state of his health ; and 

 after having gone through the usual course of study at Bourges, and 

 taken his Doctor's degree, he commenced practice as an advocate 

 before the district courfc called the Presidial, at Nimes. His bodily 

 strength however proved to be no more sufficient for the bar than it 

 had been thought to be for the pulpit ; and after some time he gave 

 up his profession, and took to literature as a means of subsistence. 

 On the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, Teissier took 

 refuge in Switzerland, having, according to the 'Biographic Universelle,' 

 although in extreme distress, declined very tempting proposals which 

 were made through the chancellor D'Aguesseau to induce him to 

 remain in France. But it would no doubt be made a condition that 

 he should abjure Protestantism. He supporttd himself chiefly at 

 first by publishing a French newspaper at Berne ; then by giving a 

 course of public law (droit public) at Zurich, and the works he sent 

 to the press from time to time also brought him something. At 

 length, in 1692, he was invited by Frederic III., elector of Branden- 

 burg (afterwards King Frederic I. of Prussia) to come to Berlin, and 

 there he resided till his death, on the 7th of September 1715. Imme- 

 diately on his arrival he had been nominated a councillor of state, and 

 appointed to the office of historiographer ; and part of his time was 

 also occupied for some years in superintending or directing the edu- 

 cation of the hereditary prince, afterwards Frederic William I. A 

 complete list of Teissier's numerous publications is given in the 

 ' Biographic Universelle.' The most celebrated among them is his 

 ' Eloges des Hommes Savans, tire'es de 1'Histoire de M. de Thou,' first 

 published at Lyon and at Geneva, in a 12mo volume, in 1683 ; then at 

 Utrecht, in 2 vols., in 1696 ; and again at Leyden, in 4 vols., in 1715. 

 In the two latter editions the text of De Thou is accompanied by 

 numerous annotations, which display much curious research. Teissier 

 was an accurate inquirer ; but there is no artistic quality or vital 

 power in any of his books, and all of them, even including his 

 ' Eloges,' may be said to be now superseded and nearly forgotten. 

 One of the most creditable is a catalogue, in Latin, of the authors 

 who have wiitten catalogues, indexes, &c., in two parts, 4to, Geneva, 

 1685 and 1705 ; some others relate to parts of the history of Prussia; 

 and a great many are translations, which have the character of being 

 generally faithful enough, but of little elegance or spirit, from St. 

 Clement, St. Chrysostom, Calvin, Sleidau, and other Greek and Latin 

 writers, the latter mostly, if not exclusively, moderns. 



TELE'MACHUS (TijA.eyuaxos), the son of Odysseus (Ulysses) and 

 Penelope. When his father joined the Greeks in their expedition 

 against Troy, Telemachus was very young, but during his father's 

 absence he grew up to manhood. When the gods had decreed that 

 Odysseus should return home from the island of Ogygia, Athena 

 (Minerva), assuming the appearance of Mentes, king of the Taphi:ms, 

 appeared to Telemachus, and advised him to get rid of the suitors of 

 his mother; but if Penelope should wish to marry again, to send her 

 to her father's house, that she might celebrate her nuptials there. She 

 also advised him to sail to Pylos and Sparta, to see whether he could 

 learn anything concerning his father, who, as she said, was probably 

 still living in some island where he was forcibly detained ; but if he 

 should be dead, she enjoined Telemachus to raise a monument to his 

 memory, and to rid himself of the suitors of his mother either by 

 stratagem or by force. Telemachus obeyed the commands of the 

 goddess, and visited Nestor at Pylos and Menelaus at Sparta. Both of 

 them received him hospitably, and Menelaus communicated to him 

 the prophecy of Proteus about his father. In the meantime Odysseus 



