THOMAS A KEMHS. 



THOMASIN. 



he passed on to the coast of Coromandel ; and having made great 

 conversions to the faith in those parts, he proceeded over to some 

 coast on the east, called China (which may possibly have been the 

 country now called Cochin-China), and afterwards returned to Coro- 

 maudel, where, having suffered martyrdom, he was buried in the 

 mount since called St. Thomas's Mount. 



In the quarters indicated there are Christian churches which bear 

 the name of St. Thomas, and claim him for their founder. If they 

 derive their existence as a church uninterrupted from the apostolic 

 age, this fact may be taken as a corroboration of the above traditions. 

 But if the effects which resulted among them from the labours of Mar 

 Thoma and other Nestorian missionaries, at the commencement of the 

 sixteenth century, were really an original conversion, or at least a re- 

 conversion, and not, as is often supposed, the revival of a fallen but 

 not extinct church then this claim is to be regarded only as an echo 

 of the tradition which has always prevailed in the Syrian churches, 

 and which must be estimated by its intrinsic probability and value. 



(Besides Assemanni and Baronius, see Tillemont, i. 397, sq. ; Cave's 

 Antiq. Apostolicce ; Winer's Biblisches Realworterbuch, art. Thomas; 

 Buchanan's Christian Researches; Yeate's Indian Church History ; and 

 Principal Mill's Letter to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 

 (July 29, 1822). inserted in Christian Remembrancer for Nov., 1823.) 



THOMAS A KEMPIS. [KEMPIS.] 



THOMAS AQUI'NAS. [AQUINAS.] 



THOMAS, ANTOINE LE'ONARD, was born at Clermont in 

 Auvergne, on the 1st of October 1732. His father, it has been gene- 

 rally believed, died while Thomas was an infant, leaving a widow with 

 three sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Joseph Thomas, who 

 embraced the clerical profession, died in 1741 : he composed a 

 dramatic piece, entitled ' Le Plaisir,' which was acted with success in 

 1740. The second, Jean Thomas, died in 1755, professor in the 

 college of Beauvais : he published some Latin verses, and introduced 

 into his college an improved method of teaching Latin. It appears 

 therefore that the taste for literature was common to the whole 

 family. 



Antoine Leonard was educated at home till he had completed his 

 ninth year, and was then sent to prosecute his studies at Paris, where 

 his brothers preceded him. In a letter which he addressed, in 1767, 

 to Madlle. Moreau, he mentions that his second brother had taken 

 groat pains with his education. They were an attached family : 

 Antoine retained all his early devotion for his mother till her death 

 in 1782 ; and his sister, the only member of the family who survived 

 him, lived with him till his death. 



Antoine Leonard Thomas distinguished Himself at the university. 

 In 1747 he carried off two of the prizes distributed in his class in the 

 college of Duplessis : in 1748 and 1749 he studied rhetoric in the 

 College of Lisieux, and obtained four prizes : from October 1749 to 

 August 1751, he studied philosophy with equal distinction, at first in 

 the College of Lisieux, subsequently in that of Beauvais. When he 

 finished his university career, his friends wished him to study for the 

 bar, and he did so far comply with their desire as to attend law classes 

 and the office of a solicitor. This continued till the death of his 

 second brother, 1755, at which time he had retired, apparently on 

 account of his health, which was always infirm, to his native district. 

 A short time after he accepted the offer of a professorship in the 

 College of Beauvais. He continued to discharge the duties of his 

 appointment till 1761, when, finding them injurious to his health, 

 he resigned, and was appointed private secretary to the Due de 

 Praslin. 



Thomas commenced his career as author in 1756 by publishing 

 'Reflexions Philosophiques et Littdraires sur le Poeme de la Religion 

 Naturelle.' This was throwing down the gauntlet to the whole school 

 of Voltaire : the patriarch himself took no notice of the publication, 

 and Grimm spoke of it as the work of ' a silly lad just escaped from 

 the school of the Jesuits.' In the same year Thomas addressed an 

 ode, full of hyperbolical compliments, to Sechelles, controller-general 

 of finance : the flattery was successful; it obtained from the minister 

 an addition to the revenues of the college. In 1757 Thomas composed, 

 on the occasion of the great earthquake at Lisbon, a ' Memoire sur les 

 Causes des Treinblemens de Terre,' which was crowned by the 

 Academy of Rouen. In 1759 he published ' Jumarville,' a poem in 

 four cantos, on the death of a French officer, killed, as the French 

 alltged, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, in the war between 

 the French and English, in the backwoods of America. Fre'ron praised 

 this poem in the ' Annee Litteraire,' a tribute of thanks to the young 

 author who had ventured to attack Voltaire. These early works of 

 Thomas are remarkable only for their turgid style, commonplace ideas, 

 and for the eagerness of the author to avail himself of the popular 

 topic of the day. 



About this time the French Academy, with a view to render the 

 prize-essays of its members more popular, began to propose the eloges 

 of great men as the subjects. Thomas entered the lists three suc- 

 cessive years, and was successful every time. His 'Eloge de Maurice, 

 Comte de Saxe,' was crowned in 1759; his 'Eloge de Henri Fra^ois 

 d'Aguesseau,' in 1760; and hia 'Eloge de Re"ne" du Guay-Trouin,' in 

 1761. In 1760 he also competed for the prize of poetry : his ' Epitre 

 au Peuple ' was declared next in merit to the poem of Marmontel, to 

 which the medal was assigned. In these compositions a marked 



improvement can be traced. There ia no greater originality of thought 

 than in hie first productions nothing of genius in them ; but more 

 matter, more of artibtical finish, and leu of boyish inflation of style. 

 The connection with the Due de Praslin was leas advantageous to 

 Thomas than it promised to be at the outset The duke procured for 

 him the sinecure appointment of secretary-interpreter to the .Swim 

 cantons. But a vacancy occurring soon after in the Academy, this 

 minister, who had a personal quarrel with Marmontel, Bought to 

 obtain it for his secretary. Thomas had the magnanimity to refute 

 the appointment, urging the superior claims of Marmontel. This act 

 of honesty lost him the favour of the Due de Praelin, and closed the 

 career of office which was opening to him. The admission to the 

 Academy was not however long deferred. He delivered his inaugural 

 address to that body on the 22nd of January 1767. 



Between 1761 and 1767 he composed ' Eloge de Sully,' crowned in 

 1763; 'Eloge de Descartes,' crowned in 1765; in 1766, 'Eloge de 

 Louis, Dauphin de France,' composed and published at the request of 

 the Comte d'Angiviller ; and his inaugural discourse. In October 

 1767, his opera of 'Amphion ' was brought out, but without success. 

 Thes works are all characterised by a progressive improvement in 

 execution. They differ also from his juvenile productions in an 

 attempt to adopt the sparkling and antithetical style of the Encyclo- 

 pEedists, and in the complete approbation of their bold satirical tone 

 in respect to politics, although much of the author's juvenile respect 

 for religion remained with him to the last. As a natural consequence 

 of the change, Grinm Lad by this time begun to praise Thomas, and 

 Fre'ron had cooled in his admiration of him : Voltaire had written a 

 complimentary letter on the 'Eloge de Descartes,' but had on the 

 other hand remarked to his friends that they ought now to substitute 

 the word galithomas for galimatkias : Diderot continued implacable. 

 It was rumoured that the court, enraged at the free strain of the 

 ' Epitre au Peuple,' and the sarcasms launched against itself and the 

 feudal system in the Eloge du Dauphin,' threatened the liberty of 

 Thomas. 



The principal publications of Thomas, from the time of his admit - 

 sion into the Academy till his death, are ' Eloge de Marc Aurele,' 

 read to the Academy in 1770, and published in 1775. Hia reply, as 

 director of the Academy, to the inaugural discourse of the archbishop 

 of Toulouse, also in 1770. 'Eseai sur le Caractere, lea Mccurs, et 

 1'Esprit des Femmes, dans tous les Siecles/ 1772. 'Essai sur lf 

 Eloges ; ou 1'Histoire de la Littdrature et de 1'Eloquence appliqudes a 

 ce genre d'Ouvrage,' published in 1773, in an edition of his collected 

 works. He commenced a poem on the Czar Peter I.; but only four 

 books and part of a fifth were completed at the time of his death. 

 The increased technical skill of the author continues to show itself 

 in these works; but the increased boldness of his attempts serves 

 also to show the natural meagreness and feebleness of his genius. Ho 

 was utterly devoid of impassioned imagination. His ' Kloge de Marc 

 Aurele ' is an attempt to personify a Stoic of the age of that emperor : 

 it is alike deficient in interest and dramatic truth. His essay on the 

 character and manners of women is a collection of passages which 

 would have swelled his didactic essay on 'dloges' to too great a bulk. 

 It was said at the time that this panegyrical essay on the sex pleased 

 them leas than the vituperations of Rousseau. No wonder the treatise 

 of Thomas is cold and uuimpassioned ; it was forced work ; but the 

 ravings of Rousseau are the scoldings of a jealous man who has been 

 anxious but unable to please. The treatise on ' eloges ' is a worthy 

 consummation of the author's labours in that empty and artificial 

 branch of literature which has all the falsehood of oratory, without 

 the interest which attaches to the eloquence of the bar or senate from 

 its power of producing great practical effects. The partially completed 

 poem of ' The Czar' is sensible and the versification smooth, but the 

 four books are four separate poems, ia the manner (though not so 

 good) of Goldsmith's ' Traveller.' They never could have been made 

 parts of an epic. 



Thomas died on the 17th of September 1785. His health, always 

 delicate, had been undermined by incessant study. Thomas was a 

 mere echo of the society by which he was surrounded. He took his 

 colouring in youth from his preceptors, most of whom were eccle- 

 siastics ; in after-life, from the sceptical literary conversation of the 

 saloons of Paris. His dloges are his most characteristic works, a kind 

 of composition too inaccurate to have value as history, too cold aud 

 remote from the real business of life to impress as oratory. He stands 

 however high among his class of writers. The high finish and some 

 of the brilliancy of the French school cannot be denied him ; though 

 for this he was indebted quite as much to the company he kept as to 

 natural talent, or even his unquestionable painstaking. 



(CEuvres de M. Thomas, Paris, 1792 ; CEuvres Posthumes de M. 

 Thomas, Paris, An x. (1802) ; Sketch of Thomas,' by Saint Sunn, in 

 the Biographie Universclle.) 



THOMASIN, or TOMASIN, surnamed Tirkela're, Cla'r, or Zerkler, 

 a German poet of the 13th century. He was a native of the Italian 

 province of Friuli, now the Austrian province of Udine, and was born 

 about 1186. Being thus an Italian by birth, he wrote in his earlier 

 days an Italian work, probably a didactic poem, ' On Courteous 

 Manners,' which is no longer extant In the course of 1216, when ho 

 had just reached his thirtieth year, he wrote in the space of ten 

 months a great didactic poem in German, which from his native 



