201 



TURNEBUS, ADRIAN. 



TURNER, JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM. 



202 



Condorcet, " a more lively sense of the attentions they showed him ; 

 and Lia spirit beheld with tranquillity the approach of the momeut 

 when, according to the eternal laws of nature, it was about to fill in 

 another sphere the place which those laws had marked out for it." 

 (' Vie de M. Turgot,' p. 206.) He died on the 20th of March 1781. 



The following are the principal works of Turgot : Articles iu the 

 Enclycope'die ' Etymologie,' ' Existence,' ' Expansibility,' ' Foires et 

 Murche*s,' 'Fondations;' 'Eloge de M. de Qournay ;' numerous official 

 letters, memoirs, and pro-jets, lois, e"dits, &c. : 'Reflexions sur la For- 

 mation et la Distribution des Richesses;' ' Lettres a M. le Controleur- 

 G on oral sur le Commerce des Grains;' 'Extension de la Libertd du 



Commerce des Colonies;' ' Lettre a M. , Maire de Rochefort ; ' 



' Lettre a M. 1'Abbe" Terray sur la Marque dt>s Fera ; ' ' Sur la Prosodie 

 de la Langue Franaise et la Versification Mdtrique ; ' ' a M. de C. sur 

 le Livre da 1'Esprit;' a complimentary Letter to Dean Tucker on the 

 occasion of M. Turgot's translating into French Tucker's work, entitled 

 ' The Case of going to War for the Sake of Trade, considered in a 

 New Light.' [TUCKER, JOSIAH.] 



Condorcet, in his Life of Turgot, gives a good many opinions and 

 speculations iu metaphysics, morals, and legislation, which formed, he 

 says, detached portions of a great work which Turgot had projected, 

 but which he had not even begun to write, and were gathered by 

 Condorcet from his conversation. 



(Vie de Monsieur Turgot (par Condorcet), Londre?, 1786; MSmoirea 

 sur la Vie et les Ov/vrages de M. Turgot, Ministre d'Etat, par Dupont 

 de Nemours, Philadelphia, 1788 ; Oeuvres de M. Turgot, Ministre d'Etat, 

 9 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1808.) 



TURNE'BUS, ADRIAN, one of the most celebrated French 

 scholars of the 16th century. His French name was Tournebcauf, 

 and some writers, as Dempster and Mackenzie, have maintained that 

 this is only a French translation of the English name Turnbull, and 

 that Turnebus was the son of a Scotchman who had settled in Nor- 

 mandy. The common account however is that he was born in 1512, 

 at Les Andelys in Normandy, and in his eleventh year he was sent 

 to Paris to be educated. His uncommon talents, combined with his 

 indefatigable diligence, soon raised him above all his fellow-students, 

 and he is said on many occasions to have shown more knowledge than 

 hh masters. After the completion of his studies he was for some 

 time engaged in teaching the ancient languages at Toulouse, until in 

 1547 ho was appointed professor of Greek at Paris, whither his name 

 and that of A. Muretus attracted students from all parts of Europe. 

 In 1552 he undertook in conjunction with William Morel the manage- 

 ment of the Royal Printing Establishment of Paris for Greek books, 

 but after the lapse of three years he resigned this office for that of 

 Royal Professor. Notwithstanding the many brilliant offers that were 

 made to him in several foreign countries, he remained at Paris until 

 Lis death, on the 12th of June 1565. 



Seldom had a scholar in his lifetime enjoyed such a universal and 

 truly European reputation as Turnebus. He was a man of a diffident, 

 modest, and very amiable character, and no one who knew him could 

 help becoming attached to him. Henry Stephens is reported to have 

 said : " Turnebus pleases everybody because he does not please him- 

 self." In his learned controversies however with Ramus and Bodi- 

 nius, he is sometimes as severe as he was naturally gentle. As a 

 scholar he was not inferior to any of his contemporaries : even on the 

 day of his marriage he could not abstain from devoting a few hours 

 to his studies. His works consist of philological dissertations, some 

 of which are polemical, critical commentaries on various ancient 

 authors, and translations of Greek writers into Latin. His criticisms 

 are generally masterly, but, like most great critics, he was too fond 

 of making conjectural emendations. His Latin translations are among 

 the most elegant and correct that have been made. His Greek trans- 

 lation of Cicero's essay ' De Fato ' is a proof of his thorough know- 

 ledge of the Greek language. Most of his works, all of which 

 appeared separately and at different times, were collected and pub- 

 lished after his death by his second son, Stephen Turnebus, under the 

 title, ' Adrian! Turnebi Opera,' Strasburg, 3 vols. folio, 1600. Besides 

 the works contained in this collection, he wrote several others, the 

 best of which are his ' Adversaria,' consisting of 3 vols. 4to, the third 

 of which was edited after his death by his son Adrian Turnebus. 

 The first edition of the first two volumes appeared at Paris in 

 1564. It was several times reprinted, but the best edition is that of 

 1599, folio. 



(NiceYtn, Memoires, vol. 39 ; Teissier, Eloges des Savans; compare 

 Mackenzie, Scotch Writers ; Saxius, Onomast.) 



* TURNER, DAWSON, a distinguished living botanist, was born in 

 the latter part of the 18th century, and spent the greater portion of 

 his life at Great Yarmouth, in Norfolk. Although he has attended to 

 all departments of botany, he is especially distinguished for _ his 

 knowledge of cryptogamic plants. His first work was ' A Synopsis of 

 the British Fuci,' which was published in London, in two volumes in 

 1802. In 1804 he published an account of the mosses of Ireland, 

 under the title 'Muscologia Hibernicse Spicilegium.' In 1808 he pub- 

 lished a work in folio with illustrations, entitled ' Fuci, or coloured 

 figures and descriptions of the Plants of the genus Fucus.' _ This work 

 was in three volumes. In 1809 appeared a smaller work in 4to, em- 

 bracing a history of various forms of sea-weeds, with the title ' History 

 of the Fuci.' He also published an account of ' A Tour in Normandy,' 



2 vols., royal 8vo. ; ' Treves, and its Architectural Remains ;' ' Sepul- 

 chral Reminiscences of Yarmouth ;' ' Historical Sketches of Caister 

 Castle ;' and ' Analyses of English, French, and Roman History.' In 

 many of his labours and travels he was associated with the late Mr. 

 Lewis Weston Dillwyn, of Swansea, and in conjunction with him, 

 ' The Botanist's Guide through England and Wales,' was published in 

 1816. This work was one of great interest to the botanist, giving the 

 localities in which plants indigenous to England and Wales could be 

 found. Mr. Turner was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society in 

 1802, ho was also one of the early Fellows of the Linuauan Society, 

 and he has had conferred upon him many foreign honours. He has 

 not now for many years contributed to the literature of botany. 



TURNER, EDWARD, a distinguished chemist, was born in Scot- 

 land iu 1798, and educated in Edinburgh for the medical profession. 

 He took his degree of M.D., in the University of Edinburgh, but 

 devoted himself to the study of chemistry. At the opening of 

 University College, then the London University, in 1828, he was 

 appointed to the chair of chemistry, a position he occupied till his 

 death. He was chiefly known as a writer on the science of chemistry, 

 by his ' Elements of Chemistry,' a book which has gone through seven 

 or eight editions, and is remarkable for the comprehensive and lucid 

 manner in which the whole science of chemistry is treated. Although 

 Dr. Turner did not contribute much to the periodical literature of 

 the day, he embodied the results of his labours in the successive 

 editions of his work ; and he wrote some mineralogical articles for the 

 ' Penny Cyclopaedia.' He chiefly worked at the department known as 

 inorganic chemistry, and more especially employed himself in perfecting 

 the atomic theory, and the laws of combination of elements. It was 

 through his labours that many of the equivalent numbers of the 

 elements were established. He was not less successful as a lecturer 

 than a writer, and few men have exhibited greater power of imparting 

 the knowledge they possessed to others than was exhibited by Dr. 

 Turner. In early life he was subject to disease of the lungs, and 

 subsequently suffered from intense dyspepsia. In January 1839, he 

 was seized with inflammation of the lungs, and died on the 13th of 

 February following. He was much beloved by the students of his 

 class at University College, and three hundred of them followed him 

 to his grave. A marble bust of him was placed in the library of the 

 college, the cost being defrayed by subscriptions from his pupils. 



TURNER, JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM, was born at No. 26, 

 Maiden-Line, Covent Garden, where his father carried on business as 

 a hair-dresser. The year, as well as the month of Turner's birth has 

 been differently given ; all that is certainly known respecting either is 

 that his baptism is entered on the register of the parish church of St. 

 Paul's, Covent Garden, as having taken place on the 14th of May, 

 1775; and it is most probable that his baptism followed pretty close 

 upon his birth. Of his boyhood and youth little is told. His father, 

 a tradesman in a small way, did not attempt to make his son a scholar, 

 and the great painter never advanced far beyond the rudiments of an 

 ordinary English education. Of his primary training in art, or what 

 led Lini to think of painting as a profession, we have no precise infor- 

 mation. Probably his own strong inclination first stimulated him to 

 overcome the initiatory difficulties of the study of drawing, and some 

 casual occurrence or association aroused or directed his ambition. It 

 does not appear that the elder Turner thwarted his son's inclination, 

 though, perhaps from poverty, perhaps from indifference, he did not 

 procure him the instruction which might have smoothed his early 

 path. 



Turner wag essentially a self-made painter. It is said iu a brief 

 notice of him published in 1805 when, though only in his thirtieth 

 year, he was already recognised as the first of living landscape 

 painters " Turner may be considered as a striking instance of how 

 much may be gained by industry, if accompanied by perseverance, 

 even without the assistance of a master. The way he acquired his 

 professional powers was by borrowing when he could a drawing or 

 picture to copy ; or by making a sketch of any one in the Exhibition 

 early in the morning, and finishing it up at home. By such practices, 

 and by a patient perseverance, he has overcome all the difficulties of 

 the art." (Daye's ' Professional Sketches of Modern Artists,' Works, 

 p. 352.) This passage was written by one eminent in his day as an 

 instructor of young landscape painters, and the teacher and friend of 

 Girtin, Turner's earliest and closest artistic associate, and it coincides 

 with what other authorites, both written and traditionary, have always 

 related of his career. But he was certainly still very young when he 

 had opened to him the means of obtaining profesional instruction, he 

 having been admitted as a student in the Royal Academy in 1789, when 

 consequently he was only fourteen years old. It is hardly probable, 

 however, that he received much direct instruction in the Academy 

 schools, or that he followed their prescribed course. If he studied 

 in the antique, or later in the life school, he certainly never acquired 

 mastery over the human form, and no instruction was given the 

 student in landscape drawing or painting. Still it is not likely that 

 a young enthusiast, as he certainly was, would attend the schools and 

 form acquaintance with professors and students, without acquiring 

 from them much technical information, even if he received no syste- 

 matic instruction. But his best academy, he was accustomed to say, was 

 " the fields and Dr. Monro's parlour." Dr. Monro, who was a warm- 

 hearted patron of young artists, had an excellent collection of water- 



