217 



TYRT^US. 



TYSON, EDWARD. 



218 



to that of Edward L; the third, Part 1, to the accession of Edward II.; 

 Part 2, to the end of the reign of Richard II. It is asserted by Hearne, 

 in his preface to Thomas de Elmham (8vo, Oxford, 1727), that a 

 further portion of the work had been pi-epared for the press ; but it 

 has never appeared. Tyrrell's history, which has now become scarce, 

 is valuable as being founded throughout upon the original chroniclers, 

 of whose accounts indeed it is in great part a literal translation ; but 

 it is rather an undigested accumulation of materials than an historical 

 narrative with even the humblest pretensions to an artistic character. 

 Besides the narrative, there are many prefaces, introductions, appen- 

 dices, &c., occupied with the investigation of particular points, or the 

 defence of the author's favourite notions, the most remarkable of 

 which are, that the Norman. Conquest made scarcely any alteration in 

 the original or Saxon frame of the government, and that the repre- 

 sentation of the commons in parliament in particular has been uninter- 

 rupted since the Saxon times. The vindication of these opinions is 

 also the object of several of his ' Political Dialogues.' 



TYRT^EUS (TvpTotos), the second great elegiac poet among the 

 ancient Greeks. His age is determined by the fact that he assisted 

 the Spartans in their second Messenian War, which is placed by 

 Fausanias between the years B.C. 685 and 668, while others place its 

 commencement about the year B.C. 660, and even later. The birth- 

 place of Tyrtseus is differently stated : Suidaa calls him a Milesian or 

 a Laconian : he of course became a Laconian after receiving the 

 Spartan franchise ; and the circumstance that after he was made a 

 Spartan citizen he spoke in his poems of himself as such, and of 

 his Spartan ancestors, led Strubo to think that Tyrtseus was originally 

 a Dorian of Erineos near Mount Pindus, from whence some centuries 

 before a portion of the Dorians had immigrated into Peloponnesus. 

 That he was actually residing in Attica, either at Aphidnse or at 

 Athens, just before he went to Sparta, is attested by the general con- 

 sent of antiquity. The common story about his going to Sparta, as 

 related by Pausanias and others, runs thus. When the second Messe- 

 nian War broke out, the Spartans, not knowing how to act, consulted 

 the oracle of Delphi. The god commanded them to avail themselves 

 of the advice of an Athenian, and an embassy was accordingly sent to 

 Athens to ask for a man who was to be their adviser. The Athenians 

 were unwilling to assist the Spartans in extending their dominion in 

 Peloponnesus, and yet not wishing to disobey the command of Apollo, 

 they sent to Sparta Tyrtteus, a schoolmaster who was lame in one foot 

 and had never shown any signs of talent. The story about his lame- 

 ness may be questioned, but that his mental powers were anything 

 but weak is sufficiently clear from the effects which his poetry is said 

 to have produced at Sparta, and the remains which are still extant. 

 The elegy, which had recently been introduced in Greece by Calliuus 

 of Miletus, was the means by which Tyrtrous inspired the Spartans 

 with courage and confidence, and by which he led them to their 

 victories over the Messenians. 



On his arrival in Sparta he recited his warlike anapccstic elegies to 

 the magistrates and to as many of the people as he could gather 

 around him, and he exhorted them in the most animating strains to 

 fight bravely against their enemies. The number of such stirring 

 war-sougs (inroOrJKai, or t>7ro0rjK<xt 5* e\eyeias), which being sung to the 

 accompaniment of the flute made a deep and lasting impression upon 

 the Spartans, appears to have been very great. But the mission which 

 Tyrtteus had to fulfil was not only to breathe a new warlike spirit 

 into the Spartans, but also to settle their internal dissensions ; for 

 those Spartans who had lost their lands in Messenia were discontented, 

 and demanded a new division of laud. For this purpose he composed 

 the most celebrated of his elegies, called 'Eunomia' (Etu/o/a; Suidas 

 calls it a iroAtreia), that is, " good government." Some fragments of 

 it are still extant, and enable us to form some idea of the whole com- 

 position. A third class of elegies were march-songs, which the Greeks 

 called /xeAT? iro\efj,i(TT'fipia ) e/i/SaTTJpia, tv6ir\ia., eny avatraiffTa, or TrpoTpeTr- 

 n;ca. All the poems of Tyrtoeus had an extraordinary influence upon 

 his hearers, but the most popular among them appear to have been his 

 war-songs, for they continued for centuries after to be sung, not only 

 at Sparta, but among the Dorians generally before they went out to 

 battle. There are extant three entire poems of this kind, but it is a 

 matter of great doubt whether they are not much mutilated and 

 interpolated. All the works of Tyrtseus were in later times collected 

 and divided into five books. 



Tyrtseus had the good fortune to live to see the fruits of his wise 

 advice the reduction of the Messenians to the condition of Helots 

 (Paus., iv., 14, 3); and the accounts which we now have of the second 

 Messenian War are probably derived in a great measure from his 

 poems. The first collection of the remains of Tyrtseus that appeared 

 in print is that of S. GeJenius and M. Aurigallus, which also contains 

 the works of Callimachus, 4to, Basel, 1532. The edition of C. A. 

 Klotz (' Tyrtsei Opera quse supersunt omuia,' &c., with a commentary 

 and a German translation, 8vo, Leipzig, 1767) is not worth much. 

 The best editions in which the poems of Tyrtseus are printed, together 

 with those of Callinus, are those of J. V. Franke (' Callinus, sive 

 Qusestio de Origiue Carminis Elegiaci : accedunt Tyrtsei Reliquise,' 

 c., 8vo, Altona, 1816), and N. Bach (' Callini Ephesii, Tyrtsei Aphid- 

 nsei, Asii Samii Carminum quse supersunt,' 8vo, Leipzig, 1831). They 

 are also contained in several collections of Greek poets. 



(Thiersch, in the Acta Philol. Monac. of 182(5, vol. iii., p. 587, &c. ; 



and in general, Muller, Hint, of the Lit. of Ancient Greece, i., p. 110, 

 &c. ; Bode, Oeschic/Ua der Lyriachen Dicktkunst. der Ildlenen, i. p. 

 211, &c.) 



There are many versions of Tyrtseua. The Elegies of Tyrtseua were 

 translated into English verse by R. Polwhele, 4to, 1786; 8vo, 1792; 

 and the War Elegies (four) were imitated by J. Pye, 8vo, 1795 



TYRWHITT, THOMAS, was the eldest son of the liev. Dr. Robert 

 Tynvhitt, the descendant of an ancient Lincolnshire family, who at 

 the time of the birth of his son, in London, 29th of March 1730, was 

 rector of St. James's, Westminster, and afterwards became a canon 

 residentiary and prebendary of St. Paul's, archdeacon of London, and 

 a canon of Windsor. Thomas was first sent to school at Kensington, 

 whence he removed in 1741 to Eton, and he remained there till he 

 was entered of Queen's College, Oxford, in 1747. In 1755 he was 

 elected to a fellowship of Merton College ; and having taken hia 

 degree of M.A. the following year, although he had also entered him- 

 self of the Middle Temple, he continued his residence at the university 

 till 1762, when, resigning his fellowship, he came up to London, and 

 entered upon the duties of the office of clerk of the House of Com- 

 mons, to which he was appointed on .the resignation of Jeremiah 

 Dyson, Esq. ; but finding the fatigue too great for his health, he 

 relinquished this appointment in 1768, and devoted the rest of hia 

 life to literary pursuits. Mr. Tyrwhitt, who was greatly beloved for 

 his amiable character, died at his house in Welbeck-street on the 15th 

 of August 1786. 



The following is a list of his publications, all of which display 

 sound scholarship, extensive reading, much taste and critical acumen, 

 or, at the least, great accuracy and precision, and the most pains- 

 taking and conscientious industry, where higher qualifications were 

 not called for : A poem, entitled ' An Epistle to Florio at Oxford ' 

 (Mr. Ellis of Christchurch), 4to, Lond., 1749. ' Translations in Verse ' 

 of Pope's ' Messiah ' and Philips's ' Splendid Shilling ' into Latin, and 

 of the 'Eighth Isthmian Ode' of Pindar into English, 4to, 1752. 

 'Observations and Conjectures on some Passages in Shakspeare' 

 (anonymous, but with the portrait of the author prefixed), Svo, 1766. 

 'Proceedings and Debates in the House of Commons in 1620 and 

 1621, from the original MS. in the Library of Queen's College, Oxford, 

 with an Appsndix,' 2 vols. 8vo, Clarendon Press, 1766. ' The Manner 

 of Holding Parliaments in England ; by Henry Elsynge, Cler. Par. ; 

 corrected and enlarged from the Author's original MS.,' 8vo, 1768. 

 ' Fragmenta duo Plutarchi ' (from the Harleian Manuscript, 5612), 

 anonymous, 8vo, 1773. 'The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer,' with 

 Dissertations, Notes, Glossary, &c., 2 vols. .4 to, Oxford, 1775; also 

 5 vols. 8vo, 1778 ; and since several times reprinted. This is in all 

 respects an admirably edited work. ' Dissertatio de Babrio, Fabu- 

 larum ^Esopicarum Scriptore,' Svo, 1776. ' Poems supposed to have 

 been written at Bristol, in the Tenth Century, by Rowley and others, 

 with a Preface, &c. (in refutation of the alleged antiquity of the 

 poems),' Svo, 1778. 'A Vindication of the Appendix to the Poems 

 called Rowley's,' Svo, 1779. An edition, in Greek and Latin, with 

 notes, of the poem entitled HepJ AiQuv (On Stones), attributed by 

 some to Orpheus (but according to Tyrwhitt written in the early 

 part of the fourth century). ' Conjecturso in Strabouem ' (privately 

 printed), 1783. An edition of an ' Oration of Isaeus against Menecles,' 

 newly discovered in the Medicean Library, 1785. He also left mate- 

 rials for a new edition of Aristotle's ' Poetics,' which were prepared 

 for the press by the Rev. Thomas Burgess and the Rev. John Ran- 

 dolph (afterwards bishops of Salisbury and London), and brought 

 out at the Clarendon Press, in quarto and also in octavo, in 1794. 

 Tyrwhitt is the author of the best notes in Dr. Musgrave's edition of 

 ' Euripides,' 1778, and of many of the most valuable in the variorum 

 editions of Shakspere ; and he has enriched the ' Transactions ' of the 

 Society of Antiquaries (the ' Archseologia ') with several disquisitions 

 of distinguished learning and ingenuity. His ' Dissertation on 

 Babrius,' after having been republished by himself with additions at 

 the end of his edition of the Greek poem ' On Stones,' was reprinted 

 at Erlangen in Bavaria ; and so were his ' Conjectures upon Strabo,' 

 in 1788, under the superintendence of Th. Ch. Hades. An octavo 

 volume entitled ' Thomse Tyrwhitti Conjectures in jEschylum, Euri- 

 pidem, et Aristophanem : accedunt Epistolse Diversorum ad Tyr- 

 whittum,' was brought out at Oxford, from the Clarendon Press, in 

 1822 ; and it appears from the preface that a small impression of the 

 same matter had many years before been printed, under the care of 

 Burgess, at Durham. The letters, which fill from p. 91 to p. 164, 

 are from Valcknaer (in Latin), from Villoison (in French), from 

 Brunck (in French), from Ruhnken (in Latin), from Schweighauser (in 

 Latin and French), an,d from Ch. Fred. Matthaei of Moscow (in Latin). 

 The editors promise another volume, to consist of Adversaria col- 

 lected from Tyrwhitt's papers; but this has not appeared. 



TYSON, EDWARD, was born in Somersetshire in 1649. He 

 studied at Oxford, and received his Bachelor's degree there in 1670, 

 after which he went to Cambridge, where he was made Doctor of 

 Medicine in 1680. Ho lived in London, and was physician to the 

 Bridewell and Bethlem hospitals, reader of anatomy at Surgeons' Hall, 

 and, for a time, Gresham professor of medicine. He was one of the 

 chief contributors to the early volumes of the Transactions of the 

 Royal Society, of which, as well as of the College of Physicians, he was 

 a Fellow. He died in 1708. 



