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KNIGHT, RICHARD PATNE. 



KNIGHT, THOMAS ANDREW. 



Thomas Knight, of Wormealey Grange, in the county of Hen-ford, 

 was born in 1760. He was * weak and sickly child, and his father 

 did not Mod him to school, or suffer him to learn either Greek or 

 Latin st home. Soon after his father's death, which took place in 

 1704, he WM sent to a gramui*r-*chool in the neighbourhood, where 

 be made a rapid progress in the Latin language. After leuviug 

 aehool he did not go to a university, but at the age of eighteen he 

 commenced the study of Greek, which he pursued with great diligence, 

 and which became one of the chief occupations of hii life. Shortly 

 afterwards he visited Italy, principally on account of hU health ; and 

 there he seems to have formed the taste for the fine arU, and espe- 

 cially for the productions of the Greek sculptors, which was his most 

 prominent characteristic. Subsequently to his father's death he 

 inherited the largo estate of Downton, near Lucllow, from his grand- 

 father, on which, after his return from Italy, he built a mansion, and 

 be devoted much time to improving and ornamenting his grounds. In 

 1780 he was elected to servo in parliament for the borough of Leo- 

 minster, and in the following parliament of 1784, for the borough of 

 Lndlow, for which he continued to sit until the year 1806, wheu he 

 retired from parliament. While a member of the House of Commons 

 he acted with Mr. Fox, but he never took any part in debate, nor did 

 be ever interest himself about politics. In 1814 he was appointed 

 a trustee of the British Museum, as the representative of the Townley 

 family. 



Early in his life he commenced the formation of a collection of 

 antiques and other works of art, to which his large fortune enabled 

 him to make constant additions. It consisted principally of ancient 

 bronzes and Greek coins ; and it was preserved in his London house 

 in Soho Square, which contained a large room fitted up for the pur- 

 pose. He bequeathed his collection (the value of which was estimated 

 at 50,000/.) to the British Museum. He had originally intended to 

 bequeath it to the Royal Academy. The bill legalising the acceptance 

 of this collection by the trustees of the British Museum received the 

 royal assent on the 17th of June 1824. Mr. Knight died in his house 

 in London, on the 24th of April 1824, and he was buried at Wormesley 

 church, in Herefordshire. 



Mr. Payne Knight began at an early age to admire the remains of 

 Grecian art, and hence in his studies of Greek literature his attention 

 WDS mainly directed to those subjects which illustrate Greek sculptures 

 and coins, namely, mythology and the archaic Greek language. Accord- 

 ingly his first work was 'An Account of the Remains of the Worship of 

 Priapus lately existing at Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples ; to which 

 is added a Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its connexion 

 with the Mystic Theology of the Ancient*,' 4to, 17S6. (Distributed 

 by the Dilettanti Society.) This illustration of the obscene worship 

 of I'riapus was severely censured by the author of the ' Pursuits of 

 Literature ;' but although it may be doubted whether the subject was 

 worthy of investigation, it is certain that Mr. Knight had no other 

 object in view than the purely scientific one of elucidating an obscure 

 part of the Greek theology. His next production was ' Au Analytical 

 Essay on the Greek Alphabet,' 4to, London, 1791. This wurk, which 

 was reviewed by Person in the ' Monthly Review ' for 1794 (see his 

 article reprinted in Person's 'Tracts,' p. 108, 'Museum Criticum,' 

 voL i., p. 489), was chiefly remarkable for on exposure of the forgery 

 of certain Greek inscriptions which Fourmont professed to have found 

 in Laconia. These inscriptions had deceived the most eminent 

 scholars, among whom it is sufficient to name Winckelmann, Villoison, 

 Valckenaer, and Heyne ; and their genuineness was first questioned 

 by Payne Knight, who supported his opinion with an elaborate argu- 

 ment : their epuriousness is now universally admitted. (See Boeckb, 

 'Corp. Inscrip. Grace.,' vol. i., pp. 61-104, whose dissertation has com- 

 pletely exhausted the subject.) Mr. Knight next attempted poetry, 

 for which the character of his mind did not at all fit him. In 1794 be 

 published the ' Landscape,' a didactic poem, in three books, addressed 

 to Uvedale Price, Esq. This poem contains many precepts, marked 

 by sound judgment and good taste, on the subject to which it relates, 

 but there is no hugeness of view or depth of thought ; at the end 

 are some sagacious remarks on the French revolution, tho event of 

 which was still undetermined. Mr. Knight published three other 

 metrical works at subsequent periods of his life. The first was a 

 didactic poem, in six books, entitled ' The Progress of Civil Society,' 

 4to, London, 1796, now only known by the witty parody in the 

 ' Autijacobin ' (supposed to have been written by Mr. Canning). The 

 second was ' A Monody on the Death of the Right Honourable C. J. 

 Fox,' 8vo, London, lfa06-7. The third was entitled ' Alfred, a Romance 

 in Rhyme,' 8vo, London, 1823. 



In 1S05 Mr. Payne Knight published 'An Analytical Enquiry into 

 the Principles of Taste,' 8vo, London, which passed through several 

 editions. This work is characterised by aoutcness of thought, and is 

 the only production of Mr. Knight's which is interesting to the general 

 reader, but it would now probably attract no notice if it were pub- 

 lished as an original work. It was reviewed with some severity in the 

 'Edinburgh Review' for January, 1806. (See also some remarks on 

 it in Mackintosh's ' Life,' voL L p. 871.) Mr. Knight afterwards con- 

 tributed to the ' Edinburgh Review ' ( Number for July, 1809 ) a 

 critique of Falconer's 'Strabo/ a work published at the Clarendon 

 Press. In the following year Mr. Coplestun, then a tutor uf Uriel 

 College, Oxford, and alterwards Bishop of Llaudafl, published a defence 



of the University of Oxford against the strictures of the ' Edinburgh 

 Review.' This defence related not only to Mr. Knight's critique of 

 Falconer's ' Strabo,' but also to passages in other articles ascribed to 

 Mr. Playfair and Mr. Sidney Smith. An article in reply, contributed 

 by the three reviewer*, appeared in the ' Edinburgh Review ' for April, 

 1810 : Mr. Knight's share of it extends from p. 169 to p. 177. Mr. 

 Copleston afterwards rejoined, and the controversy with Mr. Knight 

 ended in a grammatical discussion totally foreign to the question at 

 issue. In 1809. were published 'Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, 

 selected from different Collections of Great Britain, by the Society of 

 Dilettanti,' fol., and a second volume was publihed in 1885. This 

 magnificent work was chiefly due to Mr. Knight's industry and taste ; 

 the subjects were chosen by him, and he wrote the prefaces and 

 descriptions of the plates. 



In 1816 Mr. Knight was examined by a select committee of tho 

 House of Commons on the Elgin Marbles. The evidence which ho 

 gave upon this occasion, while like all that he published quite devoid 

 of any profundity, was not marked with his usual good taste at to 

 the merits of the remains of Greek art ; an examination of it, written 

 in a hostile spirit, may be seen in the ' Quarterly Review,' vol. xiv., 

 pp. 533-543. Mr. Knight distributed a short Answer to the ' Quar- 

 terly Review ' among his literary friends in explanation of the parts 

 of his evidence which he considered had been misrepresented. In 

 1820 Mr. Knight published an edition of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey,' 

 with prolegomena. His object in this edition was to restore the 

 text of Homer to its original state. He rejected the Wolfian hypo- 

 thesis concerning the origin of the Homeric poems, and supposed 

 the ' Iliad ' and ' Odyssey ' to have been each the work of a single 

 poet; the poet of the 'Odysaey' being posterior to the poet of tho 

 ' Iliad.' The process by which he attempted to restore the text of 

 these two poems to their original state was twofold : 1, the remodelling 

 of the language, by the introduction of forms disused in later times, 

 and of the ancient letter styled the ' digamma ; ' 2, the rejection of 

 verses interpolated by later rhapsodists and pools. It will be enough 

 to say that the work is not now regarded by scholars as of any 

 authority. After Mr. Knight's death his catalogue of his coins was 

 published by the trustees of the British Museum. (' Nummi Teteres,' 

 ic., 4to, London, 1S30). Besides the works above mentioned, Mr. 

 Knight wrote several papers in the ' Classical Journal ' and the 

 ' Archseologia ' (see vols. xv. 393, xvii. 220, xix. 369) : the article on 

 the works and life of Barry, in the ' Edinburgh Review ' for August 

 1810, is also by him. To these may be added a paper on the 

 ' Homeric Palace,' published after his death iu the ' Philological 

 Museum,' vol. ii., pp. 645-49. He likewise first published the cele- 

 brated 'Elean Inscription,' concerning which gee Bocckh, ' Corp. 

 luscript. Gr.,' No. 11. 



KNIGHT, THOMAS ANDREW, brother of the subject of tho 

 preceding article, was born on the 10th of October 175S. The grand- 

 father of these eminent men had amassed a large fortune as an iron- 

 master at a period long before steam machinery was introduced iu tho 

 smelting and manufacture of irou. When young, Thomas Knight's 

 education was BO much neglected, that when, at the age of nine 

 years, he was sent to school at Ludlow, he was scarcely able to do more 

 than read. But the days of bis childhood had not been passed with- 

 out employment. He had a great turn for the observation of natural 

 phenomena, and having been left to occupy himself in the country in 

 what way he pleased, he had already formed a close practical acquaint- 

 ance with such plants and animals as Herefordshire could furnish. 

 Eventually he graduated at Baliol College, Oxford, and subsequently 

 occupied himself with researches into various points of vegetable and 

 animal physiology. One of the most remarkable of his early investi- 

 gations was contained in a paper read before the Royal Society iu 1795, 

 upon the inheritance of disease among fruit-trees, and upon the propa- 

 gation of debility by grafting. The county of Hereford had long been 

 celebrated for the produce of its orchards, and the cider made therefrom 

 was in high esteem ; but towards the latter part of the last century 

 the trees of the most esteemed sorts became gradually less productive, 

 their vitality being nearly exhausted. Still the old practice of grafting 

 young stocks with the debilitated shoots of these trues generally 

 prevailed, till Mr. Knight, after a long course of interesting experi- 

 ments, satisfied himself that there is no renewal of vitality by the 

 process of grafting, but merely a continuation of declining life, and that 

 young grafted stocks soon became as much diseased as the old parent 

 trees. He then commenced a course of experiments by fertilising the 

 blossoms of some hardy crabs or apples with the pollen taken from 

 the flowers of the most celebrated dessert and cider fruits, and Bowing 

 the seeds thus artificially impregnated. From that time Mr. Knight 

 was looked up to in this country as a vegetable physiologist of a high 

 order; a character which he ably sustained by various experimental 

 researches into vegetable fecundation, the ascent and descent of sap 

 in trees, the phenomena of germination, the influence of light upon 

 leaves, and a variety of similar subjects. In 1797 he published a email 

 work called 'A Treatise on the Culture of tho Apple and Pear, and on 

 the Manufacture of Cider and Perry; ' in which he recommends raising 

 new kinds from seed, and suiting the sorts produced to the peculiarities 

 of soil and climate, which arc found to have so great an influence on 

 the quality of cider. Mr. Knight did not confine bi> experiment* to 

 the improvement of the apple only, but he raised many pears must 



