Tyrwhitt, Thomas

▪ English scholar

born March 27, 1730, London

died Aug. 15, 1786, London

 English scholar especially notable for his work on the medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. In classical and English scholarship alike, Tyrwhitt showed the same qualities of balance, wide knowledge, and critical acumen. (He was the one man able, on linguistic grounds alone, to denounce as a forgery the poems by Thomas Chatterton purporting to be by one “Thomas Rowley.”)

      After leaving Oxford University, he was called to the bar but never practiced. Deputy secretary of war (1756), then clerk of the House of Commons (1762), he retired in 1768. He edited Aristotle's Poetics (1794), but his fame rests chiefly upon an edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 5 vol. (1775–78). Chaucer's reputation had suffered because the principles on which his verse depends were no longer understood; it was Tyrwhitt who pointed out that final e's (by his time mute) ought to be pronounced as separate syllables and that the accent of a word was often placed in the French manner (e.g., virtúe, not vírtue). Tyrwhitt's scholarship is still held in great respect.

* * *