1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Twining, Thomas

TWINING, THOMAS (1735–1804), English classical scholar, was born at Twickenham on the 8th of January 1734–1735. The son of Daniel Twining, tea merchant of London, he was originally intended for a commercial life, but his distaste for it and his fondness for study decided his father to send him to the university. He entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (fellow, 1760), took orders, and after his marriage in 1764 spent the remainder of his life at Fordham (Essex) and Colchester, where he died on the 6th of August 1804. His reputation as a classical scholar was established by his translation, with notes, of Aristotle’s Poetics (1789). Twining was also an accomplished musician, and assisted Charles Burney in his History of Music.

Selections from his correspondence will be found in Recreations and Studies of a Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century (1882) and Selections from Papers of the Twining Family (1887)) edited by his grand-nephew (Richard Twining); see also Gentleman’s Magazine, lxxiv. 490, and J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, vol. iii. (1908).