promise of some degree of popular favour, likely to be enhanced by the romantic beauty of its surroundings.
THORNTON, HENRY (1760–1815), English banker and economist, was born on the 10th of March 1760. In 1784 he became a member of the banking firm of Downie, Free, & Thornton, with which he was associated till his death on the 16th of January 1815. In 1783 he was elected member of parliament for Southwark, a constituency which he represented for the rest of his life. Although an indifferent speaker, he soon acquired a high reputation as an authority on financial matters. This reputation he continued by An Inquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Currency of England (1802), defending the legislature in suspending cash payments. He strongly supported the income tax on its original imposition in 1798, but was in favour of a graduated system, and indeed paid his own income tax “on the scale of his ideal, not his legal debt.” He was one of the founders of the Sierra Leone Company (see Sierra Leone) and its chairman until the colony was taken over by the English government.
THORNTON, WILLIAM THOMAS (1813–1880), English economist, was born at Burnham, Buckinghamshire, on the 14th of February 1813. In 1836 he obtained a clerkship in the London house of the East India Company. In 1858 he became secretary for public works in the India office, a post which he held till his death. He was created a C.B. in 1873. His works include Over-population and its Remedy (1846), in which he put forward a plan for colonizing Irish wastes by Irish peasants; A Plea for Peasant Proprietors (1848), in which his views were developed in greater detail; On Labour (1869); and Old-fashioned Ethics and Commonsense Metaphysics, a volume of essays, published in 1873.
THORNYCROFT, WILLIAM HAMO (1850–), British sculptor. A pupil of his father, Thomas Thornycroft, and of the Royal Academy schools, he was still a student when he was called upon to assist his father in carrying out the important fountain in Park Lane, London. He accordingly returned in 1871 to England from Italy, where he was studying, and modelled the figures of Shakespeare, Fame and Clio, which were rendered in marble and in bronze. In the following year he exhibited at the Royal Academy “Professor Sharpley,” in marble, for the memorial in University College; and “Mrs Mordant,” a relief-a form of art to which he has since devoted much attention. The “Fame,” already mentioned, was shown in 1873. Believing that the pendulum had overshot its swing from conventional classicality towards pictorial realism, he turned from the “fleshy” school towards the Greek, while realizing the artistic necessity for modern feeling. In 1875 his “Warrior Bearing a Wounded Youth from the Field of Battle” gained the gold medal at the Royal Academy schools, and when exhibited in 1876 it divided public attention with the “Tennyson” of Woolner and “Wellington monument” sculptures of Alfred Stevens, now in St Paul’s Cathedral. Then followed the dramatic “Lot’s Wife,” in marble (1878), and “Artemis” (1889), which for grace, elegance and purity of taste the sculptor never surpassed. He was thereupon elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and more than justified the selection by his “Teucer” of the following year, a bronze figure of extraordinary distinction which, bought for the Chantrey collection, is now in the National (Tate) Gallery of British Art. It is simple and severe, classic yet instinct with life and noble in form; and in it he touched the high-water mark of his career. Turning to the ideal, in works entirely modern in motive and treatment, Hamo Thornycroft produced “The Mower” (1884) and “A Sower” (1886); the “Stanley Memorial” in the old church at Holyhead partakes of the same character. Among the sculptor’s principal statues are “The Bishop of Carlisle” (1895; Carlisle Cathedral), “General Charles Gordon” (Trafalgar Square, London), “Oliver Cromwell” (Westminster), “Dean Colet” (a bronze group—early Italianate in feeling—outside St Paul's School, Hammersmith), “King Alfred” (a colossal memorial for Winchester), the “Gladstone Monument” (in the Strand, London) and “Dr Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London” (bronze, erected in St Paul’s Cathedral). Mr Thornycroft’s other memorials, such as the “Queen Victoria Memorial” (Karachi), the “War Memorial” (at Durban) and the “Armstrong Memorial” (at Newcastle), are well known, and his portrait Statuary and medallions are numerous. He was elected a full academician in 1888, and an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Munich. He was awarded a medal of honour at the Paris Exhibition, 1900.
See M. H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-day (London, 1901). (M. H. S.)
Thóroddsen, Jón Þor Ðarson (1819–1868), Icelandic
poet and novelist, was born in 1819 at Reykhólar in western
Iceland. He studied law at the university of Copenhagen,
entered the Danish army as volunteer in 1848 in the war against
the insurgents of Schleswig and Holstein, who were aided by
Prussia and the other German States. He went back to Iceland
in 1850, became sheriff (sýslumaður) of Barðastrandarsýsla,
and later in Borgarfjarðarsýsla, where he died in 1868. He is
the first novel writer of Iceland. Jónas Hallgrímsson had led
the way by his short stories, but the earliest veritable Icelandic
novel was Jón Thóroddsen’s Piltur og stúlka (“Lad and Lass”),
a charming picture of Icelandic country life. Still better is
Maður og kona (“Man and Wife”), published after his death
by the Icelandic Literary Society. He had a great fund of
delicate humour, and his novels are so essentially Icelandic in
their character, and so true in their descriptions, that he is
justly considered by most of his countrymen not only as the
father of the Icelandic novel, but as the best novelist Iceland
has produced. His poems, mostly satirical, are deservedly
popular; he follows Jónas Hallgrímsson closely in his style,
although he cannot reach him in lyrical genius. (S. Bl.)
THOROTON, ROBERT (1623–1678), English antiquary,
belonged to an old Nottinghamshire family, which took its
name from Thoroton, near Newark. He resided mainly at
another village in the same neighbourhood, Car Colston, where
he practised as a physician and where he lived the life of a
country gentleman. He took very little part in the Civil War,
although his sympathies were with the royalists, but as a
magistrate he was very active in taking proceedings against the
Quakers. In 1667 Thoroton, aided by a band of helpers, began
to work upon his elaborate Antiquities of Nottinghamshire.
This was published in London in 1677; it was dedicated to
Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, and was illustrated
by engravings by W. Hollar.
In 1797 a new edition of the Antiquities was published by John Throsby (1740–1803), who added an additional volume. In 1897 the Thoroton Society was founded in honour of the antiquarian, its object being to promote the study of the history and antiquities of Nottinghamshire. Under its auspices annual volumes of Transactions and several volumes of Records have been published and much valuable work has been done. A brass tablet to the memory of Thoroton has been placed in Car Colston church. See J. T. Godfrey, Robert Thoroton, Physician and Antiquary (1890).
THORPE, BENJAMIN (1782–1870), English Anglo-Saxon scholar, was born in 1782. After studying for four years at Copenhagen University, under the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask, he returned to England in 1830, and in 1832 published an English version of Cædmon’s metrical paraphrase of portions of the Holy Scriptures, which at once established his reputation as an Anglo-Saxon scholar. In 1834 he published Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, which was for many years the standard textbook of Anglo-Saxon in English, but his best-known work is a Northern Mythology in three volumes (1851). His was the first complete good translation of the elder Edda (1866). His other works include Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (1840), an English translation of the laws enacted under the Anglo-Saxon kings; The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon (1842); Codex Exoniensis (1842), a collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry with English translation; an English translation of Dr Lappenburg’s History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (1845); Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf (1855), a translation; an edition for the “Rolls” series of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1861); and Diplomatarium Anglicum aevi saxonici (1865), a collection of
