Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/13

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Garnett
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Garnett

numerous papers, including two long and important series of essays 'On the Languages and Dialects of the British Islands,' and 'On the Nature and Analysis of the Verb.' He died of decline, 27 Sept. 1850. His epitaph was briefly written by a colleague in the Museum—'Few men have left so fragrant a memory.' Besides his philological essays, edited by his eldest son in 1859, and his theological writings, which have not hitherto been collected, he was author of some graceful poems and translations, and of a remarkable paper 'On the Formation of Ice at the Bottoms of Rivers' in the 'Transactions of the Royal Institution' for 1818, containing a most graphic account of the phenomenon from personal observation. It is republished along with the essays of his brother Thomas [q. v.] As a philologist he is thus characterised in the preface to Mr. Kington Oliphant's 'Sources of Standard English:' 'It is a loss to mankind that Garnett has left so little behind him. He seems to have been the nearest approach England ever made to bringing forth a Mezzofanti, and he combined in himself qualities not often found in the same man. When his toilsome industry is amassing facts he plods like a German; when his playful wit is unmasking quackery he flashes like a Frenchman.'

[Memoir prefixed to Garnett's Philological Essays, 1859; Southey's Letters, ed. Warter, vol. iii.; Cowtan's Memories of the British Museum; Prichard's Celtic Nations, ed. Latham; Donaldson's New Cratylus; Farrar's Essay on the Origin of Language; Kington-Oliphant's Sources of Standard English; Gent. Mag. 1850; Athenæum, 1859.]

R. G.

GARNETT, THOMAS (1575–1608), jesuit, born in 1575, was son of Richard Garnett, who had been a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and who was brother to Henry Garnett [q. v.] He was educated in the college of the English Jesuits at St. Omer, and in the English College at Valladolid, where he was ordained priest. Soon afterwards he came back on the mission, and was admitted by his uncle into the Society of Jesus on 29 Sept. 1604. In the following year he was arrested, committed to the Gatehouse, and thence transferred to the Tower. As he was a kinsman of the superior of the Jesuits, he was examined by secretary Cecil concerning the Gunpowder plot, then lately discovered, but as nothing could be proved against him, he was liberated at the end of eight or nine months, and banished for life in 1606. Venturing back to this country, he was apprehended and tried at the Old Bailey upon an indictment of high treason, for having been made priest by papal authority, and remaining in England, contrary to the statute of 27 Elizabeth. He was sentenced to death, and executed at Tyburn on 23 June 1608.

There is a photographic portrait of him in Foley's `Records,' taken from an original painting in the English College at Valladolid.

[Challoner's Missionary Priests, vol. ii.; Dodd's Church Hist. vol. ii.; Foley's Records, vols. ii. and vii.; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 100; Stanton's Menology; Tanner's Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitæ profusionem militans.]

T. C.

GARNETT, THOMAS, M.D. (1766–1802), physician and natural philosopher, was born 21 April 1766 at Casterton in Westmoreland, where his father had a small landed property. After attending a local school he was at the age of fifteen articled at his own request to the celebrated John Dawson of Sedbergh, Yorkshire, surgeon and mathematician [q. v.] He there obtained a fair acquaintance with chemistry and physics, and matriculated at the university of Edinburgh in 1785, 'possessed of exceptional scientific knowledge.' He was particularly zealous in his attendance on the lectures of Dr. Black and of Dr. John Brown, and became an ardent disciple of the Brunonian theory. 'He avoided,' says his anonymous biographer, 'almost all society, and it is said he never allowed himself at this period more than four hours' sleep out of the twenty-four.' He graduated M.D. in 1788, completed his medical education in London, and, returning for a short time to his parents, wrote his treatise on optics for the 'Encyclopædia Britannica.' In 1790 he entered upon practice at Bradford, from which he removed in the following year to Knaresborough and Harrogate. He made and published the first scientific analysis of the Harrogate waters, and was the author of several philanthropic schemes for the benefit of the inhabitants of Knaresborough. Lord Rosslyn built him a house at Harrogate, but his success did not answer his expectations, and he was meditating emigration to America when he succumbed to the attractions of Miss Catharine Grace Cleveland, whom he had received as a boarder into his house. They were married in March 1795, and as he was in Liverpool endeavouring to arrange for a passage to America a casual invitation to deliver lectures on natural philosophy changed the current of his life. The success of the course, which was repeated at Manchester and other places, brought him an invitation to become professor at Anderson's Institution at Glasgow. He obtained great success at Glasgow, both as lecturer and physician, and in 1798 undertook the tour in the highlands of which his account was published in 1800. It is too