File 158 - William Hepworth Thompson: journal of a tour in Greece, compositions, lecture notes

c 60 pieces

Travel journal of a tour of Greece dated 15 Apr.-11 June 1856 with rough sketches and geographical and architectural observations, notes on people met, food encountered, weather, and transportation (item 1). Accompanied by Latin and Greek compositions dating from early days with his private tutor Thomas Scott at Gawcott, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, many of them drafts and fragments, and including compositions for Medal and Fellowship exhibitions, with compositions and verses by others: [John William?] Donaldson, Charles Merivale, E. M. Cope, and John [Smith?] Mansfield. The compositions include one headed "Macaronic verses written a few years ago by Professor Porson, during the alarm of an invasion", and two statistical tables in an unidentified hand, "A Display at one View, of the Number of Books, Chapters, Words and Verses contained in the Old and New Testaments, with other curious information connected with the Sacred Writings", and another listing numbers of people in the world, numbers of places of worship in London, consumption of good in London, inhabitants of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales in 1802. With other notes, possibly lecture notes, many of them fragmentary, and an undated letter from Elizabeth di Spineto.

• Ancient Greek
• English
• Latin

The Papers of William Hepworth Thompson, Add.Ms.b.115-119, and Add.Ms.c.72-73, 158-160, are described briefly and linked from the collection level record linked below.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that Thompson's travelling companion in Greece was William George Clark.

Accompanied by two folder listings in William Aldis Wright's hand, with a reference to verses by Heath that may be those now in Add.MS.c.159.

Record revised with scope and content and name access points added and travel journal identified in June 2021.