Tooke
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Tooke. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
took, John Horne (1736-1812), an English politician and wit. His father was a prosperous London dealer in poultry. When young Tooke was entered in an aristocratic school he thought proper to disguise this fact by speaking of his father as a "Turkey merchant." Against his inclination he was educated for the ministry. He held a small vicarage. His taste lay, however, in the direction of travel and in political writing for the newspapers. He was a violent opponent of the Tories. He represented a pocket borough in Parliament. He had many tilts with royal authority. He established the right of a newspaper to publish the proceedings of Parliament. He was noted for bright sayings which brought him not only fines but imprisonment. Among other incidents may be mentioned the circulation of a subscription paper to collect funds for the needy relatives of "the men murdered by the king's troops at Concord and Lexington." For this he was tried for treason, and was impoverished by a fine of $6,000. Many of his witty sayings have been preserved in the Table Talk of S. T. Coleridge.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN HORNE, an English political writer; born in Westminster, England, June 25, 1736; was educated at Westminster and Eton; afterward going to St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1760 he entered the Church, and obtained the living of New Brentford. The year 1771 witnessed his contest with Junius, in which, in the general opinion, he came off victor. In 1773 he resigned his bene fice to study for the bar (to which from being in orders he was not admitted); and by his legal advice to Mr. Tooke of Purley he became that gentleman's heir In 1777 he was and assumed his name. prosecuted for a seditious libel condemning the American war, and his trial resulted in a year's imprisonment and a fine of $1,000. He was a short time member of Parliament for Old Sarum. He wrote several political pamphlets and an ingenious linguistic work entitled "Epea Pteroenta, or the Diversions of Purley." He died in Wimbledon, England, March 18, 1812.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The bare facts of Tooke's life have not moved, but the emphasis has. Collier's in 1921 praised his "ingenious linguistic work" the Diversions of Purley; modern linguists treat its etymologies as a curiosity, long since swept aside by the comparative philology of Grimm and Bopp, and Tooke is now studied chiefly as a radical agitator rather than a philologist. Neither entry dwells on the episode historians now put first: his acquittal, with Thomas Hardy and John Thelwall, at the 1794 treason trials, a landmark for freedom of political association. Aiton's 1910 account seems to fold that treason charge into the earlier prosecution over Lexington and Concord, which in fact ended in the fine and year's imprisonment Collier's describes; his brief seat for Old Sarum also prompted the 1801 act barring ordained clergy from the House of Commons.
Written for this edition, 2026.