WILLIAM

See also:

• TENNANT, CHARLES (1768-1838)
• TENNANT, SMITHSON (1761-1815)
• WILLIAM TENNANT (1784-1848)

TENNANT (1784-1848)  , Scottish scholar and poet, was born on the 15th of May 1784 at Anstruther Easter, Fife-shire . He was lame from childhood . His father sent him to the university of St Andrews, where he remained for two years, and on his return he became clerk to one of his brothers, a corn factor . In his leisure time he mastered Hebrew as well as German and Italian . His study of Italian verse bore fruit in the mock-heroic poem of Anster Fair (1812), which gave an amusing account of the marriage of " Maggie Lauder," the heroine of the popular Scottish ballad . It was written in the ottava rime adopted a few years later by " the ingenious brothers Whistlecraft " (John Hookham Frere), and turned to such brilliant account by Byron in Don Juan . The poem, unhackneyed in form, full of fantastic classical allusions applied to the simple story, and brimming over with humour, had an immediate success . Tennant's brother, meanwhile, had failed in business, and the poet became in 1812 schoolmaster of the parish of Dunino, near St Andrews . From this he was pro-rated (1816) to the school of Lasswade, near Edinburgh; from that (1819) to a mastership in Dollar academy; from that (1834), by Lord Jeffrey, to the professorship of oriental languages in St Andrews . The Thane of Fife (1822), shows the same humorous imagination as Anster Fair, but the subject was more remote from general interest, and the poem fell flat . He also wrote a poem in the Scottish dialect, Papistry Stormed (1827); two historical dramas, Cardinal Beaton (1823) and John Baliol (1825); and a series of Hebrew Dramas (1845), founded on incidents in Bible history . He died at Devon Grove, on the 14th of February 1848 .

A Memoir of Tennant by M . F . Connolly was published in 1861 . TENNEMANN, WILHELM GOTTLIEB (1761–1819), German historian of

philosophy, was born at Erfurt . Educated at his native town, he became lecturer on the history of philosophy at Jena in 1788 . Ten years later he became professor at the same university, where he remained till 1804 . His great work is an eleven-volume history of philosophy, which he began at Jena and finished at Marburg, where he was professor of philosophy from 1804 till his death . He was one of the numerous German philosophers who accepted the Kantian theory as a revelation . In 1812 he published a shorter history of philosophy, which was translated into English in 1852 under the title Manual of the History of Philosophy .