Talk:John Tutchin

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I don't know how to integrate this information, but our information comes from the Dictionary of National Biography. The 1964 volume Selected Poems (1685-1700), by John Tutchin has an introduction by Spiro Peterson that dismisses a lot of what the DNB says (and apparently 40 years didn't make much change in what the DNB said) as myth and legend.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:47, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know Spiro Peterson's name. While I will not claim that this means that his career did not succeed well, I will say that the 2004 edition on Tutchin was a wholesale rewrite. It's quite possible that the 1898 DNB had errors, as some of the authors for it relied on junk from people like Macaulay and took gossiping contemporary sources as being quite correct. The 2004 edition, though, should not have had those, and my recollection was that they got their information from letters and advertisements of the day. (The Jeffries account was from numerous references and accounts of the Assizes. Tutchin's punishment was very widely discussed. The bit on the bloody pickle is cited from the official award.) I.e. I regarded it as far more accurate an account than is usual. The article does make the case that the man is hard to know, and his fame really is as an object of grumbling and gossip than as a poet or journalist. The specifics of what Peterson rejects and adds would be good, and, if necessary, I can go back to be sure that the 2004 DNB had Peterson in its bibliography. Geogre (talk) 10:40, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I put the entire introduction on my webpage [1] (it's been cleared as public domain by Project Gutenberg.) The part that stands out is:

As J. G. Muddiman demonstrated in 1929, most of these claims are outright fabrications. Tutchin was never indicted for high treason, he could never have been challenged by Jeffreys to cap verses, and he invented the petition to be hanged.[4] In The Observator(July 25-29, 1702), he honestly admitted that he was never tried in Devonshire, but claimed he did buy his liberty of James II; and in a later issue (Aug. 4-7, 1703) he challenged an enemy: "if he Pleases to give the World an Account, When, Where, and for What I was Whip'd thro' a Market-Town, he will inform Mankind of more than I or any Body else knows ..." John Dunton believed in the whipping sentence; and Defoe, the story of the petition to be hanged. Throughout Tutchin's stormy career, his enemies made political capital of the flogging that never took place. He was probably twenty-four years old when, using the alias "Thomas Pitts," he was tried at Dorchester for "Spreading false news and fined five marks and sentenced to be whipped"--but he came down with smallpox and so was not whipped.[5] Lord Macaulay, who is incorrect on the facts taken from The Western Martyrology, certainly exaggerated in stating that Tutchin's temper was "exasperated to madness by what he had undergone."[6]

The rest seems to be about him as a poet, something of which might be worth adding to this article, but doesn't need the editorial delicacy of the above.--Prosfilaes 17:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]