Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/125

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Arnold
113
Arnold

by Samuel Beazley, the architect, at a cost of 80,000l. In 1824 Arnold produced for the first time in England a version of Weber's 'Der Freischiitz,' which had been previously refused by the two patent theatres. Other foreign operas of note, the 'Tartare' of Salieri, the 'Freebooters' of Paer, the 'Robber's Bride' of Ferdinand Ries, and Marschner's 'Der Vampyr,' were afterwards produced at the English opera house for the first time in England. In 1880 the theatre was destroyed by fire. In 1833 the present Lyceum, also rebuilt by Samuel Beazley, was opened to the public. The English operas of 'Nourjahad' by Edward Loder, and the 'Mountain Sylph' by John Barnett, were produced under Arnold's management. Arnold was a magistrate and a fellow of the Royal Society.

[Genest's History of the Stage, 1832; The Georgian Era, 1834; Phillip's Musical and Personal Recollections, 1864.]

D. C.

ARNOLD, THOMAS (1679–1737), captain in the navy, was descended from a family which had been settled for many generations in Lowestoft, and was, in 1718, first lieutenant of the Superb. He distinguished himself in the battle off Cape Passaro by heading the boarders and carrying the Spanish flagship, the Real Felipe, and in this service he was severely wounded, and lost the use of one arm. His gallantry was rewarded by his promotion, probably by Sir George Byng, to the rank of commander; in 1727 he was advanced to be a captain, appointed to the Fox, and sent to the coast of Carolina, where he was for some time under the orders of Captain Anson. On his return to England he retired from active service and settled at Lowestoft, where he died 31 Aug. 1737. A monument in Lowestoft church still keeps alive his memory, which, throughout the last century, was further distinguished by a local custom now obsolete. 'It is customary,' Wrote Gillingwater in 1790, 'at Lowestoft to hang flags across the streets at weddings. The colours belonging to the Royal Philip taken by Lieutenant Arnold have frequently been made use of upon these occasions.'

[Gillingwater's Historical Account of the ancient Town of Lowestoft (1790), pp. 410-15.]

J. K. L.

ARNOLD, THOMAS, M.D. (1742–1816), physician and writer on insanity, was born in the town of Leicester, educated at Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.D., became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. He practised in Leicester, where he was deservedly popular, and became owner and conductor of a large lunatic asylum there. 'In a word, he was an enlightened ornament of his native town' (Gent. Mag.).

His principal works are:

  1. 'Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes, and Prevention of Insanity, Lunacy, or Madness,' London and Leicester, 1782, 1786.
  2. 'A Case of Hydrophobia successfully treated,' 1793.
  3. 'Observations on the Management of the Insane,' 1809.

In the first of these he examines and compares the opinions of ancient and modern writers on the subject. It is a work of great learning and research, and abounds with interesting cases related from the author's experience. He died at Leicester 2 Sept. 1816.

[Gent. Mag. Ixxxvi. pt. ii. p. 378.]

G. V. B.

ARNOLD, THOMAS (1795–1842), head master of Rugby, was born on 13 June 1795, at East Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, where his family, originally from Suffolk, had been settled for two generations, and where his father was collector of customs. There, as a child, he learned to delight in the sea, to know the flags of half Europe that floated on the Solent during the great war, and to feel something of its stir. When he was hardly six years old his father died suddenly of spasm of the heart, and his education for the next two years was committed by his mother to her sister. Miss Delafield. In 1803 he went to a school at Warminster, and thence in 1807 to Winchester. He appears to have been a shy and retiring boy, somewhat stiff and angular in character and manners, but high-principled and warm-hearted; with remarkable powers of memory; devoted to history, geography, and poetry, especially ballad poetry.

In 1811, at the early age of sixteen, he was elected scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where a small society of picked students, under an easy rule, were left in great measure to educate themselves and one another, the two most prominent members of it at the time being John Keble, the author of the 'Christian Year,' and John Taylor Coleridge, afterwards one of the judges of the court, of Queen's Bench, the lifelong friend to whom Arnold loved to say that he 'owed more than to any living man.' Here, in a little Oxford within Oxford, he spent the next three years, his whole nature expanding in an atmosphere of venerable institutions and youthful friendships, of keen study of the great classical authors, especially Thucydides and Aristotle, varied by 'skirmishings' over the surrounding country and discussions in the undergraduates' common room on every variety of