Jonathan Oannes Toup (19 December 1713 – 19 January 1785) was an English philologist, classical scholar and critic.
Toup was ordained a deacon on 6 March 1736, and three days later was licensed to the curacy of Philleigh in his native county.
[1] Although the critical power and skill of these works earned Toup an immense reputation at home and abroad, he was also criticised for his "immoderate language" and "boorish conduct."
Although Toup was reviled by some, others allowed that he was very charitable to the poor of his parish, and that his excessive self-confidence could be attributed to the fact that he lived apart, without sufficient personal intercourse with other scholars.
On 14 May 1774, when Toup was more than sixty years old, he was appointed by Bishop Keppel to a prebendal stall at Exeter and was admitted on 29 July 1776 to the vicarage of St Merryn, the parish in which he had been partly educated.
A small marble tablet was erected to his memory on the south wall of the church by his niece Phillis Blake.
The inscription on a round brass plate beneath the tablet records that the cost was defrayed by the delegates of the Oxford University Press.