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 WHITE

WHITTAKER

of the most distinguished of Americans, Professor White s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1876), with its stern and learned indict ment of the Churches, was particularly painful to the orthodox and proportionately helpful to Rationalism. It was translated into many languages. In his Autobiography (1905) Professor White returns to the subject. He is a Theist, and is anxious for the purification, not destruction, of Christianity ; but he entirely rejects its dogmas, and apparently disbelieves in personal immortality. In Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1910) he does not deal specifically with the Rationalist contro versy, but he incidentally reviews his position. His other works are historical and educational. He was for some years an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association. D. Nov. 4, 1918.

WHITE, William Hale (&quot;Mark Ruther ford&quot;), writer. B. 1830. He was educated for the Congregationalist ministry, but he developed Rationalist convictions, and was expelled from New College in 1851. He became a clerk in the Admiralty, and rose to the position of Assistant Director of Contracts. In his leisure he did a good deal of journalistic work, and in 1881 he attracted much attention by his Auto biography of Mark Rutherford, which was followed by Mark Rutherford s Deliverance (1885) and The Revolution in Tanner s Lane (1887). They form a prolonged auto biography in the form of pleasantly written fiction. Mr. White wrote (under the name of &quot; Mark Rutherford &quot;) further novels (Catherine Furze, 1893, etc.), and published a translation of Spinoza s Ethics (1883). He returned to a non-Christian Theism, and recovered his love of the Bible ; but, he says, &quot; it has not solved any of the great problems which disturbed my peace.&quot; D. Mar. 14, 1913.

WHITMAN, Walt, American poet. B. May 31, 1819. Ed. public schools Brooklyn

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and New York. Whitman was set to manual work at an early age. He learned carpentry and printing. At the age of seventeen he became a teacher, and he began to write for the press. In 1839 he founded a weekly at Huntington, which he edited and published. It failed, and he returned to printing and journalism, and then had several years of rambling. For a year he edited the Brooklyn Eagle, and he \vrote various novels. In 1850 he started the Freeman, which at once failed, and he spent the next three years at manual labour. In 1855 appeared the first edition of Leaves of Grass, the work by which he lives. It was generally ridiculed, though R. W. Emerson spoke of it with high praise, declaring that it con tained &quot; incomparable things incomparably said.&quot; Whitman served as an army nurse in the Civil War (Drum Taps, 1865, and Memoranda During the War, 1867), and, as his health was severely strained, he was given a clerkship in the Treasury Depart ment of Washington (1865-73). In 1873 a slight paralytic stroke compelled him to retire, and he spent the next twenty years in lightly-borne poverty in his brother s home. He wrote further volumes of prose and verse (Democratic Vistas, 1870, etc.), and his complete w^orks were issued in ten volumes in 1902. But his most cherished work w r as Leaves of Grass, which he elaborated in successive editions. In resonant and virile prose-poetry, which he invented and many have feebly imitated, he sang the virtues of the common man and scorned conventions and superstitions. Religion he generally disdains to notice, though he has a beautiful apostrophe to death as a final sleep and extinction. In 1881 the Massachusetts authorities pro hibited the sale of Leaves of Grass ; but the charge of &quot; immorality &quot; against Whit man has too often been refuted to need notice here. He has taken his place among America s finest writers. D. Mar. 27, 1892.

WHITTAKER, Thomas, B.A., writer. B. Sep. 25, 1856. Ed. Dublin Royal