Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/623

 Tyndale to the Revised Version, and produced his Hexaplar English Psalter in 1911, at the age of eighty. In the same year he contributed to the second Lord Tennyson's Tennyson and his Friends an account of James Spedding [q.v.]. Since 1871 he had been engaged on an edition of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and had succeeded in tracing all but a few of the quotations. Before his death he distributed many of his books among the Cambridge libraries, and by his will he left £5,000 to the University Library, and £5,000 to the library of his college.

The amount of Wright's work is the more remarkable seeing that he suffered from writer's cramp and had to learn to use his left hand; but he allowed nothing to interfere with his methodical habits, and faced all his tasks with an iron will. As an editor he held it his duty to present his material in such a way that it would speak for itself. He distrusted theories and intuitions, and all the short cuts that cleverness is tempted to adopt. ‘Ignorance and conceit’, he said, ‘are the fruitful parents of conjectural emendation’, and he would quote the rabbinical saying, ‘Teach thy lips to say “I do not know”’. He never forgot that he was the servant rather than the master of his material, and consistently, throughout a career of over fifty years, was the most impersonal of our great editors. A superficial reader may find his work dry, and may even think of him as a mere scholiast, but every worker in the same fields continually finds that Wright has taken account of facts which others have failed to see, and every one learns to trust him. His one mistake was over the Squire Papers (Academy, 11 April and 2 May 1885; English Historical Review, April 1886); FitzGerald had believed in their authenticity, and for once Wright's judgement was misled by friendship. In conversation, as in his writings, he might seem to be incapable of any display of sentiment, but the friends who were permitted to get behind his somewhat rigid sincerity found a warm heart and great depth of feeling. He never married.

He received the honorary degrees of LL.D., Edinburgh (1879), D.C.L., Oxford (1886), and Litt.D., Dublin (1895). The portraits by Walter William Ouless at Trinity College (1887), and by William Strang in the Fitzwilliam Museum (1910), fail to convey his vigour. The best likeness is the photograph by A. G. Dew-Smith of Trinity College (1894).

 WYNDHAM, CHARLES (1837–1919), actor-manager, whose original name was, was born in Liverpool 23 March 1837, the only son of Major Richard Culverwell, doctor. He was educated abroad, at King's College, London, and at the College of Surgeons and Peter Street anatomical school, Dublin. He took the degree of M.R.C.S. in 1857 and that of L.M. in 1858. His first appearance on the stage was in amateur theatricals at Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair's private theatre at St. Andrews. In 1862 he went on the stage in London. Later in that year he went to America, and took service as an army surgeon in the federal army during the Civil War. He served till the War was nearly over, though during the winters he appeared on the stage in New York, at one time in a company which included John Wilkes Booth (who shortly afterwards assassinated Abraham Lincoln). In 1865 he returned to England and, after some appearances in provincial theatres, came to London, where during the next two years he was engaged at the Royalty Theatre, at the St. James's under Miss Herbert, and at the Queen's Theatre in a company which included (Sir) Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. In May 1868 Wyndham began a brief and unsuccessful management of the Princess's Theatre. Then, in the summer of 1869, he sailed for the United States, where, after playing leading comedy parts in New York, he began in 1871 a two years' tour with his own company, the repertory including the comedies of Thomas William Robertson [q.v.]. Subsequently he acted in the United States in 1882–1883, 1888, 1904, 1909, and 1910.

In May 1874 Wyndham appeared in London in one of his most popular parts, Bob Sackett in the farce Brighton, an anglicized version of Saratoga, by Bronson Howard. In 1875 he began a series of afternoon performances at the Crystal Palace, where in three years he produced more than one hundred plays ranging from Greek tragedy to farce. In December 1875 he took the play Brighton to the Criterion Theatre, and in April 1876 597