Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/128

 churchyard on 30 July, a large railed-in tomb being erected to his memory. A bust of him is in the library at Clare College.

Whiter wrote:
 * 1) ‘A Specimen of a Commentary on Shakspeare, containing (i.) Notes on “As you like it;” (ii.) Attempt to explain and illustrate various Passages on a new Principle derived from Locke's Doctrine of the Association of Ideas,’ 1794, pronounced by Mathias ‘very learned and sagacious’ (Pursuits of Lit. 1798 edit. Dialogue i. pp. 98–9). By 1819 he had collected sufficient matter for two or three volumes of notes.
 * 2) ‘Etymologicon Magnum,’ a universal etymological dictionary on a new plan, Cambridge, 1800, part i.; no more published. In his preface he enlarged on the value of the gipsy language. These views and his word-speculations interested George Borrow, who made his acquaintance and introduced him, as understanding some twenty languages, into ‘Lavengro,’ 1851 edit. vol. i. chap. xxiv. (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. vi. 370;, George Borrow, ii. 5). Jeffrey wrote two articles on the ‘Etymologicon Magnum’ in the ‘Monthly Review’ (June and July 1802), assigning to Whiter ‘much labour and shrewdness, with a considerable share of credulity.’
 * 3) ‘Etymologicon Universale, or Universal Etymological Dictionary on a New Plan,’ vols. i. and ii. 1822, vol. iii. 1825. These three large quarto volumes were partly printed at the cost of the University Press. The first volume was originally issued in 1811, and the preface to the first volume in the collected edition of 1822–5 still retains the date of 15 May 1811. In this work Whiter set out that ‘consonants are alone to be regarded in discovering the affinities of words, and that the vowels are to be wholly rejected; that languages contain the same fundamental idea, and that they are derived from the earth.’ Baron Merian styled it ‘splendid, a very fine book indeed’ (, Life and Letters, i. 185).
 * 4) ‘A Dissertation on the Disorder of Death, or that State called Suspended Animation,’ 1819. In this he tried to show how the apparently dead should be treated with a view to their restoration to life. In the advertisement at the end he announced ‘a series of essays to be called “Nova Tentamina Mythologica,” or Attempts to unfold various Portions of Mythology by a new Principle.’ These, and other manuscripts of Whiter, are now in the Cambridge University Library (Cat. of Cambr. Libr. MSS. iv. 521, 543–4).



WHITESIDE, JAMES (1804–1876), lord chief justice of Ireland, was born on 12 Aug. 1804 at Delgany, co. Wicklow, of which parish his father, William Whiteside, was curate. Shortly after Whiteside's birth his father removed to Rathmines, near Dublin, where he died in 1806. Mrs. Whiteside was left in narrow circumstances, but she was devoted to her children, and to her the boy was indebted for much of his early education. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1822, and graduated B.A. in 1832. In 1829 he entered as a law student at the Inner Temple, and in 1830 he was called to the Irish bar. He did not attempt to practise during his first year, preferring to study law in the chambers of [q. v.] While studying for the bar Whiteside occupied his leisure by contributing to the magazines a series of sketches, mostly of legal personages, much in the style of the ‘Sketches Legal and Political’ of [q. v.] These papers, which are written in a lively manner and evince considerable powers of observation, were collected and republished in 1870 under the title of ‘Early Sketches of Eminent Persons.’ Among his subjects were, lord Abinger [q. v.],, first lord Denman [q. v.], Sir [q. v.], and, first lord Plunket [q. v.] From 1831 Whiteside's progress at his profession was rapid, and he was made a queen's counsel in 1842. Rapidly gaining a reputation for an eloquence which recalled the traditional forensic splendours of Curran, Plunket, and Burke, his speech in defence of O'Connell in the state trials of 1843 placed him in front of all his contemporaries at the Irish bar.

Shortly after the O'Connell trials Whiteside's health obliged him temporarily to relinquish his profession. He visited Italy, and, taking much interest as well in the affairs of the peninsula as in the antiquities of Rome, he wrote and published his ‘Italy in the Nineteenth Century,’ 1848, 3 vols., and translated Luigi Canina's ‘Indicazione topografica di Roma Antica in Corrispondenza dell' epoca imperiale’ under the title ‘Vicissitudes of the Eternal City.’ Returning to active work, Whiteside acted as leading counsel for the defence of [q. v.] and his fellow-prisoners in the state trials at Clonmel in 1848. Three years later (1851) he entered parliament as conser-