Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/194

 dedicated to the Duchess of Bedford, with a life of Tasso and a list of English crusaders (2 vols. 8vo; another edition same year, 3 vols. 8vo; reprinted 1830, 2 vols. 12mo; and in Bohn's series, 1854, 1 vol. 12mo, in addition to several American editions). Hogg, in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ,’ refers to Wiffen as ‘the best scholar among a' the quakers’ and ‘a capital translator, Sir Walter tells me, o' poets wi' foreign tongues, sic as Tasso, and wi' original vein, too.’ The ‘Quarterly’ in an able article concludes that Wiffen, as a translator of Tasso, though he has fairly distanced Hoole and Hunt, cannot hope to contend successfully with Fairfax (June 1826; see also art. or ). Wiffen declined the degree of LL.D. from Aberdeen in 1827. His ‘Verses … on the Alameda,’ 1827, 4to; ‘Appeal for the Injured African,’ Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1833, 8vo; and ‘Verses … at Woburn Abbey, on … the statues of Locke and Erskine,’ 1836, 4to, complete his poetical publications.

Eight years were spent in the compilation of his ‘Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell,’ 1833, 2 vols. (portrait and plates) in three sizes—atlas folio (thirty-two copies), royal 8vo, and demy 8vo. For the production of this handsome work he made researches during a four months' tour in Normandy.

His death was sudden, at Froxfield, near Woburn, on 2 May 1836; he was buried on 8 May in the Friends' graveyard, Woburn Sands, Buckinghamshire; his portrait (1824) is prefixed to ‘The Brothers Wiffen,’ 1880. He married, on 28 Nov. 1828, at the Friends' meeting-house, Leeds, Mary Whitehead ‘descended from the line of Holinshed the chronicler,’ and had three daughters. Besides the works above noted, he published a ‘Geographical Primer’ (1812), 12mo, and edited ‘Thoughts on the Creation, Fall, and Regeneration,’ 1826, 12mo, by John Humbles, ‘a Bedfordshire peasant.’ A selection of his poems and ballads is given in ‘The Brothers Wiffen.’

[Life, by his daughter, Mary Isaline W. Wiffen, in the Brothers Wiffen, 1880, edited by S. R. Pattison; Doeg's Ackworth School Catalogue, 1831; Gent. Mag. 1836, ii. 212; Smith's Catalogue of Friends' Books, 1867; Biographical Catalogue of Portraits at Devonshire House, 1888, p. 725; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit. and Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn), s.v. ‘Tasso.’] 

WIGAN, ALFRED SYDNEY (1814–1878), actor, whose father, a teacher of languages, was at one time secretary to the Dramatic Authors' Society, was born at Blackheath, Kent, on 24 March 1814. Exhibiting some talent for music, he became ‘a wandering minstrel,’ and sang at Ramsgate, Margate, and elsewhere. He was also an usher at a school and assisted his father at the Dramatic Authors' Society. Under the name of Sydney or Sidney he was in 1834 at the Lyceum, and the following year was under Mrs. Louisa Cranstoun Nisbett [q. v.] at the Queen's Theatre, Tottenham Street. When John Braham [q. v.] opened the newly erected St. James's, Wigan joined him, and, under the name of Sidney, was on 29 Sept. 1836 the original John Johnson in the ‘Strange Gentleman,’ by Charles Dickens. In 1838 he was at a small theatre in the Old Manor House, King's Road, Chelsea, where he played Tom Tug in the ‘Waterman,’ and other musical parts, and sang songs between the acts. With Madame Vestris he appeared in 1839 at Covent Garden as Mr. Wigan, playing the original Sir Conrad (or, according to another account, Sir Otto) in Sheridan Knowles's ‘Love.’ On 5 Aug. of this year (Tallis's Dramatic Magazine; another account says 1841) he married the actress Leonora Pincott [see below]. In Boucicault's ‘Irish Heiress’ he played a French valet. He was seen as Lionel Scruple in the revised comedy of ‘Court and City,’ was the original Miffin in Jerrold's ‘Bubbles of the Day’ in March 1842, and played Lord Allcash in ‘Fra Diavolo’ and other operatic parts. Some success attended his Montagu Tigg in ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ and his French usher in ‘To Parents and Guardians.’ Not until he was cast for Alcibiades Blague in Jerrold's ‘Gertrude's Cherries, or Waterloo in 1835,’ did he show, as a guide to the field of Waterloo and a seller of vamped-up relics of the fight, the remarkable finish of his style. The impression he created was strengthened by his performance in November of Bruce Siney, an adventurer, in Mark Lemon's ‘Turf.’ Mark Meddle in a revival of ‘London Assurance’ followed. On the abrupt closing of Covent Garden he went to the Strand, where he played Iago in a burlesque of ‘Othello’ and parodied Macready, and was on 15 Jan. 1844 a dancing-master in Peake's ‘Madelon.’ At Drury Lane he had previously played Trip in a revival by Macready of the ‘School for Scandal.’ At the Lyceum, with the Keeleys, in 1844 and subsequent years he produced his own ‘Watch and Ward’ (in which he was the Chevalier Du Guet), ‘Model of a Wife’ (in which he was Pygmalion Bonnefoi), ‘Luck's All,’ ‘The Loan of a Wife,’ ‘Next Door,’ and ‘Five Hundred Pounds Reward,’ in all of which he took some part.

A performance of the Prince in the ‘Cin-