Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/265

 the ancient Fathers. 2. The false Interpretations, both of the ancient and modern Writers, which are contrary to the received Doctrine of the Catholic Church, are briefly examined and disproved. 3. With an Account of the chief differences betwixt the Text of the ancient Latin Version and the Greek in the printed Editions and Manuscripts,’ [Douay], 1730, 2 vols. 8vo. This work contains a translation of the whole of the New Testament. The preface is reprinted in the appendix to ‘Rhemes and Doway’ (1855) by Archdeacon Henry Cotton [q. v.], who says that the work ‘stands in high favour with Roman catholics at present, both as to its text and its annotations.’ The annotations were reprinted at Manchester in 1813 in Oswald Syers's ‘Bible.’ A reply appeared under the title of ‘Popery an Enemy to Scripture. By James Serces, vicar of Appleby, Lincolnshire,’ London, 1736, 8vo.

[Barnard's Life of Bishop Challoner, p. 67; Cotton's Rhemes and Douay; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 488; Horne's Introd. to the Holy Scriptures (1846), v. 109.]  WITHENS or WITHINS, FRANCIS (1634?–1704).judge. [See .]

WITHER or WITHERS, GEORGE (1588–1667), poet and pamphleteer, the eldest of three sons of George Wither, by his wife, Anne Serle, was born at Bentworth, near Alton, Hampshire, on 11 June 1588. He refers to ‘Bentworth's beechy shadows’ in his ‘Abuses stript and whipt.’ The Wither family is said to have been originally settled in Lancashire, but five generations had been settled before the poet's birth in Hampshire. The eldest branch of the family was long settled at Manydown, near Wotton St. Lawrence. Richard Wither, the poet's grandfather, who was a younger son, married a daughter of William Poynter of Whitchurch, Hampshire, and her niece (daughter of her brother, Richard Poynter) married Ralph Starkey [q. v.], the archivist. From Starkey, whose wife was thus the poet's cousin, he is said to have received some early instruction. He derived his chief education from John Greaves, rector of Colemore, whose son, John Greaves [q. v.], was the great mathematician. To his ‘schoolmaster Greaves’ Wither addressed an affectionate epigram in 1613. Subsequently he proceeded to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he spent two years, 1604–6. His tutor, according to Aubrey, was John Warner (1581–1666) [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Rochester. He took no degree, and about 1610 settled in London in order to study law. In London the greater part of his long life was spent. After joining a minor inn of court he was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1615.

Almost as soon as Wither settled in London he devoted his best energies to literature, and proved himself the master not only of a lyric vein of very rare quality, but also of a satiric temper which could often express itself in finely pointed verse. His friends soon included the most notable writers of the day. William Browne (1591–1643?) [q. v.] seems to have been his earliest literary associate, and through Browne he appears to have made the acquaintance of Michael Drayton. The earliest volume in the title-page of which his name figured was ‘Prince Henries Obsequies or Mournefull Elegies upon his Death: with a supposed Interlocution betweene the Ghost of prince Henrie and Great Brittaine. By George Wyther’ (London, printed by Ed. Allde, for Arthur Johnson, 1612, 4to; reprinted in 1617, and with the ‘Juvenilia’ of 1622 and 1633). This was dedicated in a metrical epistle to Sir Robert Sidney (afterwards Earl of Leicester) [q. v.] The elegies are in forty-five stanzas, each forming a sonnet, and the literary promise is high throughout. Next year Wither celebrated the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth with the elector palatine in a volume of ‘Epithalamia: or Nuptiall Poems’ (London, for Edward Marchant, 1612–13, 4to, 1620, 1622; London, 1633, 8vo). The poem pleased the Princess Elizabeth, whom Wither thenceforth reckoned his most powerful patron.

Less agreeable consequences attended another literary effort of the period. In 1611 he first, according to his own account, took notice of ‘public crimes’ (Warning Piece to London, 1662), and gave proof of his quality as a satirist. No publication by Wither dated in 1611 is known, but in 1613 appeared his ‘Abuses stript and whipt. Or Satiricall Essayes by George Wyther. Divided into two Bookes’ (London, printed by G. Eld for Francis Burton, 1613, 8vo). The dedication ran: ‘To Him-selfe G. W. wisheth all happiness.’ The satires are succeeded by a poem called ‘The Scourge,’ and a series of epigrams to patrons and friends, including his father, mother, cousin William Wither, and friend Thomas Cranley. A portrait by William Hole or Holle [q. v.] is dated 1611, and erroneously gives Wither's age as twenty-one. The book was popular (there were at least five editions in 1613, and others in 1614, 1615, and 1617, the last ‘reviewed and enlarged’), but it gave on its first appearance serious offence to the authorities for