Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/310

 Wolfe was tall and slight, of Celtic type, and wore his red hair undisguised. He was a good son, a staunch friend, a kindly though strict commanding officer. He owned that he was ‘a whimsical sort of person,’ of a warm and uncertain temper, and that in writing he sometimes let fall expressions that were ‘arrogant and vain.’ But he claimed that this warmth of temper enabled him to hold his own, and ‘will find the way to a glorious, or at least a firm and manly end when I am of no further use to my friends or country, or when I can be serviceable by offering my life for either’ (29 June 1753). As a soldier he was a rare mixture of dash and painstaking, of Condé, and ‘the old Dessauer.’

Believing himself to have inherited part of his father's property, nearly 20,000l., Wolfe left large legacies to his friends. His mother asked for a pension to enable her to pay them without diminution of her life interest. It was not granted, but they were paid after her death, on 26 Sept. 1764. His letters to his parents then passed into the possession of General Warde of Squerries Court, where they are still preserved. His sword is in the United Service Museum, his cloak at the Tower of London. Miss Lowther married the last Duke of Bolton in 1765, and died in Grosvenor Square on 21 March 1809. The interesting imaginary portrait of Wolfe in Thackeray's ‘Virginians’ brings out the enthusiastic side of his character and its affinity to that of Nelson.

[There is an excellent Life of Wolfe by Robert Wright, published in 1864, giving full extracts from his letters. The only separate life previously was ‘a fustian eulogium’ by J—— P——, published in 1760; but Gleig's British Military Commanders (1831) contained a memoir of him. ‘An Apology for the Life and Actions of General Wolfe,’ by Israel Mauduit, 1765, is mainly an attack on General Conway in connection with the Rochefort expedition. General Wolfe's Instructions to Young Officers (1768 and 1780) is valuable, being made up of extracts from his regimental orders, including those ‘in case the French land’ in 1755, and from his general orders in 1759. The latter should be compared with another copy printed in the fourth series of manuscripts relating to the early history of Canada, by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. The Streatfeild MSS. at the British Museum contain many extracts from his letters, but these have been used by Mr. Wright. Other letters, of 1758–9, are given in Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pt. iii. pp. 76–7, and in the Morrison Autographs, 4th ser. vi. 429–30. See also Ann. Reg. 1759, p. 281, ‘Character of General Wolfe’ (by Burke?); Stanhope's History of England; Smyth's History of the 20th Regiment; Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. iv. (Townshend Papers), 308–25, 14th Rep. App. x. 546; Gent. Mag. February 1888; Bradley's Wolfe (English Men of Action, 1895); Edward's Salmon's General Wolfe, 1909. From Cromwell to Wellington: Twelve Soldiers (1899), has a memoir by General Sir Archibald Alison. For the American war, see especially Knox's Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America (1768) and Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe (1884), with bibliographical notes, ii. 81 and 438; also Kingsford's Hist. of Canada, vol. iv.] 

WOLFE, REYNER or REGINALD (d. 1573), printer and publisher, was a native of Strasburg, and seems to have learnt the art of printing there, probably from Conrad Neobarius, whose device he afterwards adopted. In both France and Germany many early printers bore the same surname: George Wolfe of Baden, printed at Paris from 1491 to 1499; Nicholas Wolfe at Lyons, in 1498 and 1499; and Thomas Wolfe at Basle in 1527. But Reyner was probably most closely related to John Wolfe, a printer of Zürich, who rose to the position of a magistrate there, and was the host of many English protestant refugees (including John Jewell) during the reign of Queen Mary.

While at Strasburg Reyner seems to have made the acquaintance of Martin Bucer [q. v.] Before 1537 he had settled in England, apparently at Archbishop Cranmer's invitation, but for some years later he annually visited Frankfort fair, bearing letters on these visits from Cromwell to English agents in Germany, and from Cranmer to Bucer, Bullinger, and other continental reformers (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vols. xii–xv. passim). He was a man of learning and a devoted protestant. He established his press in London in St. Paul's Churchyard, and, in imitation of Conrad Neobarius of Strasburg, he set up the sign of the Brazen Serpent, which he adopted as his emblem and trade-mark in most of his publications. Wolfe occasionally employed another device, a cartouche German shield, on which appeared a fruit tree (bearing in its branches a scroll inscribed ‘Charitas’) and two boys. According to Stow, Wolfe built his dwelling in St. Paul's Churchyard ‘from the ground, out of the old chapel which he purchased of the king at the dissolution of the monasteries; on the same ground he had several other tenements, and afterwards purchased several leases of the dean and chapter of St. Paul's.’ Stow also notes that in 1549 Wolfe removed to Finsbury Fields at his own ex-