Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/380

Wood which Chandler, Revett, and Pars acted on their mission from June 1764 to September 1766. He also wrote the ‘address to the reader’ in the first volume of ‘Ionian Antiquities,’ which was published by the Society of Dilettanti in 1769 for Chandler and his associates (, Travels, 1825, vol. i. pp. vi-xxiv).

Wood became under-secretary of state in 1756, and held office under Pitt and his successors until September 1763. In September 1757 Gray wrote of him as ‘Mr. Wood, Mr. Pitt's Wood’ (Works, ed. Gosse, ii. 331); and Ralph, in his ‘Case of Authors Stated’ (1762, p. 37), refers to him as ‘distinguish'd by Mr. Secretary Pitt, as a writer by accident, not profession, and as already secur'd against any reverse of fortune by the gratitude and generosity of former friends.’ ‘His taste and ingenuity,’ says Horace Walpole, recommended him to Pitt, but their association, through Pitt's haughtiness and Wood's pride, did not last long. Two letters which he wrote to Pitt in September 1763 are in the ‘Chatham Correspondence’ (ii. 246-52), and they were evidently written to re-establish friendly relations. Through the influence of the Duke of Bridgewater, for whom he acted in parliament (, Debates, i. 500-504), Wood sat from the general election of March 1761 until his death for the pocketborough of Brackley in Northamptonshire. In December 1762 he was busied with the preliminaries of the treaty of Paris. The anecdote of his visit to the dying Carteret upon that occasion, when Carteret cited the speech of Sarpedon (Iliad, xii. 322-8), is well known. It is said by Matthew Arnold to exhibit ‘the English aristocracy at its very height of culture, lofty spirit, and greatness’ (On Translating Homer, pp. 16-18; the authority for the anecdote is Essay on the Genius of Homer, 1769, p. ii n.)

Under a general warrant and the orders of Lord Halifax, Wood seized on 30 April 1763 the papers of John Wilkes. He was then Lord Egremont's secretary, but Weston, on whom the duty devolved as Lord Halifax's assistant, declined the task on account of age and infirmity. An action for trespass was thereupon brought by Wilkes against Wood on 6 Dec. 1763, and a verdict was obtained for 1,000l. (State Trials, xix. 1153-76). He afterwards became, through Bridgewater's action, a member of the Bedford party. ‘His general behaviour was decent as became his dependent situation, but his nature was hot and veering to despotic’ (, George III, ed. Barker, i. 289). From 20 Jan. 1768 he was under-secretary to Lord Weymouth in the northern department, and on 21 Oct. in the same year he followed that peer to the southern department, remaining under him in that position until December 1770. Wood managed the entire business of the office, was very violent against Wilkes, and defended the ministry in the House of Commons ‘with heat and sharpness.’ In 1769 and 1770 he was suspected of stockfobbing and of intriguing, under the belief that a war with Spain was unavoidable and that Chatham would be called to office (ib. iii. 97, 133, 143, iv. 2, 123-4). It was suggested in December 1769 that Lord Gower might be lord-lieutenant of Ireland, with Wood as his secretary, whereupon the Irish gentlemen made many objections ‘to his mean birth and his public and private character’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. p. 191). After a ‘very short indisposition’ he died at his house at Putney on 9 Sept. 1771 in his fifty-fifth year. This house was that in which Gibbon was born, and Wood had purchased it from the elder Gibbon.

Wood was buried on 15 Sept. in a new vault in the west part of the new burial-ground near the Upper Richmond Road. A superb monument of white marble, with an epitaph by Horace Walpole, was erected by his widow, Ann Wood, and it commemorates the death of their son, Thomas Wood, on 25 Aug. 1772, in his ninth year. His library was sold in 1772. Besides the work by Mengs, a portrait of him by Hamilton was engraved by Hall.

Wood was drawn aside into politics before he had time to finish his classical labours. His chief object in his eastern voyages was to read ‘the Iliad and Odyssey in the countries where Achilles fought, where Ulysses travelled, and where Homer sung.’ He communicated the rough sketch of his later work to Dawkins, who died very late in 1757 or early in 1758, but it was not finished for several years later Seven copies of it were printed in 1767 with the title ‘A Comparative View of the Antient and present State of the Troade. To which is prefixed an Essay on the Original Genius of Homer.’ But the impression in the Grenville Library contains only the essay on Homer. An enlarged and anonymous edition of this part came out in 1769 as ‘An Essay on the Original Genius of Homer,’ and the whole scheme was edited by Jacob Bryant in 1775 as ‘An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer, with a Comparative View of the Ancient and present State of the Troade.’ This contained views by Borra of ‘Ancient Troas’ and of ‘Ancient Ruins near Troy,’