Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/130

 followed in 1840 by ‘The Paradise.’ The three portions were published together in 1845 as ‘The Vision and Life of Dante,’ and reissued in Bohn's Illustrated Library (1854 and 1861), with thirty-four illustrations on steel after Flaxman. Wright's version, which derived much benefit from the commentary (1826) of Gabriele Rossetti, is generally admitted to be accurate and scholarly, but the stanza which the translator adopted, in preference to essaying the terza rima, must be held to detract considerably from the effect.

After an interval of nineteen years Wright issued the first part of his ‘The Iliad of Homer, translated into English Blank Verse’ (Cambridge, 1859, 8vo; the last portion down to the end of book xiv. appeared in December 1864). The blank verse was good without being striking, and Matthew Arnold wrote in his ‘Lectures on translating Homer’ (1861) that Wright's version, repeating in the main the merits and defects of Cowper's version, as Sotheby's repeated those of Pope's version, had, ‘if he might be pardoned for saying so, no proper reason for existing.’ This drew from the translator ‘A Letter to the Dean of Canterbury on the Homeric Lectures of Matthew Arnold, Esq., Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford’ (Cambridge, 1861, 8vo). Wright poked fun, not unsuccessfully, at the professor of poetry's ex cathedra English hexameters, and this reflection upon the chair of poetry at the ancient university elicited from Arnold (in the preface to ‘Essays in Criticism’) his notable apostrophe to Oxford, ‘adorable dreamer,’ and his appeal to Wright to pardon a vivacity doomed to be silenced in the imminent future by the ‘magnificent roaring of the young lions of the “Daily Telegraph”.’

In addition to his versions of Dante and Homer, by which alone he is remembered, Wright published ‘Thoughts on the Currency’ (1841), ‘The Evils of the Currency’ (1847), an exposition of Sir Robert Peel's Bank Charter Act of 1844 (a valuable contribution to its subject, which reached a sixth edition in 1855), and ‘The War and our Resources’ (with an abstract of the lords' report on commercial distress in 1848), 1855.

[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Gent. Mag. 1863, i. 518; Burke's Landed Gentry; Stapylton's Eton Lists, pp. 60, 66; Bailey's Annals of Nottingham; Wylie's Old and New Nottingham, p. 203; Nottingham Daily Guardian, 18 and 21 Oct. 1871; Times, 18 and 23 Oct. 1871; Men of the Time, 1868; Men of the Reign; Allibone's Dict. of English Literature; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

 WRIGHT, JAMES (1643–1713), antiquary and miscellaneous writer, son of Abraham Wright [q. v.], by his wife Jane (d. 1645), daughter of James Stone, was born at Yarnton, Oxfordshire, where he was baptised in 1643 (, Three Oxfordshire Parishes, p. 277). Though evidently a good scholar, he was not of either university; but in 1666 he became a student of New Inn, migrating in 1669 to the Middle Temple, by which society he was called to the bar in 1672. ‘During the fluctuations of government and afterwards,’ says Warton, ‘he was attached to the principles of monarchy in their most extensive comprehension, and from this circumstance he might have derived his predilection for the theatre which had been suppressed by the republicans.’ Besides the theatre he was much attached to country life, and dwelt often with his father at Oakham. He was ‘a skilful antiquary and not a bad poet,’ and possessed many rare and valuable old manuscripts, being ‘one of the first collectors of old plays since Cartwright,’ but all his literary curiosities, among which was an excellent transcript of Leland's ‘Itinerary’ of the age of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently made before the present mutilations and corruptions, were unfortunately consumed in the fire of the Middle Temple of 1678 (, Collections, ii. 227). Thomas Hearne wrote of him in October 1713 as recently dead. I am told, he adds, that ‘he dyed a papist, and yt he continued always so from his first turning, which was I hear in K. Charles IInd's time’ (, Collections, ed. Rannie, iv. 252).

A versatile writer with a lucid style and a genuine touch of humour, especially as an essayist, Wright was author of: 1. ‘The History and Antiquities of the County of Rutland … illustrated with Sculptures,’ London, 1684, 4to. In dedicating this work to the ‘Nobility and Gentry of the County,’ Wright specially mentions the encouragement he received from Dugdale, and the admission, which he greatly prized, to Cotton's library. Nine pages of ‘Additions’ appeared in 1687, folio, and ‘Farther Additions, with a view of Burley-on-the-Hill’ (8 pp. folio) in 1714. These ‘Farther Additions’ are now rare. Two numbers (pp. 36) of a new edition by William Harrod appeared in 1788. 2. ‘A Compendious View of the late Tumults and Troubles in this Kingdom, by way of Annals,’ 1685, 8vo. This is a succinct account of the troublous period of the ‘popish plot’ (1678–84), dedicated to Henry Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and containing a warm testimonial to