Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/668

Rh 628 L W O L large series of paintings ; some on the ceiling are on panel, and others on the walls are painted thinly in tempera on canvas. As a portrait-painter he enjoyed much repute, and some of his works of this class are very admirable for their realistic vigour and minute finish. Outside Germany Wohlgemuth s paintings are scarce : the Royal Institution at Liverpool possesses two good examples, Pilate Washing his Hands, and the Deposition from the Cross, parts prob ably of a large altarpiece. During the last ten years of his life Wohlgemuth appears to have produced little by his own hand. One of his latest paintings is the retable at Schwabach, executed in 1508, the contract for which still exists. He died at Nuremberg in 1519. WOLCOT, JOHN (1738-1819), painter and satirist under the pseudonym of PETER PINDAR, was son of Alexander Wolcot, surgeon at Dodbrooke, adjoining Kings- bridge, in Devonshire, and was baptized there 9th May 1738. He was educated at Kingsbridge free school under John Morris, at the Bodmin grammar school, and in France, and as the result of this training was well acquainted with Greek and Latin, and spoke French with facility. For seven years he was apprenticed to his uncle, John Wolcot, a surgeon at Fowey, and it was intended that he should in due course succeed to the practice. Among his uncle s patients were Sir William Trelawny and his household, at Trelawne, near Fowey, and when Trelawny went to Jamaica as governor in 1769 he was accompanied by Wolcot, who had now qualified as M.D. of the uni versity of Aberdeen (8th September 1767). Considerable ecclesiastical patronage was in the gift of the governor of Jamaica, and, to render himself eligible for any desirable living which might fall vacant, Wolcot returned to England, and was ordained deacon on 24th June 1769 and priest on the following day. With these qualifications he once more repaired to the West Indies, and in 1772 became incumbent of Vere, Jamaica, but on the death of his patron (llth December 1772) he bade adieu to the colony, and on his arrival in England settled as a physician at Truro. Party politics ran high in that borough, and Wolcot threw him self into the fray, making an especial butt of an influential merchant, afterwards the representative of Truro in par liament. In consequence of those indiscretions he left in 1779, and in 1781 he fixed his permanent abode in London. He brought with him the young Cornish artist John Opie, whose talents in painting received the enthu siastic admiration of the doctor. Wolcot exerted himself energetically in spreading the fame of his young protege by puffs in the papers and by introductions to the leaders of fashion. 1 From this date he dropped the profession of medicine, as he had previously thrown off his clerical orders, and earned the means of subsistence by his satirical productions. Wolcot had long dabbled in poetry. His first effusion, on the recovery of the elder Pitt from gout, is said to have appeared in Martin s Magazine, about 1756, when he was resident at Fowey, and he dictated verses until within a few days of his death. Many of his serious pieces were marked by taste and feeling, and his translation of Thomas Warton s Latin epigram on sleep dwells in the memory through its happy simplicity. After his settlement in London he threw off with marvellous rapidity a succession of pungent satires. George III. was his favourite subject of ridicule, and his peculiarities were described or distorted in The Lousiad, Peeps at St James s, The Royal Visit to Exeter. Two of Wolcot s happiest satires on the &quot; farmer king &quot; depicted the royal survey of Whitbread s brewery and the king s wonder how the apples got into the apple dumplings. The most entertaining biography which the English language has yet produced was ridiculed in An Epistle to James Boswell, and in a piece on the rival 1 See Opie and his Works, by J. Jope Rogers. biographers, happily called Bozzy and Piozzi. The leading man of science and the adventurous traveller fell under i his lash, the former in Sir Joseph Banks and the Emperor of Morocco, and the latter in a Complimentary Epistle to I James Bmce. When Wolcot came to London with his rough artistic genius from the west his hand was directed against the painters of the day who had already established their reputation, and his Lyric Odes to the Academicians often turned their modes of painting into a jest with marvellous effect. Wolcot was himself no mean artist, and in 1797 there was published Six Picturesque Views from Paintings by Peter Pindar, engraved by Alken. His knowledge of the art of painting lent force to his strictures on the academicians of the age. In 1795 he disposed of his works to the booksellers for an annuity of 250 a year, which he lived to enjoy for many more years than the purchasers expected or desired. His various pieces were pxiblished in 1796 in four octavo volumes, and they were often reprinted. His satires are said to have exercised such an effect on public opinion that the ministers pressed upon him a Government pension, on condition that he refrained from any further attacks on the king s peculiarities ; but it is also asserted that he speedily declined to accept it any longer, and that he even returned the moneys which he had received. Like many another ridiculer of the idiosyncracies of others he was himself very susceptible to criticism, and for some attacks made on him by Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, he attempted to belabour his satirical opponent in Wright s shop in Piccadilly, but Gifford was too quick for him, and Wolcot was soundly thrashed. He died at Latham Place, Somer s Town, London, on 14th January 1819, and seven days later was buried near Samuel Butler, the author of Hudibras, in the vestry vault in the churchyard of St Paul s, Covent Garden. Polwhele, the Cornish historian, was well acquainted with Wolcot in his early life, and the best account of his residence in the west is found in vol. i. of Polwhele s Traditions and in Polwhele s Bio- graphical Sketches, vol. ii. Cyrus Redding was a frequent visitor at the old man s house, and has described Wolcot s later days in his Past Celebrities, vol. i., and his Fifty Years Recollections, vols. i. and ii. John Taylor, &quot;everybody s Taylor,&quot; lived &quot;on the most friendly footing with the doctor,&quot; who figures in the Records of iny Life. Wolcot s humour was broad, and he cared little whether he hit above or below the belt, but he had a keen eye for the ridiculous, and was endowed with a wondrous facility of diction. WOLF. The zoological position and general characters of the wolf (Canis hipus) are described in the article MAMMALIA (vol. xv. p. 438), where the difficulties that naturalists meet with in separating and defining the numerous variations of the animals called wolves, dogs, jackals, and foxes are shown. The true wolves are (excluding some varieties of the domestic dog) the largest members of the genus, and have a wide geographical range, extending over nearly the whole of Europe and Asia, and North America from Greenland to Mexico, but they are not found in South America or Africa, being replaced in both of these continents by various species of jackals and foxes. As might be expected from this extensive range, and the varied character of the climatic conditions of the countries they inhabit, they present great diversities of size, length and thickness of fur, and coloration, although resembling each other in all important structural characters. These differences have given rise to a supposed multiplicity of species, expressed by the names of C. lupus, C. lycaon (Central Europe), C. laniger and C. niger (Tibet), C. pallipes (India), C. occidentals, C. nubilis, C. mexicanus, &c., of North America, but it is very doubtful whether these ought to be distinguished as other than local varieties. In North America there is a second distinct smaller species, called the coyote or prairie wolf (Canis latrans), and perhaps the Japanese wolf (C.