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WIELAND, CHRISTOPH MARTIN. 



WIFFEN, JEREMIAH HOLME. 



G 8 



the Greeks and Romans, and he formed the design of making all 

 Germany acquainted with the masterpieces of the ancients by a 

 series of translations. He began with a translation of Horace's 

 'Epistles' (1782, reprinted at Leipzig in 1816, 2 vole. 8vo, and at 

 Leipzig, 1837, 4th edition), which was followed by Horace's 'Satires' 

 (1786, reprinted 1819, 2 vols. 8vo.). Both works are accompanied 

 with commentaries and introductions, which are useful, especially for 

 the history of the period of Horace. The translation itself is free, as 

 it was intended more for the general reader than for scholars, and is 

 more like a modernisation than a real translation. The next produc- 

 tion was a translation of Lucian (Leipzig, 1788-91, 6 vols. 8vo.), like- 

 wise with a commentary. Tooke's translation of Lucian is made 

 from the German of Wieland. Wielaud himself declares his transla- 

 tion of Horace's ' Epistles ' and his commentaries upon them to be his 

 best work, and that from which his own individuality could be best 

 recognised. The fruits of Wieland's long study of Lucian are also 

 visible in the following works, which are very successful imitations 

 of that writer: 'Dialogen in Elysium' (1791), ' Gottergesprache' 

 'Gesprache unter vier Augen,' and 'Peregrinus Proteus' (1791). 

 Simultaneously with these labours Wieland wrote a great number of 

 essays for the 'Deutscher Mercur,' which, when collected, filled 

 sixteen volumes of his works. A collection of all Wieland's works 

 was published at Leipzig from 1794 to 1802, in 36 volumes, and six 

 supplementary volumes, in 4to, and great and small octavo. In this 

 collection all the works underwent a careful revision, and some were 

 almost entirely rewritten. The handsome remuneration which he 

 received for his edition enabled him to realise one of his favourite 

 schemes : he purchased the small country-house of Osmannstedt, near 

 Weimar, in the picturesque valley of the Ilm, where he intended to 

 spend the remainder of his life. He took up his residence there in 

 1798, with his wife and children, and it was here, in the enjoyment of 

 a quiet and patriarchal life, that Wieland unfolded all the excellence 

 of his character. He continued however to devote the greater part 

 of his time to literary labours. From 1796 till 1804 he alone edited 

 the 'Attisches Museum,' and from 1805 to 1809, conjointly with J. 

 Hottinger and Fr. Jacobs, under the title of ' Neues Attisches Mu- 

 seum.' This journal was chiefly devoted to the illustration of Greek 

 literature, and here he resumed his old and favourite plan of giving 

 to his countrymen a series of translations of the best Greek writers, 

 of which a great many are contained in this journal. Some original 

 works which appeared about this time contained the fruits of his 

 renewed study of antiquity, such as 'Aristippus und einige seiner 

 Zeitgenossen' (1800-1802), and the small novels 'Krates und Hippar- 

 chia ' and ' Menander und Glycerion.' 



Fortune, which had hitherto always been smiling upon Wieland, 

 had reserved some of its hardest blows for his old age. After the 

 death of Sophia Breutano, a grand-daughter of Sophia de Laroche, 

 who had been living in his house and had been attached to him as to 

 a father, he lost, in 1801, his wife. After this event the retreat of 

 Osmaunstedt had no more charm for him : owing also to some mis- 

 fortunes, he would have been obliged to encumber it with debt, if he 

 had kept it longer ; accordingly he disposed of it, and returned in 

 1803 to Weimar, where he soon formed an ultimate friendship with 

 Schiller. In the same year he was elected a foreign member of the 

 National Institute of France ; during the congress at Erfurt in 1808, 

 Napoleon honoured him with the order of the Le"gion d'Honneur, and 

 the Emperor Alexander of Russia with that of St. Anna. But the 

 year before, death had deprived him of his friend and patron the 

 Duchess Amalie, in whose company, during the last part of her life, 

 he had spent some hours almost every day. In 1809 he was seized 

 with a long and dangerous illness, and he had scarcely got over it 

 when he broke one of his ribs by being upset in his carriage. But he 

 got over this injury, and reappeared in the circle of his friends as 

 cheerful as before. In the year 1806 he had commenced his last great 

 literary undertaking, a translation of all the letters of Cicero, which 

 he continued until his death, on the 20th of January 1813, without 

 being able to complete it. It appeared at Ziirich, 1808-21, in 7 vols. 

 8vo ; the last two vols. were completed and edited by F. D. Grater. 

 In accordance with Wieland's own wish his body was conveyed to 

 Osmannstedt, and buried in the same tomb with his wife and Sophia 

 Brentano. 



On the general character of Wieland we may add the following 

 remarks. Wieland was not a poet of the first order : his peculiar 

 talent consisted in appropriating to himself and further developing 

 that which he acquired from others, though he always impressed upon 

 it the peculiar stamp of his own mind. He never penetrated deep 

 into the nature of man, but rather remained in the happy medium; 

 but he is unrivalled in the light and insinuating gracefulness of his 

 productions and the elegance of his style. His philosophy breathes 

 the spirit of Socrates, though not without a mixture of the principles 

 of Aristippus. He did not acquire a thorough and lasting influence 

 upon German literature, but his great merit consists in the amount of 

 knowledge, taste, and refinement which he diffused among his con- 

 temporaries, and which has been transmitted to their descendants. 

 Moreover it must not bo forgotten that it was Wieland who reconciled 

 the higher classes of Germany to the literature of their own country, 

 and who formed a beneficial counterpoise to the transcendental charac- 

 ter which Klopstock and his school introduced into German poetry. 



WIESELGREN, PETER, the Swedish apostle of temperance, and 

 also a voluminous and industrious editor and compiler of miscellaneous 

 works, was born on the 1st of October 1800, at the farm of Spftuhult, 

 not far from Wexio in the south of Sweden, the son of Jonas JiJns.sou, 

 a peasant. From childhood he displayed an unusual sense of religion, 

 at the age of eight he had read the Bible through, and at ten, at the 

 instigation of his mother, had written psalms and a sermon. The 

 minister of the parish took notice of his knowledge of the Scriptures, 

 and recommended him, when ten years old, to a clergyman of the 

 name of Malmberg, who taught him Latin on the condition that 

 he should teach Malmberg's son to read. Young as he was, the boy 

 was never afterwards without a pupil. At the age of eleven he was 

 sent to the school of Wexio, where his entrance into a higher walk of 

 life was signalised by his being equipped with a surname. The rector, or 

 schoolmaster, Lundelius, hearing from the father, Jonas Jonsson, that 

 he thought he was related to a family bearing the name of Wieselgren, 

 conferred on the son, by his own authority, the name by which he has 

 since been known. At the university of Lund, where he afterwards 

 studied, he was shocked at the laxity of religious feeling which he 

 found prevalent, and began to preach on what in England would be 

 called ' evangelical ' principles, at the age of seventeen. From an early 

 period his pen has been incessantly active as an author, and his first 

 work of length ' Which religion is that of Sweden,' ' Hvilken iir 

 Sveriges Religion,' published in 1827, is on a theological subject, but 

 those of his works which have chiefly attracted attention are of a mis- 

 cellaneous character. One of the most important is the ' Delagardiska 

 Archivet,' ' Archives of the De la Gardie family, or Papers from Count 

 De la Gardie's library at Loberod,' twenty volumes octavo, with supple- 

 ment (Lund, 1831-44). The De la Gardie family, descended from a 

 Frenchman, is one of the most illustrious in Sweden, and the library 

 at Loberod, their country-seat, was rich in important documents 

 relating to Swedish history for the last three centuries. Wieselgren, 

 who was invited by the Count to assist him in arranging the papers, 

 was allowed to publish a selection, which extended to an unexpected 

 length, but which comprises much valuable matter, and might occa- 

 sionally be consulted with advantage by English historians. In 1848 

 the Count, at Wieselgren's suggestion, presented the original collection 

 to the library of the university of Lund. Another of his works, a 

 history of the printed literature of Sweden, ' Sveriges Skona Lit- 

 teratur,' which was left imperfect, in three volumes (Lund, 1833-35), 

 was founded on the academic lectures which he delivered at the 

 university of Lund, in the capacity of assistant professor of aesthetics, 

 to which he was appointed in 1824, much to his own surprise, by the 

 Chancellor von Engestrom. In 1833 he quitted the university to 

 officiate as a parish priest, and was led to occupy part of his leisure 

 on a topographical work in three volumes of a description of the 

 bishopric of Wexio ' Ny Smalands Beskrifning inskrankt till Wexio 

 Stift,' in which he was considered somewhat too fanciful in his intro- 

 ductory speculations on remote antiquity. 



As a contributor to Palmblad's Biographical Lexicon of celebrated 

 Swedes [PALMBLAD] he wrote more than two hundred lives, and on 

 Palmblad's death, in J852, took his place as editor of the work, which 

 has now attained its twenty-second volume, and appears to be close to 

 its completion. It is from his autobiography contributed as an 

 article to this Dictionary that most of the foregoing particulars have 

 been taken. It concludes with a list of his writings occupying three 

 closely-printed pages ; but almost the only important work that re- 

 mains to be added, is his ' Historical Dissertation on Swedish Brandy- 

 Legislation for the last two hundred years ' (Lund, 1840), with which 

 he commenced his campaigns against Swedish intemperance, which he 

 has now carried on for many years by preachiug-tours made during 

 every summer. Wieselgren is also an active advocate of whit is 

 called in Germany and Sweden the ' Inner Mission,' a system of 

 visiting the poor for religious purposes, analogous to the ' Home- 

 Missions* of England. He is generally respected as sincere and well- 

 meaning, and on one occasion was proposed by his colleagues to the 

 government as a candidate for the bishopric of Wexio, but his judg- 

 ment is sometimes less remarkable than his ardour, and as a compiler 

 he is too apt to obtrude his own peculiarities on the reader. 



WIFFEN, JEREMIAH HOLME, was born in the neighbourhood of 

 Woburn, in 1792, of Quaker parents, and was educated for the pro- 

 fession of a schoolmaster, a vocation which he followed for several 

 years. He very early however displayed a taste for poetry and literary 

 composition. In 1812 he published a ' Geographical Primer,' for the 

 use of the junior classes of a school, and he contributed some poetical 

 effusions of considerable merit to a volume entitled ' Poems by Three 

 Friends.' He next wrote some spirited stanzas on the portraits in 

 Woburn Abbey, inserted in the Rev. Mr. Parry's ' History of Woburn,' 

 and afterwards reprinted separately as 'The Russells.' In 1819 he 

 published ' Aonian Hours,' and other poems, which attracted the notice 

 of the Duke of Bedford, who appointed him his librarian at Woburn, 

 and (his private secretary. From this time he lived in the enjoyment 

 of literary ease, but continued to employ himself actively. In 1620 

 he published ' Julia Alpinula, the Captive of Stamboul, and other 

 Poems;' in 1822, a translation of the poems of Garcilasso de la Vega; 

 and for many years he contributed original poems and translations to 

 ' Time's Telescope,' and various other periodical works. Among the 

 original pieces may be mentioned ' The Luck of Eden Hall,' as a sue- 



