693 



WILBYE, JOHN. 



WILFORD, FRANCIS. 



694 



In 714 the death of Pepin restored within Wilbrord's own diocese 

 the authority of the samo Pagan monarch, Had bod, who had subjected 

 him to the above ordeal, and the people appear to have rapidly laps d 

 into heathenism. The successes of Charles Martel re-established the 

 bishop in his influence, but the lapse of only two years seems to have 

 given him a great portion of his proselyting labours to do over again. 

 With the assistance of the missionary Wulfratnn, he brought the 

 stubborn and again defeated monarch Radbod so close to the point of 

 conversion that he had come to the holy font and put one foot in the 

 water, when he started the question whether there were a greater 

 number of Frieslanders in heaven or in hell. On being incautiously 

 told that all the unbaptised kings and nobles who had preceded him 

 were in the latter place, he withdrew his foot, saying he would prefer 

 going to the place where he would meet his ancestors to that which 

 might only happen to be peopled by some of his descendants. Con- 

 tinuing his missionary exertions under the patronage of Charles 

 Martel, Wilbrord made a narrow escape, attributed to miracle, from 

 death at the hands of the priest of an idol which he had destroyed, on 

 the island of Walcheren. He founded the monastery of Epternach 

 near Treves (at what time seems not clearly ascertainable). He there 

 died and was buried, in 738, in his eighty-first year. His day in the 

 calendar is the 7th of November. 



(Beda, Hist. Eccles., lib. v., chap, xi , xii. ; Mabillon, Annalet Ord. 

 S. Bened., lib. xviii. ; Wright, Biog. Brit, Lit., Anglo-Saxon Period, 

 250-262.) 



WILBYE, JOHN. Of this admirable composer one of the 

 brightest ornaments of the English school of music all that is 

 known, his works excepted, is, that in 1598 he was a teacher of music, 

 and dwelt in Austin Friars. (Hawkins, iii. 387.) In that year he 

 published a set of ' Madrigals, to three, four, five, and six Voices,' 

 and a second book of the same in 1609. These include some of the 

 most lovely, and at the same time the most scientific compositions 

 that, in this department, the art ever produced. Among them are, 

 ' Flora gave me fairest flowers/ ' Ladye, when I behold the roses 

 sprouting,' 'Sweet honey-sucking bees,' 'Down in a valley,' and 'Stay, 

 Cory don, thou swain ;' but only the second of these is mentioned by 

 Sir John Hawkins, though an active member of the Madrigal Society; 

 and but two the first and second of the above named by the other 

 musical historian, Dr. Burney. Mr. Warren (afterwards Warren Home), 

 the original secretary to the Catch Club, published, about seventy years 

 ago, fourteen madrigals for three voices, selected Irom Wilbye's two 

 sets : these include, ' As fair as morn,' and ' Fly, love, to heaven,' with 

 others of great merit. The Society of Musical Antiquarians have 

 reprinted some of his madrigals in a very handsome manner. 



WILD, HENRY, known as the learned tailor, or the Arabian tailor, 

 was a native of the city of Norwich, where he was born about the 

 year 1684, and where he received the usual elementary education in 

 Greek and Latin at the grammar-school ; on being taken from which 

 however he was bound apprentice to a tailor, with whom he is said 

 to have served seven years in that capacity, and then to have worked 

 seven more as a journeyman. Long before the end of the fourteen 

 years his Greek and Latin had probably been nearly altogether forgot- 

 ten, but he was now seized with an illness, which at last obliged him to 

 give up working, and in this state he took to reading as an occupa- 

 tion for his idle hours. The books which fell into his hands, or which 

 he was either by accident or taste led to read, were some old works of 

 controversial divinity ; and the quotations from the Scriptures in the 

 original Hebrew, with which they happened to be interspersed, are 

 said to have first excited him to an attempt to make himself master of 

 that language. In prosecuting this object he by degrees recovered his 

 Latin, thus enabling himself after some time to exchange his English 

 Hebrew lexicon and grammar for better works of that kind written in 

 Latin ; and, what was of still more importance, in the course of his 

 studies he also recovered his health, and was enabled to resume his 

 trade. But he did not upon this lay aside his books : he worked part 

 of the day, and devoted the rest, and often also a portion of the night, 

 to study, BO that he gradually made himself acquainted with others of 

 the Oriental languages as well as the Hebrew. In March, 1714, he is 

 mentioned as having within the preceding seven years mastered Latin, 

 Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic, and Persian. This statement, 

 which is given in a letter from Dr. Turner of Norwich to Dr. Charlett, 

 written at the time, aud published in the ' Letters by Eminent Per- 

 sons ' (edited by Dr. Bliss), 3 vols. 8vo, 1811, is, it may be observed, 

 not very easily reconcileable with the common story of his having 

 worked fourteen years as a tailor before he took to study : it would at 

 least require that we should suppose him to have left the grammar- 

 school and been apprenticed before he was nine years of age, instead 

 of when he was "almost qualified for the university," as the common 

 accounts say. This letter of Dr. Turner's too, in which he is spoken 

 of as then about thirty years of age, is the authority for the date 

 assigned to his birth. It is clear that either the time he is made to 

 have been at school, or that assigned to the part of his life which was 

 subsequently spent without study, must be shortened. It appears to 

 have been shortly before the date of Dr. Turner's letter that Wild 

 was discovered by the learned Dr. Prideaux, then dean of Norwich, 

 who, upon inquiring one day after some Arabic manuscripts, which a 

 bookseller of the .place had some time previous offered to him 

 and which he had then declined to purchase, learned to his alarm 



that they had since been bought by a tailor. Wild was instantly sent 

 for, and the dean was not only soon relieved from his apprehension, 

 that the precious parchments had been cut down for measures, but 

 was astonished by the tailor telling him that he had bought them to 

 read, and proving that he could do so on the spot. A subscription 

 was soon after raised to rescue him from the necessity of labouring 

 with his bands, which really does not seem to have been his proper 

 vocation : " He is very poor," writes Dr. Turner in his letter, " and his 

 landlord lately seized a polyglot Bible (which he had made shift to 

 purchase) for rent :" a proof that he had hardly been able to make 

 broad by his partial application to his trade of a tailor. Eventually 

 he was taken to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and employed in 

 translating and making extracts of Oriental manuscripts ; and he also 

 added something to his means of subsistence by taking pupils in the 

 Oriental tongues. He did not meet with much encouragement how- 

 ever in the latter line. About the year 1720 he left Oxford and came 

 to London, where he is believed to have spent the rest of his days 

 under the patronage of Dr. Mead. The date of his death is unknown ; 

 but he is supposed to have been dead before 1734, in which year was 

 published a translation by him of an Arabic legend entitled ' Maho- 

 met's Journey to Heaven,' his only literary production that ever found 

 its way to the press. This self-taught scholar is said to have been a 

 very inoffensive and amiable man. 



WILDENS, JOHAN, a celebrated Flemish landscape painter, born 

 at Antwerp. He was the contemporary of Rubens, to many of whose 

 pictures he painted landscape backgrounds, which he knew how to 

 harmonise with the style and colouring of llubens better than any 

 other landscape painter. Rubens is said to have preferred the works 

 of Wildens to those of Van Uden, whom he employed in the samo 

 way. Wildens painted large and small pictures, in some of which 

 there are some good figures painted by himself; but in his best works 

 the figures are painted by other masters. He painted twelve very 

 clever and characteristic pictures of the twelve months, which have 

 been engraved. He died in 1644 : the year of his birth is not known ; 

 1584 aud 1600 are both given by different writers. 



WILFORD, FRANCIS (Lieut. -Col.), known as an Oriental scholar 

 by numerous contributions to the 'Asiatic Researches,' weat out to 

 India, in 1781, as lieutenant of some troops which were Sent from 

 Hanover, his native country, to reinforce the British troops of the 

 line. Soon after the peace of Maogalore, in 1784, Wilt'ord was sta- 

 tioned at Russapugla, where he devoted some of the time which was 

 not occupied by his professional duties to the elucidation of Hindoo 

 antiquities by means of whatever notices he could find concerning 

 them in Greek and Latin authors : he found however great difficulties 

 from a total ignorance of the Oriental languages; aud in his first 

 essay, which was published in the ' Asiatic Researches' (1787), he com- 

 plains of having no tiuae to study languages. A few years afterwards 

 he was stationed at Benares, the centre of Hiudoo learning, where he 

 engaged a Pandit to instruct him in the sacred dialect, and more 

 especially to point out to him those passages from the Vedas and 

 Puran'as which in some measure related to the West. The first fruit 

 of his investigation was an essay on ' Egypt and the Nile, from the 

 ancient books of the Hindoos ' (1792). It is needless to say that the 

 Pandit had forged authorities to suit the fancies of his unsuspecting 

 employer; yet so skilful were these forgeries, that even the judicious 

 Sir W. Jones was imposed upon by them. Wilford himself describes 

 how the imposture was carried on in the following manner : " I 

 directed my Pandit to make extracts from all the Puran'as and other 

 books relating to my inquiries, and to arrange them under proper 

 heads. I gave him a proper establishment of assistants and writers, 

 aud I requested him to procure another Paudit to assist me in my 

 studies ; and I obtained, for his further encouragement, a place for him 

 in the college at Benares. At the same time I amused myself with un- 

 folding t j him our ancient mythology, history, and geography. This was 

 absolutely necessary, as a clue to guide him through so immense an 

 undertaking, and I had full confidence in him." That is, Wilford 

 wished to know whether there had been any connection between Egypt 

 and India; and the Brahmin immediately substituted the word Egypt 

 for the name of any other country mentioned in the Puran'as. We have 

 thought it worth while giving the above extract, for it now renders it 

 entirely unnecessary to give a detailed account of his works, which we 

 shall mention, with a warning to our readers not to trust even those 

 which he wrote after discovering the imposture in 1804. This cir- 

 cumstance greatly disturbed his peace of mind, and brought on 

 paroxysms, which threatened the most serious consequences to his 

 then infirm state of health. He was an original member of the Asiatic 

 Society, and associc Stranger of the Institut de France (Acaddmie des 

 Inscriptions et Belles Lettres), aud died at Benares, on the 4th Sep- 

 tember 1822. The following is a list of his essays, which show great 

 zeal for his subject but an utter want of sound judgment. They are 

 all inserted in the ' Asiatic Researches :' 1, ' Remarks on the Town of 

 Tagara,' i., p. 369 (1787); 2, 'On Egypt and the Nile, &c.,' iii., 295 

 (1792); 3, ' Dissertation on Semiramis,' iv., 363; 4, 'An Account of 

 some ancient Inscriptions,' v., 135; 5, 'On the Chronology of the 

 Hindus,' v., 247 (1797) ; 6, ' Remarks on the names of the Cabirian 

 Deities,' v., 297; 7, ' On Mount Caucasus,' vi., 455 (1799) ; 8, "Essays 

 on the Sacred Isles of the West,' ix., 32; x., 27 ; xi., 11 (1805-10); 

 9, 'Chronology of the Kings of Magadha,' ix., 82; 10, ' ^Eras of 



