817 



WORSAAE, JENS JACOB ASMUSSEN. 



WOTTON, SIR HENRY. 



813 



referred to at place called Runamo in Bleking, but to him it was as 

 unintelligible as it bad been to tbe emissaries of King Walclemar. 

 Doubt began to arise in the 18th century and to spread in the 19th, as 

 to whether the inscription was an inscription at all; a Swedish anti- 

 quary named Brocman and the eccentric Danish antiquary Arendt 

 maintained tbat the scratches and figures which were observed in the 

 rocky path at Runamo were nothing more than a freak of nature, that 

 Saxo Grammaticus had merely retailed an idle tradition, and that if 

 King Harold Hildetand, or any one else, had wished to cut an inscrip- 

 tion in that part of Bleking, he would hardly have chosen a rough 

 horizontal rock when numerous flat perpendicular rocks were at 

 hand for the purpose. The question at last excited so much interest 

 that," in 1833, the Royal Danish Scientific Society determined to send a 

 commission of learned men to Bleking to examine the spot. Ominously 

 enough they found that the disputed marks were cut in a piece of trap- 

 rock. The geologist Forchhammer did not hesitate to pronounce that 

 many of the marks were to be attributed to natural causes, others he 

 considered to be the work of human hands, and he carefully pointed 

 out which, in his opinion, were owing to one cause and which to the 

 other. Three drawings were made, one of the natural marks, another 

 of the artificial, and a third of the two combined, presenting, it was 

 said, a facsimile of the inscription as it appeared to the ordinary 

 spectator, and the three were engraved for the ' Transactions of the 

 Copenhagen Society.' Finn Magnusson, the celebrated Icelandic 

 scholar, who was one of the commission, found himself unable to 

 decipher the mystic inscription when on the spot, and for months 

 afterwards laboured at it in vain. This ignorance was destined to be 

 suddenly dispelled. " On the 22nd of May 1834, in the afternoon," he 

 says in the great work he afterwards published on the subject, " when 

 I had been looking over the first proof of the first impression of the 

 copper-plate, which represents those parts of the inscription which 

 were recognised by Professor Forchhammer as cut in or punctured by 

 art, the idea chanced to come across me of trying to read the inscrip- 

 tion backwards, or from right to left. I immediately read off without 

 the slightest difficulty the word Hiiltekiun, and the others followed 

 soon after without any particular trouble by reading the letters in this 

 direction, and also, according to the rules by which, in Iceland and 

 other countries, what are called Binderuner (complex or entangled 

 Runes), ai'e usually deciphered." 



The discovery produced a sensation in the antiquarian world, and 

 was made known in all its bearings in the ' Transactions ' of the Society 

 in an article which filled a quarto volume of more than seven hundred 

 pages, and which was afterwards issued in a separate shape by Mag- 

 nussen under the title of 'Runamo og Runerne' (Runamo and the 

 Runes), Copenhagen, 1841. The controversy might now be supposed 

 to be fairly at an end, but it revived anew, with more vigour than 

 ever. Berzelius, the eminent Swedish chemist, hearing of the affair 

 while on a visit to Copenhagen, made a journey to Bleking, even before 

 Magnussen's work was published, on purpose to examine the inscrip- 

 tion, and entirely disagreed with Forchhammer, coming to the con- 

 clusion that all the marks in the rocky road which were not produced 

 by nature were produced by wheels. Nilsson of Lund, the eminent 

 Swedish antiquary, coincided with Berzelius. The suspicions of 

 Worsaae had been originally aroused by the great amount of curious 

 facts that the inscription in Magnussen's hands, and as read by him, 

 was made to prove. Saxo Gramrnaticus had been considered a retailer 

 of romantic fables, but the inscription coincided to such a degree with 

 his narrative as to show that this opinion must be erroneous ; it also 

 proved that the language now called Icelandic was in use in Bleking 

 in the time of Harold Hildetand, and not only so, but that Icelandic 

 verse of the kind called ' Fornyrthalag ' or ' Old Metre,' the same into 

 which Thorlaksson translated ' Paradise Lost ' in the 19th century, was 

 current at least as early as the 8th. This led Worsaae to examine the 

 rock of Runamo with some curiosity, first in 1842 and afterwards in 

 1844, when he had with him a copy of the engravings which had been 

 published by the Danish Society. <( The first glance," he tells us, 

 " showed me what my subsequent comparisons and examinations have 

 brought to a complete certainty that the representations of the trap 

 at Runamo taken by Forchhammer's direction are altogether unre- 

 liable." " I could not therefore have the slightest doubt," he adds, 

 " that Finn Magnussen's whole reading and interpretation of the in- 

 scription which was grounded on this drawing were completely wrong." 

 Worsaae published in his pamphlet, side by side with the old ' portrait 

 of Runamo,' a new portrait taken by another artist, which was entirely 

 different. He contended, with a strong array of facts and arguments, 

 that in his supposed discovery the Icelandic scholar must have been 

 the dupe of his own imagination, and that the inscription he believed 

 he had read was as unreal as the delineations which fancy often sees 

 in a winter's fire. It required no little courage in a young and com- 

 paratively unknown Danish writer thus openly to assail the work of 

 one of the literary magnates of the land given to the public by its 

 most distinguished scientific body. But his cause was gained ; the 

 verdict has gone against Finn Magnussen. In his ' Runamo og Ru- 

 nerne,' Magnussen had also given a translation of the inscription on 

 the column at Ruthwell, which was afterwards criticised with great 

 severity and effect by J. M. Kernble. It is now therefore generally 

 considered that, with undeniable learning and ingenuity, and many 

 merits, the great Runic scholar was not to be trusted in Runes. 



BIOG. DIV, VOL. VI, 



Tho other works of Worsaae arc numerous, and are all marked by a 

 character of sobriety and soundness. His ' Danmarks Oldtid oplyst 

 sed Oldsager,' literally ' Denmark's Old Time illustrated by Old 

 Things/ (Copenhagen, 1843,) appeared in England under the title of 

 ' The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, translated and applied to the 

 illustration of similar remains in England, by W. J. Thorns ' (London, 

 1849), with a preface in English by the original author. The transla- 

 tion, which had the benefit of his revision, was made from a German 

 translation which he had also superintended, and to which a tour ia 

 Prussia, Austria, and Bavaria, in 1845, had given him the power of 

 making additions. In 1846 and 1847 he paid a visit of some duration 

 to the British islands at tho expense of the Danish government, and 

 the result of his journey was the volume entitled ' Minder om de 

 Danske og} Nordmaendene i England, Skotland, og Irland' (Copen- 

 hagen, 1851), published in English the next year as 'An Account of 

 the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland' (London, 

 1852). The work attracted considerable attention here from the sum- 

 mary which it presented of the recent researches of the Scandinavian 

 antiquaries with regard to our own history, but was hardly equal to 

 the expectations which had been formed of it, and contains little that 

 might not have been written without a tour. An essay by Mr. Wor- 

 saae on the Antiquities of Ireland and Denmark is inserted in the 

 ' Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy,' and short contributions 

 from his pen on other archseological subjects have appeared in some 

 English periodicals. He repeated his visit to England in 1852, made 

 in the same year a tour in France, and in 1854 went to Germany and 

 Italy. In his own country his merits were recognised by his appoint- 

 ment, in 1847, as Inspector of Antiquarian Monuments in Denmark, 

 and a member of the royal commission for the preservation of anti- 

 quities, and, when two years later this commission was broken up and 

 two persons recommended in its stead to discharge its duties, the two 

 were Thomsen and Worsaae. In 1854 he received the honorary rank 

 of professor. He is a warm patriot, and among his lesser writings 

 many are in defence of Scandinavianism, on the formation of a closer 

 league between the Scandinavian countries to resist the pressure of 

 foreign influence, a subject on which he has been engaged in con- 

 troversy with Professor Munch, the Norwegian. [MUNCH.] His most 

 important recent publication is his ' Af bildainger fra det kongelige 

 Museum fer Nordiske Oldsager' (Delineations from the Royal Museum 

 of Northern Antiquities), Copenhagen, 1854, 



WORSLEY, SIR RICHARD, BART., was born in 1751, in the Isle 

 of Wight. His father was Sir Thomas Worsley, and Richard suc- 

 ceeded to the title when he was about eighteen years of age. He soon 

 afterwards travelled on the Continent, and remained a considerable 

 time at Rome, where he purchased a variety of pieces of sculpture 

 and other remains of ancient art. 



Sir Richard Worsley, after his return to England, sat in the House 

 of Commons for many years as one of the representatives of the 

 borough of Newport in the Isle of Wight. He was comptroller of the 

 royal household to George III., and also held the office of governor of 

 the Isle of Wight, where he died in 1805. 



Sir Richard Worsley published a ' History of the Isle of Wight,' 

 4to, London, 1781, with engravings. The history is natural, civil, 

 military, commercial, and antiquarian ; but except in mere matters of 

 historical detail, most of them dull enough. Worsley's work was super- 

 seded by Sir Henry Englefield's 'Description of the Isle of Wight.' 

 Sir Richard Worsley also published 'Musseum Worsleianum; or a 

 Collection of antique Basso-Relievos, Bustos, Statues, and Gems ; with 

 Views of Places in the Levant, taken on the spot in the years 1785, 

 86, and 87,' 2 vols. folio, London, 1794-1803. He was assisted in the 

 arrangement and description of his collection by Ennio Quirino 

 Visconti. It was printed by Bulmer, and at the time of its publica- 

 tion was considered to be, in typography and embellishments, one of 

 the most splendid works which had issued from the English press. 

 Very few copies were printed ; some authorities say only fifty, but 

 others two hundred and fifty, and the total expense to Sir Richard 

 was about 27,OOOZ. 



WOTTON, EDWARD, was born at Oxford in 1492. He studied 

 at the University of Oxford, and took his Bachelor's degree in 1513. 

 He was subsequently appointed, by Bishop Fox, Greek lecturer at 

 Corpus Christi College. In this position he remained till 1520 : he 

 then travelled into Italy, and having visited the principal cities, he 

 graduated in medicine in the University of Padua, in 1523. He took 

 his degree of Doctor of Medicine at Oxford in 1525, and became a 

 Fellow of the College of Physicians of London. He was afterwards 

 appointed physician to Henry VIII. He devoted much attention to 

 the study of natural history, and published at Paris, in 1552, a work 

 entitled 'De Differentiis Animalium.' This work is spoken highly of 

 by Gesner. It does not contain any new matter of his own, but was 

 an epitome of the natural history of his day. It is written in elegant 

 Latin. He began a history of insects, but this work was never pub- 

 lished. He died in 1555. 



WOTTON, SIR HENRY, was born April 9 (30th March, O.S.), 

 1568, atBocton Hall, " commonly," says his biographer, Izaak Walton, 

 " called Bocton or Bougton Place," in the more modern accounts 

 written Boughton Hall, in the parish of Boughton-Malherbe, in the 

 county of Kent. Here his ancestors, several of whom had held dis- 

 tinguished employments in the state, had been seated for many gene- 



3 a 



