WHIPPLE, EDWIN PERCY (1819-1886). —Essayist and critic, b. in Massachusetts, was a brilliant and discriminating critic. His works include Character and Characteristic Men, Literature and Life, Success and its Conditions, Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, Literature and Politics, etc.
WHISTON, WILLIAM (1667-1752). —Theologian, and man of science, b. at Norton, Leicestershire, and ed. at Camb., where he succeeded Newton as Lucasian Prof. of Mathematics, was a prominent advocate of the Newtonian system, and wrote a Theory of the Earth against the views of [Thomas Burnet] (q.v.). He also wrote several theological works, Primitive Christianity Revived and the Primitive New Testament. The Arian views promulgated in the former led to his expulsion from the Univ. His best known work was his translation of Josephus. He was a kindly and honest, but eccentric and impracticable man, and an insatiable controversialist.
WHITE, GILBERT (1720-1793). —Naturalist, b. at Selborne, Hants, and ed. along with the [Wartons] (q.v.) at their father's school at Basingstoke, and thereafter at Oxf., entered the Church, and after holding various curacies settled, in 1755, at Selborne. He became the friend and correspondent of [Pennant] the naturalist (q.v.), and other men of science, and pub. in the form of letters the work which has made him immortal, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). He was never m., but was in love with the well-known bluestocking Hester Mulso, afterwards Mrs. Chapone, who rejected him. He had four brothers, all more or less addicted to the study of natural history.
WHITE, HENRY KIRKE (1785-1806). —Poet, s. of a butcher at Nottingham. At first assisting his f., next a stocking weaver, he was afterwards placed in the office of an attorney. Some contributions to a newspaper introduced him to the notice of Capel Lofft, a patron of promising youths, by whose help he brought out a vol. of poems, which fell into the hands of Southey, who wrote to him. Thereafter friends raised a fund to send him to Camb., where he gave brilliant promise. Overwork, however, undermined a constitution originally delicate, and he d. at 21. Southey wrote a short memoir of him with some additional poems. His chief poem was the Christiad, a fragment. His best known production is the hymn, "Much in sorrow, oft in Woe."
WHITE, JOSEPH BLANCO (1775-1841). —Poet, s. of a merchant, an Irish Roman Catholic resident at Seville, where he was b., became a priest, but lost his religious faith and came to England, where he conducted a Spanish newspaper having for its main object the fanning of the flame of Spanish patriotism against the French invasion, which was subsidised by the English Government. He again embraced Christianity, and entered the Church of England, but latterly became a Unitarian. He wrote, among other works, Internal Evidences against Catholicism (1825), and Second Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion, in answer to T. Moore's work, Travels, etc. His most permanent contribution to literature, however, is his single sonnet on "Night", which Coleridge considered "the finest and most grandly conceived" in our language.