The novel was founded partly upon
the story of Goethe's friend, a senti-
mentalist named Jerusalem, who com-
mitted suicide in 1772, and partly
by the story of Goethe's own rela-
tions with Lotte (i.e., Charlotte)
Buff, whom he met (1772), during the
interval between her betrothal and
her marriage with his friend Kestner
and who awoke in him a passion from
which he delivered himself by flight.
Western, Sophia, heroine of Field-
ing's novel Tom Jones, who, after a
series of misconceptions and misad-
ventures, marries the not entirely
worthy hero. She is drawn from the
same model as Amelia Booth, i.e.,
Fielding's wife. Sophia and Amelia
represent Miss Charlotte Cradock
before and after she became Mrs.
Henry Fielding. Miss Sophia is the
model English maid of her period, a
little too soft and sweet and yielding
for the modern taste, but historically
true to the past. A tender heart is
conjoined with a cultivated mind; the
beauty of her person is an index of the
soul that lodges there. She never
wavers in her love and reverence for
her father, despite all he is and says
and does. She does not even ask her-
self whether he might not more profit-
ably employ his time than in getting
drunk every afternoon. She will not
marry a man she loathes, but short
of that she will obey her father in all
things, will submit unquestioningly
to his abuse and his punishments.

Western, Squire, in Tom Jones,
father of the above, an all-too-faithful
picture of the English country gentle-
man of the mid-eighteenth century.
Though bred at the university, he
talked the broad dialect of Somerset-
shire, cursed and swore and used foul
language in the presence of his

White

womenkind on any provocation, was
a cruel tyrant to his daughter Sophia
(whom at the same time he idolized),
and got drunk every day of his life.

prejudice, irascibility, and rusticity, united
An inimitable picture of ignorance,
with natural shrewdness, constitutional
good humor, and an instinctive affection for
his daughter.-Sir Walter Scott.

White Lady of Avenel, in Scott's
historical novel, The Monastery
(1820), a mysterious spirit who
watches over the fortunes of the
Avenel family, and is "
aye seen to
yammer [shriek] and wail before ony
o' that family dies." Among other
"braw services," she rescued Lady
Alice's "thick black volume with
silver clasps " from the papist hands
of Father Philip and Father Eustace,
and afterward took Halbert Glenden-
ning into "the bowels of the earth,"
there to find it lying in a pyramid of
fire, yet unconsumed. This is how
she describes herself:

She reappears in The Abbot, to
show her interest in the marriage
of Roland Avenel with Catherine
Seyton, and was seen to sport
by her haunted well with a zone
of gold around her bosom as broad
as the baldrick of an earl." (See
BANSHEE.)

She

White, Selma, in Robert Grant's
novel, Unleavened Bread (1900), a
young Western woman, of compara-
tively humble birth, who sacrifices
self-respect and happiness in ceaseless
struggle as a soldier climber.
secures a divorce from her first hus-
band, marries an architect from New
York, and removes thither, to find
that he does not enjoy the social dis-
tinction she covets. On his death,
she allies herself to a politician whose
views of life, though different from
hers, are equally meretricious. He
becomes Governor and United States
Senator, but falls through corrupt

practices, carrying her down into the gutter with himself.

Wickfield, Agnes, in Dickens's David Copperfield (1849-50), daughter of Mr. Wickfield, a solicitor, and second wife of David. Andersen saw in Mrs. Dickens a likeness to this character. She is more plausibly a portrait of that lady's sister, Georgiana Hogarth.

In Agnes he has painted for us a perfectly unselfish character, living day by day in the lives of others, but accustomed from childhood to a certain self-restraint, which enables her the better to conceal the one attachment of her life under the modest veil of true sisterly affection, to be for years as an adopted sister to the man whom in the secret shrine of her pure heart she worshipped as a lover.-M. E. TOWNSEND: Great Characters of Fiction, p. 75.

I had heard many people remark that Agnes in David Copperfield was like Dickens's own wife, and, although he may not have chosen her deliberately as a model for Agnes, yet still I can think of no one else in his books so near akin to her in all that is graceful and amiable. Mrs. Dickens had a certain soft womanly repose and reserve about her; but whenever she spoke there came such a light into her large eyes, and such a smile upon her lips, and there was such a charm in the tones of her voice, that henceforth I shall always connect her and Agnes together.-H. C. ANDERSEN: Autobiography.

Wild Irish Girl, title of a novel (1806) by Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, and nickname of its heroine, Glorvina, in whom acquaintances of the author detected a clever bit of self-portraiture. She is the last descendant of a line of Connaught princes who for centuries had been at feud with the Sassenach earls that had dispossessed them. The heir to the earldom wooes her in disguise, and wins her after many romantic vicissitudes.

Wild, Jonathan (1682-1725), a famous criminal who was hanged at Tyburn. He is said to have married six wives. He was a receiver of stolen goods, who for a long time, by clever technicalities, evaded the law, and the head of a large corporation of thieves, whom he organized into gangs, each with its allotted sphere of work. An adept in suborning perjury, he could protect the loyal among

Wildfire

his followers and crush the disloyal through the constituted legal channels. He is a subsidiary character in Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard, the subject of a ballad, Newgate's Garland, printed in Swift's Miscellanies, and the hero of romances by Defoe and Fielding. The latter, The History of Johnathan Wild the Great (1742), departs widely from fact. Fielding makes his hero a dissolute rake of ancient lineage, who achieves the sort of greatness that is measured by success in crime. In his youth he is thrown in with a French gambler, Count La Ruse, and so far betters his master's instructions that the count himself becomes his victim. All goes well with Wild until his marriage with Letitia Snap, a match for himself in deceit and vileness. She betrays him and he perishes on the gallows.

Wildair, Sir Harry, one of Farquhar's best-drawn characters, first introduced in his comedy, The Constant Couple, and afterward made the hero of its sequel, Sir Harry Wildair. He is the original of all that class of characters who throw the witchery of high birth and splendid manners and reckless dash, good humor, generosity, and gayety over the qualities of the fop, the libertine, and the spendthrift. Farquhar improved upon this first sketch in his Mirabel. Sheridan seized the type and made it his own in the still more famous Sir Charles Surface, and it is now a stock character on the stage.

Wilder, in Cooper's romance of the sea, The Red Rover (1827), the name assumed by Henry Ark in his effort to capture the famous pirate.

Wildfire, Madge, in Scott's romance, The Heart of Midlothian (1818), Meg Murdock's son's daughter, driven to insanity by the profligate George Staunton. She is described as a tall, strapping wench, of eighteen or twenty, dressed fantastically in a sort of blue riding-coat, with tarnished lace; her hair clubbed like that of a man; a Highland bonnet and a bunch of broken feathers; a riding-skirt or petticoat of scarlet

Willie, Holy, hero of a poem, Holy Willie's Prayer, by Robert Burns, a canting hypocrite, recognized as a legitimate caricature of one William Fisher, leading elder in the kirksession at Kilmamoch, who had publicly denounced the poet for immorality. This precious pharisee was afterward found guilty of embezzling money from the church offerings. He ended his career by dying in a ditch, into which he had fallen when intoxicated.

Wilmot. There are three characters of this name, differentiated as Old Wilmot, Mrs. Wilmot, and Young Wilmot, in George Lillo's tragedy, Fatal Curiosity (1736). The story is that of a father and mother reduced to the extremity of want, who murder a visitor to their house for the sake of his casket of jewels, and afterward find the victim was their son. Young Wilmot, returning home after an absence of many years, had been prompted by curiosity to visit his parents incognito, and his mother, in her turn, had the curiosity to examine the stranger's box while he was taking an opportune nap. Lillo found his material in a pamphlet purporting to narrate an episode which happened in 1618 at "Perin," -i.e., Penryn, the scene of the drama. | Goethe produced Fatal Curiosity at Weimar (excusing himself on the plea that wine-drinkers relish an occasional glass of brandy), and this production suggested to Zacharias Werner his February 24, the most successful of all German Schicksalstragödien (or Fate-Tragedies). See also CHARLOTTE. Wilson, William, hero of a short story by E. A. Poe. Wilson has an alter ego or doppelgänger, who pursues him through life and finally kills him in a duel. See JEKYLL, DR.

He [Poe] lived and died a riddle to his friends. Those who had never seen him in a paroxysm could not believe that he was the perverse and vicious person painted in the circulated tales of his erratic doings. To an abnormally wicked and profane reprobate, the other a quiet and dignified gentleman. The special moral and mental condition incident to cerebral epilepsy explains these apparent contradictions as felicitously

those who had he was two men,-the one

Winkle

as it elucidates the intellectual and psychical traits of his literature.-FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD: A Madman of Letters, Scribner's Monthly, x, p. 696.

Wimble, Will, a member of the fictitious Spectator Club (q.v.); said to be intended as a portrait of a Mr. Thomas Morecroft (d. 1741).

Winkelried, Arnold von, an historical character, whom James Montgomery makes the hero of a narrative poem, Make Way for Liberty. At the great battle of Sempach, July 9, 1836, which freed Switzerland from the yoke of Austria, the Swiss had failed for a long time to break the serried ranks of the enemy. At last Arnold, commending his wife and children to the care of his comrades, rushed forward, hurled himself upon the Austrian spears, and fell pierced through and through, but not before he had opened a way for his countrymen to follow him to victory.

Winkle, Mr., Senior, in Dickens's Pickwick Papers, father of Nathaniel Winkle; an old wharfinger at Birmingham, a man of methodical habits, never committing himself hastily in any affair. He is greatly displeased at his son's marriage to Miss Arabella Allen, but finally forgives him, and admits that the lady is "a very charming little daughter-in-law, after all."

Winkle, Nathaniel, a member of the Corresponding Society of the Pickwick Club, and a cockney pretender to sporting skill.

Winkle, Rip Van, hero and title of a short story (1819), by Washington Irving, adopted from the German legend of Peter Klaus, a goatherd, who fell asleep one day upon the Kyffhauser Hills and did not wake up till twenty years after, when he returned to his native village to find everything changed and no one who knew him. In Irving's tale the hero is one of the Dutch colonists of New York, who, just before the Revolution, goes to sleep in the Kaatskill, and wakes to find that George Washington has ousted George III and that great changes have occurred in his village and his home. A stage version

Winterblossom

by Boucicault earned great success through the histrionic genius of Joseph Jefferson.

The first number of the Sketch-book contained the tale of Rip Van Winkle, one of the most charming and suggestive of legends, whose hero is an exceedingly pathetic creation. It is indeed a mere sketch, a hint, a suggestion; but the imagination readily completes it. It is the more remarkable and interesting because, although the first American literary creation, it is not in the

least characteristic of American life, but,

on the contrary, is a quiet and delicate satire on it. The kindly vagabond asserts the charm of loitering idleness in the sweet leisure of woods and fields, against the char:

acteristic American excitement of the overflowing crowd and crushing competition of the city, its tremendous energy, and incessant devotion to money-getting.-CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER: Washington Irving.

His witches are distinguished from the witches of Middleton by essential differ

ences. These are creatures to whom man or woman plotting some dire mischief might resort for occasional consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men. From the moment that

their eyes first meet with Macbeth's he is spellbound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the fascination. These witches can hurt the body; those have power over the soul.-Specimens of Early Dramatic Poetry.

Witching Hill, an imaginary locality in which E. W. Hornung places eight tales which he has bound together under the general title of Witching Hill (1912). Several generations ago, we are told, this estate was the seat of a very wicked nobleman, and the evil he did lives after

him. The Hill is cursed. All who come to occupy the suburban villas erected on the subdivided estate succumb to its evil influence. Blame

less on arrival, they are speedily moved by an irresistible impulse to deeds of darkness.

Wititterley, Mr. Henry, in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, a selfimportant snob, plain in face and manners, but continually boasting of his acquaintance with the aristocracy. His wife, Julia, is a tufthunter as shoddy as himself. The couple are an apparent reminiscence of Beau Tibbs and his wife, but painted with a coarser brush.

Witwould, Sir Wilful, hero of Congreve's comedy, The Way of the World (1700), a coxcomb, lighthearted, cynical, and well-bred, who never opens his lips without a compliment, and in his extravagant chatter reaches the utmost heights of folly.

Woffington, Margaret, or Peg, in Charles Reade's drama, Masks and Faces (1852), afterward turned into the novel, Peg Woffington, is the Irish actress of that name (1718-1760), who bewitched the London public and was the mistress of David Garrick before his marriage. Here she is represented as of virginal innocence, beautiful and vivacious, of brilliant wit and of extraordinary mimetic powers. In the greenroom of Covent Garden Theatre she tricks an entire dramatic company by impersonating the tragic actress Anne Bracegirdle. Later, in the studio of James Triplett, who has painted her portrait, she successfully essays a more difficult

feat.

A party composed of actors and would-be art critics are coming in an unfavorable mood to criticise the painting. She cuts out the painted face, inserts her own in the aperture, and, after the fault-finders have done their worst, confounds them by exploding the truth upon them.

Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal (1475– 1530), a famous English statesman; lord chancellor and prime minister of Henry VIII from 1515 to 1529,