ETHERIDGE, JOHN WESLEY (1804–1866), Wesleyan minister, was born at Youngwoods, a farmhouse four miles from Newport, Isle of Wight, on 24 Feb. 1804. His father was a lay preacher among the methodists, and had been urged by Wesley to enter the regular ministry, but refused. His mother was Alley Gray, daughter of an old naval officer. As a youth Etheridge was thoughtful and studious. He was privately educated and began to preach in 1826. Towards the end of 1827 the president of the conference sent him to Hull to assist the Rev. Dr. Beaumont, whose health had broken down. At the Bristol conference in August 1831 Etheridge was received into full connexion, being then second minister in the Brighton circuit. During that year he married Eliza Middleton, by whom he had one child, a daughter, who under her father's teaching became a remarkable Hebrew scholar and linguist. He took peculiar delight in the sacred literature and languages of the East, and most of his works related to these subjects. During several years of feeble health he lived at Caen and Paris, and availed himself of their libraries for carrying on his favourite studies. The university of Heidelberg in 1847 conferred upon him the degree of Ph.D. as a recognition of his exact scholarship and contributions to learning. Etheridge resumed circuit work on his recovery to health, and laboured successfully in Bristol, Leeds, and London. From 1853 he lived in Cornwall, and discharged ministerial duties at Penzance, Truro, Falmouth, St. Austell, and Camborne. Two volumes of biography were written by him for the Wesleyan conference, ‘Life of Dr. Adam Clarke’ in 1858, and ‘Life of Dr. Thomas Coke’ in 1860. Etheridge had an intense love of work, and was patient, modest, and gentle. He died at Camborne on 24 May 1866, aged 62. His principal works are:
- ‘The Apostolic Ministry and the Question of its Restoration considered,’ 1836.
- ‘Horæ Aramaicæ: Outlines of the Shemitic Language,’ 1843.
- ‘History, Liturgies, and Literature of the Syrian Churches,’ 1846.
- ‘The Apostolical Acts and Epistles, from the Peschito, or Ancient Syriac,’ &c., 1849.
- ‘Jerusalem and Tiberias; a Survey of the Religious and Scholastic Learning of the Jews,’ &c., 1856.
- ‘The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch, &c.; from the Chaldee,’ in 2 vols., vol. i. 1862, vol. ii. 1865.
[Smith's Memoirs, &c., 1871; Minutes of the Methodist Conference, 1866.]
ETKINS, JAMES (1613?–1687). [See Atkine, James.]
ETTY, WILLIAM (1787–1849), painter, born at York on 10 March 1787, was seventh child of Matthew Etty and Esther (Calverley) his wife. His father was a baker and a miller, and it was at the shop in Feasegate, famed for its gingerbread, that William was born. His mother had ‘a face for a Madonna,’ according to Sir Thomas Lawrence; his uncle William was ‘a beautiful draughtsman in pen and ink.’ His eldest brother (also named William, who died before our William was born) had a taste for design, but otherwise there is nothing specially to account for the strong tendency towards art which he showed when a child. ‘My first panels on which I drew’ (he tells us in his short autobiography published in the ‘Art Journal’ in 1849) ‘were the boards of my father's shop-floor; my first crayon a farthing's worth of white chalk, but my pleasure amounted to ecstasy when my mother promised me next morning, if I were a good boy, I should use some colours, mixed with gum-water. I was so pleased I could scarcely sleep.’
In 1798 he was apprenticed to a letterpress printer at Hull, and he served his full seven years, adding three weeks' work as a journeyman printer. His uncle, in answer to his repeated requests, sent for him to London, and he was free to follow the first and last aim of his life. The whole of his little leisure during his apprenticeship was spent in drawing and reading. He always ‘thought to be a painter,’ he wrote, ‘dreamed of nothing else.’ A strong sense of duty alone kept him to his distasteful employment. He speaks of ‘harassing and servile duties,’ and adds, a year before his death, that he still sometimes dreamt that he was ‘a captive, and wake and find it luckily but a dream.’
His uncle belonged to the firm of Bodley, Etty, & Bodley, of Lombard Street, and was ‘bountiful and benevolent’ to him. At home at his uncle's, and furnished with cash by his brother Walter, he set to work in earnest, drawing from the antique at Gianelli's plaster-cast shop in Cock Lane, Smithfield, and soon achieved a ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ which, with the aid of Opie and the favour of Fuseli, procured him entrance to the school of the Academy at ‘dear Somerset House,’ where he worked with Collins and Haydon. A hundred guineas paid by his kind uncle gave him the privilege of a room in Sir Thomas Lawrence's house in Greek Street, Soho. He retained his admiration for Lawrence, though he seems to have had little instruction, except what could be gained from copying his master's pictures. Charles Leslie speaks of his earlier pictures as ‘black and colourless attempts,’ and it was not till 1811, after six
