‘The Poetical Works of George Wither’ (published in Lamb's ‘Works’ in 1818) he expressed unbounded faith in his poetic greatness. It is now universally recognised that Wither was a poet of exquisite grace, although only for a short season in his long career. Had his last work been his ‘Faire Virtue,’ he would have figured in literary history in the single capacity of a fascinating lyric poet. He was one of the few masters in English of the heptasyllabic couplet, and disclosed almost all its curious felicities. But his fine gifts failed him after 1622, and during the last forty-five years of his life his verse is mainly remarkable for its mass, fluidity, and flatness. It usually lacks any genuine literary quality and often sinks into imbecile doggerel. Ceasing to be a poet, Wither became in middle life a garrulous and tedious preacher, in platitudinous prose and verse, of the political and religious creeds of the commonplace middle-class puritan. At times he enjoyed considerable influence; but his political philosophy amounted only to an assertion that kings ought not to be tyrannical nor parliaments exacting, and his religious views led merely to a self-complacent conviction of the sinfulness of his neighbours and of the peril to which their failings exposed the world, owing to the working of the vengeance of God.
Extracts from ‘Juvenilia’ by Alexander Dalrymple (London, 1785, 8vo) formed the earliest attempt at a full reprint of Wither's poems. Selections from Wither figured in a very thin volume called ‘Select Lyrical Ballads, written about 1622,’ which was printed by Sir S. E. Brydges (1815, 8vo). Brydges also printed ‘Shepherd's Hunting’ (1814), ‘Fair Virtue’ (1815), and ‘Fidelia’ (1818) in separate volumes. In 1810 Gutch reprinted a few specimens of Wither's early work, and sent to Lamb an early interleaved copy for corrections and suggestions. ‘I could not forbear scribbling certain critiques in pencil on the blank leaves,’ Lamb wrote to Gutch on 9 April 1810. The book, with these pencilled notes, was afterwards sent to Dr. George Frederick Nott [q. v.], the editor of Surrey's and Wyatt's poems. Nott added emendations of his own, and the volume again found its way to Lamb, who amusingly recorded his low opinions of Nott's taste. The volume, with the triple set of annotations, was subsequently acquired by Mr. Swinburne, who humorously described it in the ‘Nineteenth Century’ in January 1885; Mr. Swinburne's essay is reprinted in his ‘Miscellanies,’ 1886. J. M. Gutch also edited the ‘Juvenilia’ and other works in ‘Poems of George Wither,’ without notes or introduction (Bristol, 1820, 3 vols.); this collection was never completed; some copies are divided into four volumes, and bear the date 1839. Sheets containing a life of Wither by Gutch, intended to accompany his edition, were accidentally destroyed; only one impression was preserved by Gutch (cf. Athenæum, 1858, i. 500). Stanford printed a few of Wither's poems in his ‘Works of British Poets’ (1819, vol. v.). Southey included the ‘Shepherd's Hunting’ in his ‘Select Works of English Poets’ (1831). Wither's ‘Halelujah’ and ‘Hymnes and Songs of the Church,’ edited by Edward Farr, were reprinted in the ‘Library of Old Authors,’ 1857–8. The greater number of Wither's works were reprinted by the Spenser Society between 1870 and 1883 in twenty parts. A selection was edited by Professor Henry Morley in his ‘Companion Poets,’ 1891. ‘Fidelia’ and ‘Faire Virtue’ are included in Mr. Arber's ‘English Garner.’
[The general facts are collected in Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 761–75 (a confused bibliography); Aubrey's Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, i. 221, ii. 306–7; Hunter's Chorus Vatum (Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 24491, p. 49); Masson's Milton; Park's British Bibliographer, an elaborate bibliography by Park; preface to Brydges's reprint of Shepherds Hunting, 1814; Brydges's Censura Literaria; Wither's publications in the reprint of the Spenser Society, especially the Schollers Purgatory, 1625, and Ecchoes from the Sixth Trumpet, 1666. Some further biographical particulars may be gleaned from the following tracts, in which incidents in Wither's political and literary career are adversely criticised: A letter to George Wither, touching his soi-disant Military Exploits in Kent, Surrey, Gloucester, and Middlesex. Sold by the Cryers of ‘New, new, and true News,’ in all the streets of London, 1646, 4to; A letter to George Wither to prevent his future Pseudography, London, 1646, 4to; Mr. Wither his Prophesie of our present Calamity and (except we repent) future Misery, written in the year 1628, n.p. or d. 4to (two editions); Withers Remembrancer: or Extracts out of Master Withers his booke called Britain's Remembrancer. Worthy of the review and consideration of himselfe, and all other men, 1643, 8vo; A letter to George Wither, Poetica Licentia Esq., published for the better information of such who by his perpetual scribbling have been screwed into an opinion of his worth, and good affection to the publick, London, 1646, 4to.]
WITHERING, WILLIAM (1741–1799), physician, botanist, and mineralogist, was born at Wellington, Shropshire, in March 1741, being the only son of Edmund Withering, a surgeon, and his wife Sarah Hector, a kinswoman of Richard Hurd
