English divine; born at Nottingham, Feb. 22, 1756; died in London, Sept. 9, 1801. He was graduated at Cambridge, 1776, obtained a fellowship; took holy orders, left (1786), and violently assailed the Established Church. He joined no other communion. From 1779 to 1783 he was classical tutor in the dissenting academy at Warrington, and for a year (1790–91) the same in the dissenting academy at Hackney. His later views were Unitarian. Gentle in domestic life, he yet was acrimonious in controversy. He published editions of Bion and Moschus, Virgil and Lucretius, and many original books, of which may be mentioned, “An enquiry into the opinions of the Christian writers of the three first centuries concerning the person of Christ,” London, 1784 (only vol. 1 printed); “Enquiry into the expediency and propriety of social worship,” 1791 (in which he takes strong ground against it); “Translations of the New Testament,” 1791, 3 vols. (2d ed., 1795, 2 vols. reprinted, Cambridge, Mass., 1820), “An examination of the Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine,” 1794.
Personal
I was introduced into this planet on February 22, 1756, in the parsonage house of St. Nicholas, in Nottingham, of which church my father was rector…. From my earliest infancy I was endowed with affections unusually composed, with a disposition grave and serious. I was inspired from the first with a most ardent desire of knowledge, such as I believe hath never been surpassed in any breast, nor for a moment impaired in mine…. At the age of three years, I could spell the longest words, say my catechism without hesitation, and read the gospels with fluency.
He had the pale complexion and mild features of a saint, was a most gentle creature in domestic life, and a very amiable man; but when he took part in political or religious controversy, his pen was dipped in gall.
Porson was never at any pains to conceal his extreme contempt for Wakefield. There was at one time a seeming sort of friendly communication; but whilst Wakefield aimed at being thought on a level with Porson in point of attainments, this latter must unavoidably have felt the consciousness of his own great superiority.—Indeed, the difference between them was immense. Without disparagement to Wakefield, his warmest advocates must acknowledge, that although he formed his opinions hastily, he never failed to vindicate them with peremptory decision. In consequence of this eagerness and haste, his criticisms were frequently erroneous, and his conclusions false; neither, if detected in error, would his pride allow him either to confess, or retract his fault.
He did himself less than justice in his writings; but his private life was spotlessly pure, pre-eminently true, and great in qualities which only those who knew him intimately and enjoyed his friendship had the opportunity of knowing. It conveys a disagreeable impression of himself in his autobiography (a work now almost unknown), but this impression those who loved him declare to be quite a false one, due only to his unfortunate manner of expressing himself and a want of moderation and judgment. That stern obedience to conscience which, in the eighteenth century, brought him to Dorchester Goal, would certainly, in the fifteenth, have gained him a martyr’s death; since he never hesitated for a moment to sacrifice what he held most dear to his intense and ardent conviction of truth.
General
Wakefield possesses exquisite taste and a most luxuriant fancy, as a critic; and one grieves that he should ever have misapplied his powers to politics and religion.
His ravages on Virgil and Horace, in his late editions of them are often as shocking to taste as to truth.
The late Gilbert Wakefield is an instance where the political and theological opinions of a recluse student tainted his pure literary works. Condemned as an enraged Jacobin by those who were Unitarians in politics, and rejected because he was a Unitarian in religion by the orthodox, poor Wakefield’s literary labours were usually reduced to the value of waste-paper. We smile, but half in sorrow, in reading a letter, where he says, “I meditate a beginning during the winter, of my criticisms on all the ancient Greek and Latin authors, by small piece-meals, on the cheapest possible paper, and at the least possible expense of printing. As I can never do more than barely indemnify myself, I shall print only 250 copies.” He half ruined himself by his splendid edition of Lucretius, which could never obtain even common patronage from the opulent friends of classical literature. Since his death it has been reprinted, and is no doubt now a marketable article for the bookseller; so that if some authors are not successful for themselves, it is a comfort to think how useful, in a variety of shapes, they are made so to others. Even Gilbert’s “contracted scheme of publication” he was compelled to abandon! Yet the classic erudition of Wakefield was confessed, and is still remembered.
The design of Mr. Wakefield in the plan of this work [“Silva Critica”] was the union of theological and classical learning,—the illustration of the Scriptures by light borrowed from the philology of Greece and Rome, as a probable method of recommending the books of revelation to scholars.
Some of the emendations [“Silva Critica”] are too conjectural, and discover the natural boldness of the author; but his criticisms often afford a clear and happy solution of difficulties which have hitherto proved insuperable. The complete work is now become scarce.
A scholar, and an ardent and multifarious one, Gilbert Wakefield undoubtedly was; but, with his talents and attainments, we regret that a more elegant and interesting air is not given to the pages of his biography: and while the sincerity of his religious principles, and the integrity of his private life, cannot fail to be readily admitted, it must be regretted that these excellent qualities did not produce a more placable temper in argument, and a more peaceful tone in literary and political controversies. Why should human beings, gifted as was Gilbert Wakefield, dip their pens in gall, when there is abundance of milk within their reach? And why do eminently intellectual characters seem to strive their utmost to make us disgusted with the pursuits and consolations of Literature? Nevertheless, let Gilbert Wakefield’s biography find a place upon the shelves of the curious—for a sum somewhat less than a sovereign.
Porson felt much respect for Gilbert Wakefield’s integrity, but very little for his learning. When Wakefield put forth the “Diatribe Extemporalis” on Porson’s edition of the “Hecuba,” Porson said, “If Wakefield goes on at this rate, he will tempt me to examine his ‘Silva Critica.’ I hope that we shall not meet; for a violent quarrel would be the consequence.”—Wakefield was a very agreeable and entertaining companion. “My ‘Lucretius,’” he once said to me, “is my most perfect publication,—it is, in fact, ‘Lucretius Restitutus.’” He was a great walker; he has walked as much as forty miles in one day; and I believe that his death was partly brought on by excessive walking, after his long confinement in Dorchester goal. What offended Wakefield at Porson was, that Porson had made no mention of him in his notes. Now, Porson told Burney expressly, that out of pure kindness he had forborne to mention Wakefield; for he could not have cited any of his emendations without the severest censure.
Gilbert Wakefield was a man who received scanty justice. His contemporaries condemned him as hot-headed, arrogant, and eccentric, though they contemptuously admitted his honesty. He was weak enough, they declared, to fall in love with the opinions for which he made sacrifices, and would, so they argued, have ceased to love them had they been generally acceptable. He was as dogmatic about trifles as about serious matters; “he was as violent against Greek accents as he was against the Trinity, and anathematised the final υ as strongly as episcopacy.” He had, in short, that love of petty crotchets which distinguishes men of his temperament, and which flourishes in revolutionary periods. He was a teetotaler and vegetarian in the good old days of port wine and roast beef, and had he lived a generation later would doubtless have been at the head of numerous societies for the regeneration of mankind. Our ancestors dealt him shorter and sharper measure.
Wakefield possessed accurate scholarship and acuteness of intellect, but lacked judgment; he was violent in his prejudices, and bitter in his animosities; and he rebelled against authority, equally in church, in state, and in letters. His writings are valuable, not for his conclusions, but for the sharpness of his criticism.
He was one of those not very uncommon men who, personally amiable, become merely vixenish when they write: and his erudition was much more extensive than sound. But he edited several classical authors, not wholly without intelligence and scholarship, and his “Silva Critica,” a sort of variorum commentary from profane literature on the Bible, was the forerunner, at least in scheme, of a great deal of work which has been seen since.
He holds a distinct position in the history of English scholarship. As a scholar, he had decided merits and conspicuous defects. He had abundance of good taste, extensive general knowledge, and great industry; but these qualifications were counterbalanced by the excessive haste and temerity of his conclusions. His reputation would be higher if he had been a severer critic of himself. He measured swords with Porson with a light heart, and when Porson published his “Hecuba” in 1787, Wakefield immediately assailed the work in a “Diatribe Extemporalis.” The result was a more or less discourteous controversy, which went on simmering in Porson’s notes to the “Orestes” and in the second edition of the “Hecuba;” and an estrangement followed…. Wakefield’s best known works are the “Silva Critica” and the editions of “Lucretius,” both of which show him alike at his best and his worst. The former is a medley of critical and illustrative comment on classical passages, acute, ingenious, and widely informed, but here and there disfigured by serious blunders that a little thought would have corrected. It was his chief fault as a scholar that he carried his love of emendation to an absurd degree, and fairly justified Porson’s remark that “no author escaped his rage for correction.” “Lucretius,” although Wakefield’s greatest work, was published at a loss.
