William Whitehead, 1715–1785. Born, at Cambridge, Feb. 1715. Early education at Winchester School, July, 1728 to Sept. 1735. Matric. Clare Hall, Cambridge, as Sizar, 1735; B.A., 1739; Fellow, 1742–46; M.A., 1743. Appointed tutor to son of Lord Jersey, 1745; travelled on Continent with him, June, 1754, to Sept. 1756. Was an inmate of Lord Jersey’s household till 1769. Play, “The Roman Father,” produced at Drury Lane, 24 Feb. 1750; “Creusa,” Drury Lane, 20 April, 1754; “The School for Lovers,” Drury Lane, 1762; “A Trip to Scotland,” Drury Lane, 1770. Contrib. to “The World,” 1753. Registrar of Order of Bath, 1755. Poet-Laureate, 1757. Died, in London, 14 April, 1785. Buried in South Audley Street Chapel. Works: “On the Danger of Writing in Verse,” 1741; Epistle of Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII., 1743; “Essay on Ridicule,” 1743; “On Nobility,” 1744; “Atys and Adrastus,” 1744; “The Roman Father,” 1750; “A Hymn to the Nymph of Bristol Spring,” 1751; “Creusa,” 1754; “Poems on Several Occasions,” 1754; “Elegies,” 1757; “Verses to the People of England,” 1758; “A Charge to the Poets,” 1762; “The School for Lovers,” 1762 (adapted from the French of Le Bovier de Fontenelle); “A Trip to Scotland” (anon.), 1770; “Plays and Poems” (2 vols.), 1774; “Variety” (anon.), 1776; “The Goat’s Beard” (anon.), 1777.

Personal

  In the same year [1762] the rabid satire of Churchill sorely smote his reputation. Poor Whitehead made no reply. Those who, with Mason, consider his silence as the effect of a pacific disposition, and not of imbecility, will esteem him the more for his forebearance, and will apply it to the maxim, Rarum est eloquenter loqui varias eloquenter tacere. Among his unpublished MSS. there were even found verses expressing a compliment to Churchill’s talents. There is something, no doubt, very amiable in a good and candid man taking the trouble to cement rhymes upon the genius of a blackguard, who had abused him; but the effect of all this candor upon his own generation reminds us how much more important it is, for a man’s own advantage, that he should be formidable than harmless. His candour could not prevent his poetical character from being completely killed by Churchill. Justly, some will say; he was too stupid to resist his adversary. I have a different opinion, both as to the justice of his fate, and the cause of his abstaining from retaliation. He certainly wrote too many insipid things; but a tolerable selection might be made from his works, that would discover his talents to be no legitimate object of contempt; and there is not a trait of arrogance or vanity in any one of his compositions, that deserved to be publicly humiliated. He was not a satirist; but he wanted rather the gall than the ingenuity that is requisite for the character. If his heart had been full of spleen, he was not so wholly destitute of humour as not to have been able to deal some hard blows at Churchill, whose private character was a broad mark, and even whose writings had many vapid parts that were easily assailable. Had Whitehead done so, the world would probably have liked him the better for his pugnacity. As it was, his name sunk into such a by-word of contempt, that Garrick would not admit his “Trip to Scotland” on the stage, unless its author was concealed. He also found it convenient to publish his pleasing tale, entitled “Variety,” anonymously. The public applauded both his farce and his poem, because it was not known that they were Whitehead’s.

  He died April 14, 1785, at the age of seventy, and was buried in South Audley Street chapel.

  The boy showed his good sense by not being ashamed to win an education at the expense of his pride. Entering Cambridge as a sizar, he graduated with honours and was elected a fellow of his college. He then became tutor to the son of the Earl of Jersey. He travelled with him, and then settled down with him in his quiet, beautiful home, where many happy years were passed. Whitehead had leisure for literary studies, and he enjoyed not only the friendship and confidence of his employers, but formed many close connections with the nobility who treated him with respect and deference. Whitehead became very popular among his friends, winning their regard, and keeping it, too. His manners were not only polished, but were the outward expression of a sincere and kind heart. Though fond of society, he indulged in no dissipation. He visited the theatres frequently, and this finally led him to try his hand at dramatic writing, and his success was greater than he had himself anticipated.

General

  Mr. Whitehead has just published a pretty poem called “Variety,” in which there is humour and ingenuity, but not more poetry than is necessary for a Laureate; however, the plan is one, and is well wound up.

  He will be most advantageously known to posterity as a dramatic writer; his “Roman Father” and “Creusa,” tragedies, and his “School for Lovers” a comedy, possessing considerable merit.

  A play [“Creusa”] which, though seldom read, and never acted, is by no means destitute of dramatic feeling and conception…. The piece contains some strong situations; its language is unaffected; and it fixes the attention (if I may judge from my own experience) from the first to the last scene. The pure and holy character of the young Ilyssus is brought out, I have no hesitation to say, more interestingly than in Euripides, by the display of his reverential gratitude to the queen, upon the first tenderness which she shows him, and by the agony of his ingenuous spirit, on beholding it withdrawn. And, though Creusa’s character is not unspotted, she draws our sympathy to some of the deepest conceivable agonies of human nature. I by no means wish to deny that the tragedy has many defects, or to speak of it as a great production, but it does not deserve to be consigned to oblivion.

  The most accomplished tuft-hunter of his time…. The writings of Whitehead, Cambridge, Coventry, and Lord Bath are forgotten.

  He was the author of several successful plays—“The Roman Father,” “Creusa,” and “The School for Lovers;” and of miscellaneous poems, that have scarce any individualizing characteristics, but are in the manner of writers of the time of Queen Anne. On his return from travelling with noble pupils he published an “Ode to the Tiber” and six “Elegiac Epistles,” which were applauded at first, and in course of time neglected; the usual fate of poems produced by Talent apart from Genius: the Junonian offspring of a female parent alone. This “Ode to the Tiber” is an excellent specimen of such poetry as may be written by a clever man, on command, having everything that is to be desired, except a soul of its own; it reads like a first-rate school exercise, or such an exercise as might be produced in an adult School of Poetry.

  An elegant poet and a nervous writer.

  He wrote the usual official poems, which had the negative merit of being considered superior to those of his predecessor; and he was engaged in the composition of a birthday ode when he died…. Whitehead was more successful as a dramatist than as a poet…. As Laureate, Whitehead did not escape the usual fate of being lampooned by the envious wits, and small poets of his day.

  His poetry is for the most part tame and conventional enough; yet here and there he emerges from the ruck of Georgian poetasters and becomes noticeable. “Variety, a Tale for Married People,” which is too long for quotation, is an excellent story in verse—with a moral, of course, as a conte should have—told in a light and flowing style not unworthy of Gay.

  He was always fond of the theatre, and his first effort was a little farce which was never published, but which tempted him to compose heavy tragedies which were. Of these tragedies it would be absurd to speak; they never enjoyed any popularity, either on the stage or in the closet. He owed his appointment—which he did not obtain till Gray had refused it—entirely to his noble friends.

  Sprung from the ranks, he had the good fortune to secure the favour of the great, until he became tutor to Lord Jersey. Whitehead’s knowledge of books was considerable, and he became a man of cultured taste. Though he possessed little originality of thought, he had a musical ear, and found it comparatively easy to produce poetry of a certain order. He even indulged in writing dramas; but Macaulay, in his time, said his works were forgotten. He himself confessed that his verses would not bear criticism, and apologized for them by remarking that his muse would not be “obliged by sack and pension.” The fact is he was a metre-making machine.

  Whitehead was no poet. He simply reflected in a turbid fashion what more original men were saying. His tolerably full statement of the romantic attitude towards nature, with his subsequent assertion of the triumphant good sense of Classicism is, therefore, valuable testimony to the two-fold spirit of the age.

  At Cambridge, Whitehead had published his first more important poetic efforts, which showed him to have deliberately formed his style as a writer of verse upon Pope, at a time when English poetical literature was at last on the very point of widening its range as to both form and subjects. His epistle “On the Danger of writing in Verse” (1741) is elegant in versification and diction, and modest in tone—two merits which are rarely absent in Whitehead…. In form Whitehead’s versatility was remarkable.