WHITNEY, WILLIAM DWIGHT (1827-1894).—­Philologist, b. at Northampton, Mass., was Prof. of Sanskrit, etc., at Yale, and chief ed. of the Century Dictionary.  Among his books are Darwinism and Language and The Life and Growth of Language.

WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF (1807-1892).—­Poet, was b. at Haverhill, Massachusetts, of a Quaker family.  In early life he worked on a farm.  His later years were occupied partly in journalism, partly in farming, and he seems also to have done a good deal of local political work.  He began to write verse at a very early age, and continued to do so until almost his latest days.  He was always a champion of the anti-slavery cause, and by his writings both as journalist and poet, did much to stimulate national feeling in the direction of freedom.  Among his poetical works are Voices of Freedom (1836), Songs of Labour (1851), Home Ballads (1859), In War Time (1863), Snow Bound (1866), The Tent on the Beach (1867), Ballads of New England (1870), The Pennsylvania Pilgrim (1874).  W. had true feeling and was animated by high ideals.  Influenced in early life by the poems of Burns, he became a poet of nature, with which his early upbringing brought him into close and sympathetic contact; he was also a poet of faith and the ideal life and of liberty.  He, however, lacked concentration and intensity, and his want of early education made him often loose in expression and faulty in form; and probably a comparatively small portion of what he wrote will live.

WHYTE-MELVILLE, GEORGE JOHN (1821-1878).—­Novelist, s. of a country gentleman of Fife, ed. at Eton, entered the army, and saw service in the Crimea, retiring in 1859 as Major.  Thereafter he devoted himself to field sports, in which he was an acknowledged authority, and to literature.  He wrote a number of novels, mainly founded on sporting subjects, though a few were historical.  They include Kate Coventry, The Queen’s Maries, The Gladiators, and Satanella.  He also wrote Songs and Verses and The True Cross, a religious poem.  He d. from an accident in the hunting-field.

WICLIF, or WYCLIF, JOHN (1320?-1384).—­Theologian and translator of the Bible, b. near Richmond, Yorkshire, studied at Balliol Coll., Oxf., of which he became in 1361 master, and taking orders, became Vicar of Fillingham, Lincolnshire, when he resigned his mastership, and in 1361 Prebendary of Westbury.  By this time he had written a treatise on logic, and had won some position as a man of learning.  In 1372 he took the degree of Doctor of Theology, and became Canon of Lincoln, and in 1374 was sent to Bruges as one of a commission to treat with Papal delegates as to certain ecclesiastical matters in dispute, and in the same year he became Rector of Lutterworth, where he remained until his death.  His liberal