Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte. On witchcraft and insanity,
see Hack-Tuke, History of Insanity; O. Snell, Hexenprocesse und
Geistesstörung. For a discussion of the evidence for the real existence
of witchcraft, see E. Gurney, Phantasms of the Living, vol. i.; F.
Podmore, Modern Spiritualism, i. 13.
(N. W. T.)
WITCH-HAZEL, in botany, the common name for a North American shrub, Hamamelis virginica, known in gardens. The clusters of rich yellow flowers begin to expand in the autumn before the leaves fall and continue throughout the winter. The bark and leaves are astringent, and the seeds contain a quantity of oil and are edible. The name is derived from the use of the twigs as divining rods, just as hazel twigs were used in England.
Britten and Holland (Dictionary of English Plant Names, p. 247) quote three British plants under this name: (1) Wych elm (Ulmus montana), which, according to Parkinson (Theatr. 1403), was called “Witch hasell,” because the leaves are “like unto the leaves of the Hasell nut”; (2) Hornbeam (Carpinus Betulus), which, according to Gerard, was so called in some places from its likeness to the elm or “wich Hazell tree”; and (3) Mountain ash (Pyras Aucuparia).
WITCH OF AGNESI, in geometry, a cubic curve invented
by Maria Gaetana Agnesi. It is constructed by the following
method: Let AQB be a semicircle of diameter
AB, produce MQ the ordinate of Q to P so that
MQ : MP :: AM : AB. Then the locus of P is the
witch. The cartesian equation, if A be taken as
origin and AB ( = 2a) for the axis of x, is xy2 = 4а2(2а − х). The curve consists of one
branch entirely to the left of the line x = 2a and
having the axis of y as an asymptote.
WITHAM, an urban district in the Maldon parliamentary division of Essex, England, 39 m. N.E. by E. from London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 3454. It lies on the River Brain, an affluent of the Blackwater, also known as the Guith, a form connected with the name Witham. The church of St Nicholas is principally Decorated, but retains earlier portions. Roman bricks appear in its fabric, and premise a Roman station in the vicinity. Surrounding the church (which stands in a high lying portion of the town known as Chipping Hill) there are earthworks, possibly the remains of a fortification recorded as made by order of Edward the Elder in 913, but perhaps of British origin.
WITHER, GEORGE (1588-1667), English poet and satirist, son of George Wither, of Hampshire, was born at Bentworth, near Alton, on the 11th of June 1588. He was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford, at the age of fifteen, and remained at the university for two years. His neighbours appear to have had no great opinion of him, for they advised his father to put him to “some mechanic trade.” He was, however, sent to one of the Inns of Chancery, eventually obtaining an introduction at court. He wrote an elegy (1612) on the death of Prince Henry, and a volume of gratulatory poems (1613) on the marriage of the princess Elizabeth, but his uncompromising character soon prepared trouble for him. In 1611 he published Abuses Script and Whipt, twenty satires of general application directed against Revenge, Ambition, Lust and other abstractions. The volume included a poem called “The Scourge,” in which the lord chancellor was attacked, and a series of epigrams. No copy of this edition is known, and it was perhaps suppressed, but in 1613 five editions appeared, and the author was lodged in the Marshalsea prison. The influence of the Princess Elizabeth, supported by a loyal “Satyre” to the king, in which he hints that an enemy at court had fitted personal meanings to his general invective, secured his release at the end of a few months. He had figured as one of the interlocutors, “Roget,” in his friend William Browne's Shepherd's Pipe, with which were bound up eclogues by other poets, among them one by Wither, and during his imprisonment he wrote what may be regarded as a continuation of Browne's work, The Shepherd's Hunting (printed 1615), eclogues in which the two poets appear as “Willie” and “Roget” (in later editions “Philarete”). The fourth of these eclogues contains a famous passage in praise of poetry. After his release he was admitted (1615) to Lincoln's Inn, and in the same year he printed privately Fidelia, a love elegy, of which there is a unique copy in the Bodleian. Other editions of this book, which contained the lyric “Shall I, wasting in despair,” appeared in 1617 and 1619. In 1621 he returned to the satiric vein with Wither's Motto. Nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo. Over 30,000 copies of this poem were sold, according to his own account, within a few months. Like his earlier invective, it was said to be libellous, and Wither was again imprisoned, but shortly afterwards released without formal trial on the plea that the book had been duly licensed. In 1622 appeared his Faire-Virtue, The Mistresse of Phil' Arete, a long panegyric of a mistress, partly real, partly allegorical, written chiefly in the seven-syllables verse of which he was a master.
Wither began as a moderate in politics and religion, but from this time his Puritan leanings became more and more pronounced, and his later work consists of religious poetry, and of controversial and political tracts. His Hymnes and Songs of the Church (1622-1623) were issued under a patent of King James I. ordaining that they should be bound up with every copy of the authorized metrical psalms offered for sale (see Hymns). This patent was opposed, as inconsistent with their privilege to print the “singing-psalms,” by the Stationers' Company, to Wither's great mortification and loss, and a second similar patent was finally disallowed by the House of Lords. Wither was in London during the plague of 1625, and in 1628 published Britain's Remembrancer, a voluminous poem on the subject, interspersed with denunciations of the wickedness of the times, and prophecies of the disasters about to fall upon England. He also incidentally avenged Ben Jonson's satire on him as the “Chronomastix” of Time Vindicated, by a reference to Ben's “drunken conclave.” This book he was obliged to print with his own hand in consequence of his quarrel with the Stationers' Company. In 1635 he was employed by Henry Taunton, a London publisher, to write English verses illustrative of the allegorical plates of Crispin van Passe, originally designed for Gabriel Rollenhagen's Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum (1610-1613). The book was published as a Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, of which the only perfect copy known is in the British Museum.
The best of Wither's religious poetry is contained in Heleluiah: or Britain's Second Remembrancer, which was printed in Holland in 1641. Many of the poems rise to a high point of excellence. Besides those properly entitled to the designation of hymns, the book contains songs of singular beauty, especially the Cradlesong (“Sleep, baby, sleep, what ails my dear”), the Anniversary Marriage Song (“Lord, living here are we”), the Perambulation Song (“Lord, it hath pleased Thee to say”), the Song for Lovers (“Come, sweet heart, come, let us prove”), the Song for the Happily Married (“Since they in singing take delight”) and that for a Shepherd (“Renownèd men their herds to keep”)—(Nos. 50 in the first part, 17 and 24 in the second, and 20, 21 and 41 in the third). There is also in the second part a fine song (No. 59), full of historical as well as poetical interest, upon the evil times in which the poet lived, beginning—
“Now are the times, these are the days
Which will those men approve
Who take delight in honest ways
And pious courses love;
Now to the world it will appear
That innocence of heart
Will keep us far more free from fear
Than helmet, shield or dart.”
Wither wrote, generally, in a pure nervous English idiom, and preferred the reputation of “rusticity” (an epithet applied to him even by Baxter) to the tricks and artifices of poetical style which were then in favour. It may be partly on that account that he was better appreciated by posterity than by his contemporaries.
Wither had served as captain of horse in 1639 in the expedition of Charles I. against the Scottish Covenanters, and his religious rather than his political convictions must be accepted as the explanation of the fact that, three years after the Scottish expedition, at the outbreak of the Great Rebellion, he is found definitely siding with the parliament. He sold his estate to raise a troop of horse, and was placed by a parliamentary committee in command of Farnham Castle. After a few days' occupation he left the place undefended, and marched to London. His own
