to the very small amount of information which has come down to us regarding the gods of ancient England and Germany, it cannot be determined how far the character and adventures attributed to Odin in Scandinavian mythology were known to other Teutonic peoples. It is clear, however, that the god was credited with special skill in magic, both in England and Germany, while the story of the Langobardic migration (see Lombards) represents him as the dispenser of victory. From Woden also most of the anglo-Saxon royal families traced their descent. By the Romans he was identified at an early date with Mercurius, whence our name "Wednesday" (Woden's day) as a translation of dies Mercurii. Tacitus states that the ancient Germans worshipped Mercurius more than any other god, and that they offered him human sacrifices. Many scholars connect the origin of the deity with the popular German and Swedish belief in a raging host (in Germany called das wütende Heer or Wutes Heer, but in Sweden Odens Jagt), which passes through the forests on stormy nights. There is evidence, however, that deities similar to Woden were known to some of the ancient peoples of central Europe, e.g. the Gauls and Thracians. See Teutonic Peoples, ad fin. (H.M.C.)
WODROW, ROBERT (1679-1754), Scottish historian, was born at Glasgow, being a son of James Wodrow, professor of divinity. He was educated at the university and was librarian from 1697 to 1701. From 1703 till his death, on the 21st of March 1734, he was parish minister at Eastwood, near Glasgow. He had sixteen children, his son Patrick being the "auld Wodrow" of Burns's poem "Twa Herds." His great work, The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution, was published in two volumes in 1721-1722 (new ed. with a life of Wodrow by Robert Burns, D.D., 1807-1808). Wodrow also wrote a Life (1828) of his father. He left two other works in MS.—Memoirs of Reformers and Ministers of the Church of Scotland, and Analecta: or Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences, mostly relating to Scotch Ministers and Christians. Of the former, two volumes were published by the Maitland Club in 1834-1845 and one volume by the New Spalding Club in 1890; the latter was published in four volumes by the Maitland Club in 1842-1843.
Wodrow left a great mass of correspondence, three volumes of which, edited by T. M'Crie, appeared in 1843-1844. The Wodrow Society, founded in Edinburgh to perpetuate his memory, was in existence from 1841 to 1847, several works being published under its auspices.
WOELFL, JOSEPH (1772-1812), Austrian pianist and composer, was born in 1772 at Salzburg, where he studied music under Leopold Mozart and Michael Haydn. After a short residence at Warsaw he produced his first opera, Der Höllenberg, with some success at Vienna, where it was soon followed by Das schöne Milchmädchen and some other dramatic pieces. His fame now rests upon his compositions for the pianoforte, and the skill with which he is said to have met their formidable demands upon his power as an executant. The perfection of his technique was immeasurably enhanced by the enormous stretch of his fingers (his hand could strike a thirteenth with case); and to his wide grasp of the keyboard he owed a facility of execution which he turned to excellent account, especially in his extempore performances. His technique was superior even to that of the young Beethoven, who played in company with him at the house of Count Wetzlar, and in memory of this exhibition of good-humoured rivalry he dedicated to Beethoven his "Three Sonatas," Op. 6. Quitting Vienna in 1798, he exhibited his skill in most of the great European capitals, and, after spending some years in Paris, made his first appearance in London on the 27th of May 1805. Here he enjoyed a long term of popularity, crowned about 1808 by the publication of his sonata, Op. 41, containing some variations on "Life let us cherish." This, on account of its technical difficulty, he entitled Non Plus Ultra; and, in reply to the challenge, Dussek's London publishers reprinted a sonata by that composer, originally called Le Retour à Paris, with the title Plus Ultra, and an ironical dedication to Non Plus Ultra. Woelfl died in Great Marylebone. Street, London, on the 21st of May 1812.
WOFFINGTON, MARGARET (Peg) (c. 1714-1760), English actress, was born at Dublin, of poor parents. As a child of ten she played Polly Peachum in a lilliputian presentation of The Beggar's Opera, and danced and acted at various Dublin theatres until 1740, when her success as Sir Harry Wildair in The Constant Couple secured her a London engagement. In this, and as Sylvia in The Recruiting Officer, she had a pronounced success; and at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, as well as in Dublin, she appeared in all the plays of the day to ever growing popularity. Among her best impersonations were the elegant women of fashion, like Lady Betty Modish and Lady Townley, and in "breeches parts" she was unapproachable. She lived openly with Garrick, and her other love affairs were numerous and notorious, but her generosity and kindness of heart were equally well known. She educated her sister Mary, and cared for and pensioned her mother. She built and endowed by will some almshouses at Teddington, where she lived quietly after her retirement in 1757.
See Austin Dobson's introduction to Charles Reade's novel Peg Woffington (London, 1899), and Augustin Daly's Woffington: a Tribute to the Actress and the Woman (1888).
WÖHLER, FRIEDRICH (1800-1882), German chemist, was born at Eschersheim, near Frankfort-on-the-Main, on the 31st of July 1800. In 1814 he began to attend the gymnasium at Frankfort, where he carried out experiments with his friend Dr J. J. C. Buch. In 1820 he entered Marburg University, and next year removed to Heidelberg, where he worked in Leopold Gmelin's laboratory. Intending to practise as a physician, he took his degree in medicine and surgery (1823), but was persuaded by Gmelin to devote himself to chemistry. He studied in Berzelius's laboratory at Stockholm, and there began a lifelong friendship with the Swedish chemist. On his return he had proposed to settle as a Privatdozent at Heidelberg, but accepted the post of teacher of chemistry in the newly established technical school (Gewerbeschule) in Berlin (1825), where he remained till 1831. Private affairs then called him to Cassel, where he soon became professor at the higher technical school. In 1836 he was appointed to the chair of chemistry in the medical faculty at Göttingen, holding also the office of inspector-general of pharmacies in the kingdom of Hanover. This professorship he held until his death on the 23rd of September 1882.
Wöhler had made the acquaintance of Liebig, his junior by three years, in 1825, and the two men remained close friends and allies for the rest of their lives. Together they carried out a number of joint researches. One of the earliest, if not the earliest, was the investigation, published in 1830, which proved the polymerism of cyanic and cyanuric acid, but the most famous were those on the oil of bitter almonds (benzaldehyde) and the radicle benzoyl (1832), and on uric acid (1837), which are of fundamental importance in the history of organic chemistry. But it was the achievement of Wöhler alone, in 1828, to break down the barrier held to exist between organic and inorganic chemistry by artificially preparing urea, one of those substances which up to that time it had been thought could only be produced through the agency of "vital force." Most of his work, however, lay in the domain of inorganic chemistry. The isolation of the elementary bodies and the investigation of their properties was one of his favourite pursuits. In 1827 he obtained metallic aluminium as a fine powder, and in 1845 improved methods enabled him to get it in fully metallic globules. Nine years afterwards H. É. Sainte-Claire Deville, ignorant of what he had done, adopted the same methods in his efforts to prepare the metal on an industrial scale; the result of Wöhler's claim of priority was that the two became good friends and joined in a research, published in 1856-1857, which yielded "adamantine boron." By the same method as had succeeded with aluminium (reduction of the chloride by potassium) Wöhler in 1828 obtained metallic beryllium and yttrium. Later, in 1849, titanium engaged his attention, and, proving that what had up to that time passed as the metal was really a cyanonitride, he showed how the true metal was to be obtained. He also worked at the nitrides, and in 1857 with H. Buff carried out an inquiry on the compounds of silicon in which they prepared the previously unknown gas, silicon hydride or silicuretted hydrogen. A problem to which he returned repeatedly was that of separating nickel and cobalt from their ores and freeing them from arsenic; and in the course of his long laboratory practice he worked out numerous processes for the preparation of pure chemicals and methods of exact analysis.
The Royal Society's Catalogue enumerates 276 separate memoirs written by him, apart from 43 in which he collaborated with others.
