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Wolfe
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Wolfe

London, although he was not formally appointed to the office till 1595, when he succeeded Singleton. He was admitted into the livery of the Stationers' Company on 1 July 1598 (Arber, ii. 872). He frequently changed his residence. In 1588 he left Distaff Lane and took up his quarters in the Stationers' Hall. In 1589 he opened ‘a little shop’ in St. Paul's Churchyard, ‘over against the great south door.’ In 1592 he rented for a time a shop in Paul's Chain, and from 1596 until his death his shop was in Pope's Head Alley, Lombard Street, near the Royal Exchange. He died before 6 April 1601, when his shop passed to William Ferbrand, and his press to Adam Islip. He left a widow Alice, who was engaged in the trade till 1613.

[Ames's Typogr. Antiq. ed. Dibdin; A Bibliography of Printing, ed. Bigmore and Wyman, 1886, vol. iii.; Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Arber's Transcript of the Stationers' Company's Registers; Brit. Mus. Cat. of Books before 1640.]

S. L.

WOLFE, alias Lacey, WILLIAM (1584–1673), jesuit. [See Lacey.]

WOLFF, JOSEPH (1795–1862), missionary, the son of a Jewish rabbi of the tribe of Levi named David, by his wife Sarah, daughter of Isaac Lipchowitz of Bretzfeld, was born at Weilersbach, near Forchheim and Bamberg, in 1795. He originally bore, according to oriental custom, the single name of Wolff, conferred in circumcision, but on baptism he took the christian name of Joseph, and Wolff became his surname. In the year of his birth Wolff's father removed to Kissingen to avoid the French, in 1796 he proceeded to Halle, and in 1802 again removed to Ullfeld in Bavaria. When he was eleven his father became rabbi at Württemberg, and sent him to the protestant lyceum at Stuttgart, whence he afterwards removed to Bamberg. While still a youth he learnt Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Leaving home on account of Christian sympathies, after many wanderings he was converted to Christianity in part through perusing the writings of Johann Michael von Sailer, bishop of Regensburg, and he was baptised on 13 Sept. 1812 by Leopold Zolda, abbot of the Benedictines of Emaus, near Prague. In 1813 he commenced to study Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldæan, and in that and the following year he attended theological lectures in Vienna, where he was intimate with Professor Johannes Jahn, the oriental scholar; Friedrich von Schlegel; Theodor Körner; the poet Werner; and Clement Maria Hoffbauer, the general of the Redemptorists. After visiting the great Friedrich Leopold, count of Stolberg, at his palace at Tatenhausen, near Bielefeld in Ravensberg, he entered the university at Tübingen in 1815, and by the liberality of Prince Dalberg he was enabled to study the oriental languages and theology for nearly two years. He devoted himself chiefly to the oriental languages, particularly Arabic and Persian, but he also acquired a knowledge of ecclesiastical history and biblical exegesis under Professors Steudel, Schnurrer, and Flatt. In 1816 he left Germany, visited Zschokke, Madame la Baronne de Krudener, and Pestalozzi in Switzerland, and spent some months with the Prussian ambassador, Count Waldbourg-Truchsess, and Madame de Stael-Holstein at Turin. He arrived in Rome in the same year, and was introduced to Pius VII by the Prussian ambassador. He was received on 5 Sept. 1816 as a pupil of the Collegio Romano and afterwards of the Collegio di Propaganda, but about two years later, having publicly attacked the doctrine of infallibility and assailed the teaching of the professors, he was expelled from the city for erroneous opinions.

After a visit to Vienna he entered the monastery of the Redemptorists at Val Sainte, near Fribourg; but, disliking the system of the monastery, he shortly after came to London to visit Henry Drummond [q. v.], whose acquaintance he had made at Rome. He soon declared himself a member of the church of England, and at Cambridge resumed his study of oriental languages under Samuel Lee (1783–1852) [q. v.] and of theology under Charles Simeon [q. v.] He resolved to visit eastern lands to prepare the way for missionary enterprises among the Jews, Mohammedans, and Christians who inhabited them, and commenced his extraordinary nomadic career in oriental countries. Between 1821 and 1826 he travelled as a missionary in Egypt and the Sinaitic peninsula, and, proceeding to Jerusalem, was the first modern missionary to preach to the Jews there. He afterwards went to Aleppo, and sent Greek boys from Cyprus to be educated in England. He continued his travels in Mesopotamia, Persia, Tiflis, and the Crimea, returning to England through European Turkey. While in England he met Edward Irving [q. v.], through whom he made the acquaintance of his first wife. About 1828 Wolff commenced another expedition in search of the lost ten tribes. After suffering shipwreck at Cephalonia and being succoured by Sir Charles James Napier [q. v.], whose friendship he preserved through life, he went to Jerusalem, Alexandria, Anatolia, Con-