WHITE
WHITTAKER
of the most distinguished of Americans,
Professor White s History of the Warfare
of Science with Theology in Christendom
(1876), with its stern and learned indict
ment of the Churches, was particularly
painful to the orthodox and proportionately
helpful to Rationalism. It was translated
into many languages. In his Autobiography
(1905) Professor White returns to the
subject. He is a Theist, and is anxious
for the purification, not destruction, of
Christianity ; but he entirely rejects its
dogmas, and apparently disbelieves in
personal immortality. In Seven Great
Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity
with Unreason (1910) he does not deal
specifically with the Rationalist contro
versy, but he incidentally reviews his
position. His other works are historical
and educational. He was for some years
an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist
Press Association. D. Nov. 4, 1918.
WHITE, William Hale ("Mark Ruther ford"), writer. B. 1830. He was educated for the Congregationalist ministry, but he developed Rationalist convictions, and was expelled from New College in 1851. He became a clerk in the Admiralty, and rose to the position of Assistant Director of Contracts. In his leisure he did a good deal of journalistic work, and in 1881 he attracted much attention by his Auto biography of Mark Rutherford, which was followed by Mark Rutherford s Deliverance (1885) and The Revolution in Tanner s Lane (1887). They form a prolonged auto biography in the form of pleasantly written fiction. Mr. White wrote (under the name of " Mark Rutherford ") further novels (Catherine Furze, 1893, etc.), and published a translation of Spinoza s Ethics (1883). He returned to a non-Christian Theism, and recovered his love of the Bible ; but, he says, " it has not solved any of the great problems which disturbed my peace." D. Mar. 14, 1913.
WHITMAN, Walt, American poet. B. May 31, 1819. Ed. public schools Brooklyn
887
and New York. Whitman was set to
manual work at an early age. He learned
carpentry and printing. At the age of
seventeen he became a teacher, and he
began to write for the press. In 1839 he
founded a weekly at Huntington, which he
edited and published. It failed, and he
returned to printing and journalism, and
then had several years of rambling. For
a year he edited the Brooklyn Eagle, and
he \vrote various novels. In 1850 he
started the Freeman, which at once failed,
and he spent the next three years at
manual labour. In 1855 appeared the
first edition of Leaves of Grass, the work
by which he lives. It was generally
ridiculed, though R. W. Emerson spoke of
it with high praise, declaring that it con
tained " incomparable things incomparably
said." Whitman served as an army nurse
in the Civil War (Drum Taps, 1865, and
Memoranda During the War, 1867), and, as
his health was severely strained, he was
given a clerkship in the Treasury Depart
ment of Washington (1865-73). In 1873
a slight paralytic stroke compelled him to
retire, and he spent the next twenty years
in lightly-borne poverty in his brother s
home. He wrote further volumes of prose
and verse (Democratic Vistas, 1870, etc.),
and his complete w^orks were issued in ten
volumes in 1902. But his most cherished
work w r as Leaves of Grass, which he
elaborated in successive editions. In
resonant and virile prose-poetry, which he
invented and many have feebly imitated,
he sang the virtues of the common man
and scorned conventions and superstitions.
Religion he generally disdains to notice,
though he has a beautiful apostrophe to
death as a final sleep and extinction. In
1881 the Massachusetts authorities pro
hibited the sale of Leaves of Grass ; but
the charge of " immorality " against Whit
man has too often been refuted to need
notice here. He has taken his place among
America s finest writers. D. Mar. 27, 1892.
WHITTAKER, Thomas, B.A., writer. B. Sep. 25, 1856. Ed. Dublin Royal