Princess of Orange, and also painted the Princess Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark. Wissing was young and good-looking, and obtained a reputation for flattering ladies in their portraits. He is said to have taken by the hand those who had too pale a complexion, and to have danced them about the room until the colour came into their cheeks. His portraits of children were also much admired. He was specially employed by the Earl of Exeter, and while on a visit to him at Burghley House he died unexpectedly, on 10 Sept. 1687, in his thirty-second year. Wissing was buried in St. Martin's Church at Stamford, where a monument was erected to his memory. A large number of Wissing's portraits were engraved in mezzotint, and show greater charm than most of the works of his contemporaries. Matthew Prior [q. v.] wrote a poem ‘To the Countess Dowager of Devonshire on a Piece of Wiessen's [sic], whereon were all her Grandsons painted.’ His own portrait, by himself, was finely engraved in mezzotint by John Smith. In the National Portrait Gallery there are portraits by Wissing of Mary of Modena, Mary II, the Duke of Monmouth, Prince George of Denmark, John, lord Cutts, and the poet Earl of Rochester.
[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornum, with manuscript notes by G. Scharf; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; De Piles's Lives of the Painters; Catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery.]
WITCHELL, EDWIN (1823–1887), geologist, was born in June 1823, his father Edward Witchell of Nympsfield, Gloucestershire, being a yeoman of good standing. The boy showed an aptitude for study, and was placed at the age of thirteen in the office of a solicitor of Stroud, named Paris, to whom he was afterwards articled, and to whose practice he succeeded in 1847. Though fond of outdoor sports, and especially of hunting, Witchell gradually devoted more and more time to geology, perhaps incited thereto by George Julius Poulett Scrope [q. v.], M.P. for Stroud, for whom he acted as confidential agent for many years. From 1884 he suffered at times from angina pectoris, but he continued to work at his profession and at science till he died suddenly on a geological excursion at Swift's Hill, near Stroud, on 20 Aug. 1887.
He was elected F.G.S. in 1861, communicating papers to that society and to the ‘Proceedings’ of the Cotteswold Club (of which he was treasurer), about ten in all, and published a small book on the geology of Stroud (1882). He formed a good collection of fossils, which were often delineated by his own hand, and was an energetic promoter of science in his neighbourhood, where he won universal respect.
[Obituary notices in Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. vol. xlix. Proceedings, p. 44, in Geol. Mag. 1887, p. 479 (from the Stroud News), and Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers.]
WITHALS or WHITHALS, JOHN (fl. 1556), lexicographer, probably a schoolmaster, was author of an English-Latin vocabulary for children. The English words, with their Latin equivalents affixed, were classified under such headings as ‘skie,’ ‘four-footed beastes,’ ‘the partes of housinge,’ ‘clothinge and apparell,’ ‘instrumentes of musicke,’ and the like. A list of adjectives in alphabetical order is given at the end. The words reach a total of six thousand—a small number when compared with the nineteen thousand in Palsgrave's ‘Lesclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse’ (1530), an English-French dictionary, or with the twenty-six thousand in Richard Huloet's ‘Abecedarium Anglo-Latinum,’ 1552, or with the nine thousand in Peter Levins's English-Latin ‘Manipulus Vocabulorum’ (1570).
According to Herbert's edition of Ames's ‘Typographical Antiquities,’ the work was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde ‘in the late house of William Caxton’ about 1510, and was reissued in 1554 by Thomas Berthelet. No copies of these dates have been met with, and it seems doubtful if the book was sent to press before 1556. In that year the earliest edition now discoverable was published under the title: ‘A Short Dictionarie for Yonge Beginners, gathered of good authours, specially of Columell[a], Grapald[i] and Plini. Anno 1556.’ The colophon ran: ‘Thus endeth this Dictionarie very necessarie for children. Compiled by Jhon Whithals. Imprinted at London by Jhon Kington for Jhon Waley and Abraham Vele, 1556’ (4to, Brit. Mus.). The author claimed no personal acquaintance with his patron, Sir Thomas Chaloner the elder [q. v.], to whom the work was dedicated, but Chaloner was invited to aid in ‘the finishing of this little book’ ‘after the manner of Sir Thomas Elyote.’ The aim of the book was to ‘induce children to the Latin tongue’ and familiarise them in adult years ‘bothe in disputacion’ and familiar conversation with ‘the proper and naturall woord.’
Withals's ‘Short Dictionarie’ became a standard school book. After being reissued by Wykes in 1562 and 1568, it was reprinted for the first of many times by Thomas Purfoot in 1572 with an appendix of phrases by
