Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/51

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Wordsworth
27
Worgan

Dowden, and the Oxford miniature edition in 5 vols. 24mo, 1895, edited by Mr. T. Hutchinson. The text of the last two editions is remarkably correct. ‘Poetical and Prose Works, together with Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals,’ 1896, edited by Professor Knight. The life and letters promised for this edition have not yet been published. Miss Fenwick's notes, partly given in the ‘Memoir,’ were first added to the poems in a six-volume edition, published by Moxon in 1857. A volume of ‘Selections’ was published with preface by J. Hine in 1831, and again in 1834. The ‘Sonnets’ were collected (with some additions) in 1838. Other ‘Selections’ are edited by F. T. Palgrave, 1865, Matthew Arnold, 1879, and by Professor Knight and other members of the Wordsworth Society, 1888. The prose works, in 3 vols. 8vo, were edited by Dr. Grosart in 1876.

Professor Dowden's ‘Bibliography and Chronological List’ appears in vol. vii. of his edition of ‘Wordsworth's Poetical Works.’ There is also a bibliography in Professor Knight's 1882−6 edition (vol. i. pp. xxxix−xlvii), and a chronological table in the same volume, revised and corrected in vol. viii. pp. 325−87. A revision of the bibliography and chronological table appears in the edition of 1896, vol. viii. Mr. J. R. Tutin contributed a bibliography to the edition of 1886, and has also published a ‘Wordsworth Dictionary of Persons and Places …,’ 1891, 8vo. For some interesting details in regard to the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ see ‘A Description of the Wordsworth and Coleridge Manuscripts in the possession of Mr. T. Norton Longman, edited with notes by W. Hale White,’ 1897.

[The Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by Christopher Wordsworth (afterwards bishop of Lincoln), his nephew, 1851, 2 vols. 8vo, gives a useful though not very full narrative. The life by Professor Knight, in 3 vols. 8vo (1889), forms the ninth, tenth, and eleventh volumes of the Poetical Works, &c., and adds a considerable number of letters and other materials. The short life by Mr. F. W. Myers in the ‘Men of Letters’ series is an admirable summary and criticism. See also ‘William Wordsworth,’ by Elizabeth Wordsworth, 1891. La jeunesse de Wordsworth, par Emile Legouis, 1896, is a singularly interesting and careful study of the early life. An English translation by J. W. Matthews appeared in 1898. William Wordsworth: sein Leben, seine Werke, seine Zeitgenossen, von Marie Gothein, 1893, 2 vols., is painstaking and sympathetic. The second volume consists of translations into German. Other books of original materials are: Cottle's Early Recollections, 1837 (republished with alterations as Reminiscences, 1847); Coleridge's Biographia Literaria; Letters of S. T. Coleridge, 1893; Letters of the Lake Poets (privately printed in 1889), pp. 329−86 for Wordsworth's letters; Memorials of Coleorton, 1887, 2 vols. edited by Professor Knight; Mrs. Sandford's Thomas Poole, 1888, i. 225, 238, 241, 298, ii. 54, 58, 120, 269, &c.; Lamb's Letters; Southey's Life and Letters and Select Correspondence; Lockhart's Life of Scott; De Quincey's Wordsworth in ‘Lake Poets;’ Moore's Diaries; Crabb Robinson's Diaries, passim; Campbell's Life of Coleridge; Clayden's Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries, 1889, 2 vols. many references); Carlyle's Reminiscences; Martineau's Autobiography, 1877, ii. 234−44; Haydon's Correspondence and Table Talk, ii. 18−59 (letters); Tom Taylor's Life of Haydon, i. 135, 297, 325, 384, ii. 11, iii. 218, 223, 302, 305; Keats's Works (Buxton Forman), iii. 45, 92, 101, 107, 151−5; Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, 1860, pp. 247−9; Pattison's The Brothers Wiffen, 1880, pp. 32−42; Life of Alaric Watts, 1884. i. 234−47, 281−8; Gillies's Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, 1851, ii. 137−73; Mrs. (Eliza) Fletcher's Autobiography, 1874, pp. 213, &c.; Sir Henry Taylor's Autobiography, i. 172−82, 190, 333−9, ii. 54−62; Yarnall's Wordsworth and the Coleridges, 1899; Fields's Yesterdays with Authors. The Wordsworth Society published eight volumes of Transactions (1880, &c.), which contain some letters and notes upon various details. A life of Dorothy Wordsworth by Edmund Lee appeared in 1886. The writer has especially to thank Mr. W. Hale White for many suggestions and corrections.]

L. S.

WORGAN, JOHN (1724−1790), organist and composer, of Welsh descent, and the son of a surveyor, was born in London in 1724. He became a pupil of his brother, James Worgan (1715−1753), organist of Vauxhall Gardens, and he subsequently studied under Thomas Roseingrave [see under Roseingrave, Daniel] and Geminiani. John Worgan speedily took a foremost place as a skilful organist. In succession to his brother James he was organist at St. Mary Undershaft with St. Mary Axe, about 1749, at Vauxhall Gardens, 1751 to 1774, and at St. Botolph, Aldgate, in 1753. He subsequently became organist of St. John's Chapel, Bedford Row, in 1760; and, in succession to his brother, he held the post of ‘composer’ to Vauxhall Gardens from 1753 to 1761, and again from 1770 to 1774. He took the degree of bachelor in music at Cambridge in 1748, and the doctorate in 1775. He died at 22 (now 65) Gower Street on 24 Aug. 1790, and was buried in St. Andrew Undershaft on 31 Aug., when Charles Wesley (1757−1834) [q. v.], one of his favourite pupils, presided at the organ.

Four interesting tributes are extant to the remarkable powers of Worgan as an organist, whose performances always attracted great crowds of both professors and amateurs