WITHER, GEORGE (1588-1667), English poet and satir ist, son of George Wither, of Hampshire, was born at Bentworth, near Alton, on June II, 1588. He was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford, at the age of fifteen, and then entered one of the Inns of Chancery, eventually obtaining an introduction at court. He wrote an elegy (1612) on the death of Prince Henry, and a vol ume of gratulatory poems (1613) on the marriage of the princess Elizabeth, but his uncompromising character soon prepared trouble for him. In 1611 he published Abuses Stript and Whipt, twenty satires of general application directed against Revenge, Ambition, Lust and other abstractions. In 1613 five editions appeared, and the author was lodged in the Marshalsea prison. The influence of the Princess Elizabeth, supported by a loyal "Satyre" to the king, secured his release at the end of a few months. He had figured as one of the interlocutors, "Roget," in his friend William Browne's Shepherd's Pipe, with which were bound up eclogues by other poets, among them one by Wither, and during his imprisonment he wrote what may be regarded as a continuation of Browne's work, The Shepherd's Hunting (print ed 1615), eclogues in which the two poets appear as "Willie" and "Roget" (in later editions "Philarete"). The fourth of these eclogues contains a famous passage in praise of poetry. After his release he was admitted (1615) to Lincoln's Inn, and in the same year he printed privately Fidelia, a love elegy, of which there is a unique copy in the Bodleian. Other editions of this book, which contained the lyric "Shall I, wasting in despair," appeared in 1617 and 1619. In 1621 he returned to the satiric vein with Wither's Motto. Nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo. Over 30,00o copies of this poem were sold, according to his own ac count, within a few months. Like his earlier invective, it was said to be libellous, and Wither was again imprisoned, but shortly afterwards released without formal trial on the plea that the book had been duly licensed. In 1622 appeared his Faire-Virtue, The Mistress of Phil' Arete.
Wither began as a moderate in politics and religion, but from this time his Puritan leanings became more and more pronounced, and his later work consists of religious poetry, and of controversial and political tracts. His Hymnes and Songs of the Church (I622 1623) were issued under a patent (later disallowed) of King James I. ordaining that they should be bound up with every copy of the authorized metrical psalms offered for sale. (See HYMNS.) Wither was in London during the plague of 1625, and in 1628 published Britain's Remembrancer, a voluminous poem on the subject, which he had to print with his own hand in consequence of his quarrel with the Stationers' Company. In 1635 he was employed by Henry Taunton, a London publisher, to write Eng lish verses illustrative of the allegorical plates of Crispin van Passe, originally designed for Gabriel Rollenhagen's Nucleus em blematum selectissimorum (1610-1613). The book was published
as a Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Modern, of which the only perfect copy known is in the British Museum. The best of Wither's religious poetry is contained in Heleluiah: or Britain's Second Remembrancer, printed in Holland in 1641. Besides hymns proper, the book contains songs of singular beauty, espe cially the Cradle-song ("Sleep, baby, sleep, what ails my dear").
Wither had served as captain of horse in 1639 in the expedi tion of Charles I. against the Scottish Covenanters, but three years after the Scottish expedition, at the outbreak of the Great Rebellion, he is found definitely siding with the parliament. He sold his estate to raise a troop of horse, and was placed by a parliamentary committee in command of Farnham Castle. After a few days' occupation he left the place undefended, and marched to London. His own house near Farnham was plundered, and he himself was captured by a troop of Royalist horse, owing his life to the intervention of Sir John Denham on the ground that so long as Wither lived he himself could not be accounted the worst poet in England. After this episode he was promoted to the rank of major. He was present at the siege of Gloucester (1643) and at Naseby He had been deprived in 5643 of his nominal command, and of his commission as justice of the peace, in consequence of an attack upon Sir Richard Onslow, who was, he maintained, responsible for the Farnham disaster. In the same year parliament made him a grant of £2,000 for the loss of his property, but he apparently never received the full amount. An order was made to settle a yearly income of LI5o on Wither, chargeable on Sir John Denham's sequestrated estate, but there is no evidence that he ever received it. A small place given him by the Protector was forfeited "by declaring unto him (Cromwell) those truths which he was not willing to hear of." At the Restor ation he was arrested, and remained in prison for three years. He died in London on May 2, 1667.
His extant writings, catalogued in Park's British Bibliographer, number over a hundred. Sir S. E. Brydges published The Shepherd's Hunting (1814), Fidelia (1815) and Fair Virtue (1818), and a selection appeared in Stanford's Works of the British Poets, vol. v. (1819). Most of Wither's works were edited in twenty volumes for the Spenser Society (1871-1882) ; a selection was included by Henry Morley in his Companion Poets (1891) ; Fidelia and Fair Virtue are included in Edward Arber's English Garner (vol. iv., 1882 ; vol. vi. 1883), and an excellent edition of The Poetry of George Wither was edited by F. Sidgwick in 5902.