WADE, TnomAs (1805-75). An English poet. horn at Woodbridge, in Suffolk. He went to Lon don al an early age with a competence, and began to publish remarkable verse under the inspira tion of Shelley and Keats, Ile met with some success in the acting drama; but he eventually turned to journalism, becoming editor and part proprietor of Bell's teckly Messenger. After losing much by this undertaking, he retired to the Isle of Jersey, where he edited the British Press, and continued to write verse until his death. Wade's first volume of poems, Tasso and the Sisters (1825), displaying rare imaginative qualities, especially in the piece called "The Nuptials of Juno," was followed by a collection strangely called Ifundi et Gordis, de Rebus Seim piternis ct Temporariis. Carmina (1835). and re markable verse pamphlets: The Contention of Death and Lore (1837), Helena (1837). The (1837). and Prothanasia and Other Poems (1339). In the meantime, he had
written for the stage Woman's Lore (Covent Garden Theatre, 182S), The Phrenologists, a farce (Covent Garden, 1830), and The Jew of Arragon (Covent Garden, 1830). The latter was damned owing to its exaltation of the Jew. Of two other dramas written at this period, Effrida is lost, and King Henry IL exists only in manu script. The manuscript of a series of sonnets in spired by his wife is in the possession of Buxton Forman; and likewise a translation (made in 1845-46) of Dante's Inferno in the original metre. Consult: Niles (ed.), I'oets and. Poetry of the Century, vol. iii. (London, 1S96), which contains an estimate by Forman; Nicoll and Wise (e41.), Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century, vol. i. (London, 1895), which contains a speci men of the Dante, fifty sonnets, and the first two verse pamphlets cited above.