Wakefield, GILBERT

Wakefield, GILBERT, divine, was born at Nottingham, 22d February 1756, and had his education at Jesus College, Cambridge, of which he became fellow. He took orders, but renounced the Anglican communion, laboured as classical tutor in dissenting academies at Warrington and Hackney, lay two years in Dorchester gaol for a so-called seditious libel in answer to Bishop Watson, for which his political friends consoled him with a gift of £5000, and died in London, 9th September 1801. He published editions of Bion and Moschus, Virgil, Horace, and Lucretius; Christian writers of the three first centuries on the Person of Christ (1784), left unfinished; Inquiry into the expediency and propriety of social worship (1791), the necessity for which he denied; An Examination of Paine's Age of Reason (1794); and Silva Critica, a collection intended to illustrate the Scriptures from the stores of profane learning (1789-95). His learning was wide, if nowhere profound or exact; but his warmth of temper proved a great source of weakness to him as a controversialist. After leaving the Church of England he never attached himself to any other religious society, although practically a Unitarian. In his Diary, H. C. Robinson says of him: 'He had the pale complexion and mild features of a saint, was a most gentle creature in domestic life, and a very amiable man; but when he took part in political or religious controversy his pen was dipped in gall.' His own Memoirs (1792) are uninteresting; not so his Correspondence with Fox (1813).