There has been a tendency in recent criticism to over-estimate the works of Joseph Wright. His portraits are frequently defective in drawing, and without quality or variety of handling, while their flesh tints are often hard, and unpleasant in their purple-grey shadows. He is seen at his best in his subjects of artificial light, of which the Orrery (1766), the property of the corporation of Derby, and the Air-pump (1768), in the National Gallery, are excellent examples. His Old Man and Death (1774) is also a strik ing and individual production. An exhibition of Wright’s works was brought together at Derby in 1883, and twelve of his pictures were shown in the winter exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1886. A careful and elaborate biography of the artist, by William Bemrose, was published in 1885.

WRIGHT, Silas (1795-1847), was born at Amherst, Massachusetts, May 24, 1795. He graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont, in 1815, was admitted to the bar in 1819, and began practice at Canton, in northern New York. From the first he showed those characteristics which finally made him a representative American Democratic leader. He had settled in what was almost a wilderness. His farm was a small one, and no hired labourer upon it worked harder than he. His manner of life was of the simplest. In his professional work he was a type of the lawyer of the old school,—shrewd, skilful, rigidly just, and controlled by the belief that his profession was a public trust, and that judicial qualities must mingle with those of the advocate. He seems never to have sought an office, and never to have felt at liberty to refuse one, even that of village postmaster, if he could possibly serve. He was appointed surrogate in 1820, and was elected successively to the State senate in 1823, to the house of representatives in 1827-29, comptroller of the State 1829-33, United States senator 1833-44, and governor of New York 1844-46. During his public life he had become a leader of the Democratic party of New York, Van Buren being his closest associate. When the national Democratic party in 1844 nominated and elected Polk to the presidency, instead of Van Buren, Wright and the State organization took an attitude of armed neutrality towards the new administration. Renominated for governor in 1846, Wright was defeated, and the result was ascribed to the hostility of the Polk administration. The death of the defeated candidate, at Canton, August 27, 1847, gave intense bitterness to New York politics for several years; and his faction, in 1848, succeeded in defeating their national party’s candidates in the presidential election.

Wright was one of a class of politicians which has influenced American development largely, finding its most characteristic types in the State of New York. It may be traced clearly from about 1820, beginning with what was then known as “the Albany Regency,” including Dix, Marcy, Wright, Seymour, Tilden, to Cleveland (president from 1885), and many of the new men who have come into the national administration with him. Absolutely and punctiliously honest, devoted to the public good, and believing intensely that the public good depended on the political principles of their party, they have been prone to consider politics as a warfare, and merciless exclusion of opponents from office as a legitimate war-weapon. One of their earliest leaders, Marcy, declared the rule of party struggle, that “the spoils (of office) belong to the victor”; the latest, President Cleveland, has been the first to recognize the merit system of appointment in practice, Tilden having already accepted it in theory. The sternness of Wright’s integrity in office was illustrated in 1845, when the “antirent troubles” broke out again, and it seemed probable that the votes of the disaffected would decide the coming election. The governor asked and obtained from the legislature the power to suppress the disturbance by armed force, ordered the militia into the disturbed district, arrested the offenders, had them tried, convicted, and punished, and put an end to what was really an insurrection. His defeat in 1846 was a transition from the old to the new phase of American politics; but his name is still the representative of all that was best in the old.

Wright’s Life has been written by Jenkins, who also has a sketch of him in his Governors of New York·, but the best biography of him is that of Hammond.

WRIGHT, Thomas (1810-1877), antiquary, was born at Ludlow, in Shropshire, 21st April 1810, and was descended from a Quaker family formerly living at Bradford, in λ orkshire. He was educated at the old grammar school at Ludlow, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1834. While at Cambridge he contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine and other periodicals, and in 1835 he came to London to devote himself to a literary career. His first separate work was Early English Poetry in Black Letter, with Prefaces and Notes, 1836, 4 vols. 12mo, which was followed during the next forty years by a very extensive series of publications, many of lasting value. He helped to found the British Archaeological Association and the Percy, Camden, and Shakespeare societies. In 1842 he was elected corresponding member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of Paris, and was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries as well as member of many other learned British and foreign bodies. In 1859 he superintended the excavations of the Roman city of Uriconium, near Shrewsbury, of which he issued a description. He died at Chelsea, 23d December 1877, in his sixty-seventh year. A portrait of him is in the Drawing Room Portrait Gallery for October 1, 1859. His fertility was remarkable, and the list of seventy-eight articles in Allibone’s Dictionary (1871, iii. pp. 2864-67) includes examples of almost every department of literature. He was a great scholar, but will be chiefly remembered as an industrious antiquary and the editor of many relics of the Middle Ages. In the British Museum catalogue are 121 references under his name.

His chief publications are— Queen Elizabeth and Her Times, a Series of Original Letters, 1838, 2 vols.; Reliquiae Antiquae, 1839- 43, again 1845, 2 vols., edited with Mr J. 0. Halliwell-Phillipps; W. Mapes’s Latin Poems, 1841, 4to, Camden Society; Political Ballads and Carols, published by the Percy Society, 1841; Popular Treatises on Science, 1841; History of Ludlow, 1841, &c., again 1852; Collection of Latin Stories, 1842, Percy Society; The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman, 1842, 2 vols., 2d ed. 1855; Bio- graphia Literaria, vol i., Anglo-Saxon Period, 1842, vol. ii., Anglo-Norman Period, 1846; The Chester Plays, 1843-47, 2 vols., Shakespeare Society; St Patrick's Purgatory, 1844; Anecdota Literaria, 1844; Archaeological Album, 1845, 4to; Essays connected with England in the Middle Ages, 1846, 2 vols.; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, 1847-51, Percy Society, a new text with notes, reprinted in 1 vol., 1853 and 1867; Early Travels in Palestine, 1848, Bohn’s Antiq. Lib.; England under the House of Hanover, 1848, 2 vols., several editions, reproduced in 1868 as Caricature History of the Georges ; Mapes, Be Nugis Curialium, 1850, 4to, Camden Society; Geoffrey Gaimar’s Metrical Chronicle, 1850, Caxton Society; Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, 1851, 2 vols.; The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, 1852, 4th ed. 1885; History of Fulke Fitz JVarine, 1855; Jo. de Garlandia, Be Triumphis Eeclesiae, 1856, 4to, Roxburghe Club; Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, 1857; A Volume of Vocabularies, 1857, 2d ed. by R. P. Wülcker, 1884, 2 vols.; Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, Paris, 1858, 2 vols.; Malory’s History of King Arthur, 1858, 2 vols., revised 1865; Political Poems and Songs from Edward III. to Richard HL, 1859-61, 2 vols., Rolls Series; Songs and Ballads of the Reign of Philip and Mary, 1860, 4to, Roxburghe Club; Essays on Archaeological Subjects, 1861, 2 vols.; Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England in the Middle Ayes, 1862, 4to, reproduced in 1871 as The Homes of other Bays·, Roll of Arms of Edward I., 1864, 4to; Autobiography of Thomas Wright (1736-97), his grandfather, 1864; History of Caricature, 1865, 4to; Womankind in Western Europe, 1869, 4to; Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of 12th Cent., 1872, 2 vols., Rolls Series.