John Whiston

“ It does not, however, contain any account of the proceedings taken against him at Cambridge, these having been published separately at the time.
Whiston is a striking example of the association of an entirely paradoxical bent of mind with proficiency in the exact sciences. He also illustrates the possibility of arriving at rationalistic conclusions in theology without the slightest tincture of the rationalistic temper. ”

“ It has not affected vulgar minds so much as it has dazzled the eyes of the learned, because they are more easily deceived by the glare of erudition, and the power of novel ideas. Mr. Whiston was a celebrated astronomer, in the constant habit of considering the heavens, observing the stars, and contemplating the wonderful course of nature; he could never persuade himself that this small grain of sand, this Earth which we inhabit, occupied more the attention of the Creator than the universe, the vast extent of which [119] contains millions of other Suns and Earths. ”

“ The old man seemed but slightly interested in the matter, and Reginald saw that no interference need be feared from him. On further consulting the parish register, he found recorded the marriage of Thomas Whiston and Sarah Wilkins, and a year later, the baptism of Wilkins, son of Thomas and Sarah Whiston, in 1856.
"So it is as I hoped, the child is one of [Pg 64] the Flock," the curate said to himself. "And that mite of a boy is thirteen years old!" ”

“ If the autobiography be slightly deficient on the side of sentiment, we may console ourselves by admitting that some of the descriptions of the actors of the time would not disgrace Charles Lamb. Would we find another variety of innocent and excessive vanity? Take up the memoirs—unfortunately fragmentary—of one whose long life ran side by side with Cibber's for some eighty-two years, though in oddly different surroundings,—Swift's 'wicked Will Whiston,' so called because so transparently guileless and well-meaning that even bigots could only smile at his absurdities. ”

“ Braver men the world has not known. Beside him, differing in creed, but united with him in works of love and charity, sat Thomas Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends, fresh from his farm in Lancaster County, dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form surmounted by a shock of unkempt hair, the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting strongly with he clearness and directness of his spiritual insight. ”

“ Such a good influence for Mr. Whetstone! So fortunate! He was now known to be a strictly well behaved young man; what a pity nobody had a daughter old enough for him! Marriage was just what he needed, and he would make such a good husband! His hair grew so nicely over his ears, and had you ever noticed his eyelashes? Would it do to ask Mrs. Frankish or Verbena if they really were shooting quail? Or could it be something about the stage? Had the patrol really been drawn from the road? ”

“ The interpolation marked by a parenthesis is Whiston's, who proceeds:— [299]
"The Church of England allows their very bishops to be twice—nay thrice—nay even four times married without any impediment to their episcopal functions, whereas the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople would not admit the Emperor Leo, a layman, into the church, because he had married a fourth wife."
Whiston, though a "fanciful man," as Burnet calls him, was well read in Christian antiquity, and his opinion is therefore of some weight. Wall's authority no one would willingly undervalue. ”

“ MARMADUKE MEETS MRS. VYNER.
Everybody was at Dr. Whiston's, as the phrase goes, on one of his Saturday evenings. Dr. Whiston was a scientific man, whose great reputation was founded upon what his friends thought him capable of doing, rather than upon anything he had actually done. He was rich, and knew "everybody." His Saturday evenings formed an integral part of London society. They were an institution. No one who pretended to any acquaintance with the aristocracy of science, or with the scientific members of the aristocracy, could dispense with being invited to Dr. Whiston's. ”

“ It was Weston, the steward, who spoke.
“I wish you’d come and look at Jackson, sir,” he said. “The poor chap wore all right when Mr O’Neil comed down jist now, and a sleepin’ still as when you seed him awhile ago. But all of a suddink he starts up as he hears you a comin’ down the companion-way, sir, and is jabbering away like anythink!”
“Oh, but,” I exclaimed, “why did you leave him?”
“I wor afeard he’d jump overboard, or try to do somethink awful!”
“Nonsense! the very thing you are there for to prevent,” said I, going into the cabin, where I saw the poor fellow trying to get out of the cot. ”

“ It was only recently that any of his neighbors, barring Judge Leslie and Tom Colton, who shared his secret, had definitely proposed a political career to him, in other words divined his abilities and ambitions. But Mr. Wheaton had once been young and adventurous himself, and much if not all of his success in life was due to his shrewd divination of human nature. No man could drive a harder bargain than "Wash" Wheaton (he was named for the father of his country) , but he had never been wanting in a vein of humorous sympathy, nor in a fair capacity for friendship as well as enmity. ”

“ Art and Art Critics”; b. 1834.
Whiston, William, divine and mathematician, born in Leicestershire; educated at Clare College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow; gained reputation from his “Theory of the Earth”; succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as Lucasian professor, but was discharged from the office and expelled from the university for Arianism; removed to London, where he lived a separatist from the Church, and died a Baptist ”

“ Raridan knew the personal history of most of his fellow townsmen, and he was fond of characterizing those whom he particularly liked or disliked, for the benefit of his friends. He took it upon himself to sketch Wheaton for John Saxton's benefit in this fashion.
"Jim Wheaton's one of those men who never make mistakes," said Raridan, with the scorn of a man whose own mistakes do not worry him. "He went into that bank as a boy, and was first a model messenger, and then a model clerk ”

“ Like Wesley, he rose at four; his punctuality was rigid, his love of order extreme; ‘he did not think he should die easy, if he thought his gloves were out of their place’ (Winter, p. 82) . He was ‘irritable, but soon appeased’ (ib. p. 81) ; his beneficence was the outcome of the generous glow of his affections.
The National Portrait Gallery has a portrait, painted about 1737 by John Woolaston, in which Whitefield is depicted as preaching from a pulpit; a female figure in front of the congregation is supposed to represent his wife. ”

“ The young Earl of Huntingdon came of age in 1750, and the Countess gave up Donnington Park to him, removing her household to Ashby, living there with her other children and two of the Ladies Hastings. Towards the close of 1749 Whitefield desired, if possible, with the aid of Lady Huntingdon, to organise the vast numbers who had been greatly blessed by his evangelistic work, into a corporate body, like that which the clear, practical wisdom of John Wesley had created for the societies which looked up to him as leader. ”

“ John Wesley's character is a singularly interesting one, interesting for this very reason, that he was such a thorough man—full of human infirmities, constantly falling into errors of judgment and inconsistencies, but withal a noble specimen of humanity, a monument of the power of Divine grace to mould the rough materials of which man is made into a polished stone, meet to take its place in the fabric of the temple of the living God. ”

“ So sensible was even the calm Newton to critical attacks, that Whiston tells us he lost his favour, which he had enjoyed for twenty years, for contradicting Newton in his old age; for no man was of “a more fearful temper.” Whiston declares that he would not have thought proper to have published his work against Newton’s “Chronology” in his lifetime, “because I knew his temper so well, that I should have expected it would have killed him; as Dr. Bentley, Bishop Stillingfleet’s chaplain, told me, that he believed Mr. ”

“ The principal characters are Professor Whiston (Hoyle) , who gives lessons in the game of Whist; Sir Calculation Puzzle, a passionate admirer of Whist, who imagines himself a good player, yet always loses; Sharpers, Pupils of the Professor, and Cocao, Master of the Chocolate-house. The sharpers are disgusted at the appearance of the book.
"Lurchum. Thou knowest we have the Honour to be admitted into the best Company, which neither our Birth nor Fortunes entitle us to, merely for our Reputation as good Whist-Players. ”

“ Stanley Heuston seemed to catch the constraint in the air. He got up as if to go. "I suppose we're dining somewhere too—." He pronounced the "we" without conviction, for every one knew that he and his wife seldom went out together.
Wyant raised a detaining hand. "Don't go, Stan. Nona and I have no secrets—if we had, you should share them. Why do you look so savage, Nona? I suppose I've said something stupid. . . Fact is, I'm old-fashioned; and this idea of people who've chosen to live together having perpetually to get away from each other. ”

“ The case was not proceeded with, for Woolston now attacked a posthumous dissertation of Walter Moyle [q. v.] , in ‘A Defence of the Miracle of the Thundering Legion’ (1726, 8vo) , dedicated to Whiston, who had written on the same side. ‘I had used you,’ he says, ‘with such freedom in my “Moderator” as would have provoked another man to resentment, and even to rejoice at any sufferings that could have fallen on me; but it is manifest that you are of a more Christian temper, and can forgive any treatment from an adversary; for which I shall always esteem you a brave and a good man ”

“ Of this lucky contradiction the very incarnation was Whistler. No man ever preached the impersonality of art so well; no man ever preached the impersonality of art so personally. For him pictures had nothing to do with the problems of character; but for all his fiercest admirers his character was, as a matter of fact far more interesting than his pictures. He gloried in standing as an artist apart from right and wrong. ”

“ Flimsy stuff; doesn’t satisfy you somehow. The times call for another old Walt Whitman. That bird had ideas. He certainly hit some grand old truths. ‘Produce great men,’ he says; ‘the rest follows.’ Just as easy! Wow! There’s our team coming out now!” (prolonged cheering) “Well, there’s the old saying that the time brings the man. Can’t tell but there’s a future president right here in this crowd!”
“It might be you, John!” remarked Grace, laughing at the serenity with which he returned to his subject after joining in the uproar.
“No, Grace ”

“ Here, Weston, you ugly thaife of a son of a gun, come here! There’s going to be some rare foightin’ on deck prisintly; an’ as I know ye don’t loike to be afther spoilin’ that beautiful mug o’ yours, you jist sit down there, alannah, an’ moind this poor chap here till I come below ag’in, whilst I help Musther Haldane, too, with thim murtherin’ arms that give one a could chill, faith, to look at, bad cess to ’em. ”

“ Whistler may entertainingly insinuate that long life has been denied to his friendships, he will agree with me, I know, when I assert that it is secured to his etchings.
That my print-drawers contain but four or five etchings by Seymour Haden is at once my misfortune and my reproach. As one looks at them one conjures up visions of bygone sales at Sotheby’s, when as yet Mr. Wilkinson, benign and aged, sat in the chair, to wield the ivory hammer—what opportunities neglected, of which the more diligent have availed themselves! ”

“ Believe me, young gentleman, there are more still who play a fair hand at whist. Whist, sir, is wide as the world; ’tis an accomplishment like breathing. I once knew a youth who announced that he was studying to be Chancellor of England; the design was certainly ambitious; but I find it less excessive than that of the man who aspires to make a livelihood by whist.”
“Dear me,” said Challoner, “I am afraid I shall have to fall to be a working man.”
“Fall to be a working man?” echoed Mr. Godall. “Suppose a rural dean to be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? ”

“ It was like the horrible ailing old men in history books, who used to bathe in human blood to restore their vitality. Every one agreed that there was nothing such a clever sensitive fellow as Stanley Heuston mightn't have made of his life if he'd married a different kind of woman. As it was, he had just drifted: tried the law, dabbled in literary reviewing, taken a turn at municipal politics, another at scientific farming, and dropped one experiment after another to sink, at thirty-five, into a disillusioned idler who killed time with cards and drink and motor-speeding. ”

“ New York in winter, Hudson in summer... Staple topics: snow for six months, mosquitoes the other. I suppose that's the reason your generation have got the fidgets!"
Nona laughed. "It's a good enough reason; and anyhow there's nothing to be done about it."
Wyant frowned. "Nothing to be done about it—in Lita's case? I hope you don't mean that. My son—God, if ever a man has slaved for a woman, made himself a fool for her..."
Heuston's dry voice cut the diatribe. "Well, sir, you wouldn't deprive him of man's peculiar privilege: the right to make a fool of himself?" ”