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WRIGHT, THEODORE FRANCIS

Swedenborgian; b. at Dorchester (now a part of Boston), Mass., Aug. 3, 1845; d. at sea near Alexandria, Egypt, Nov. 13, 1907. He was graduated from Harvard (A.B., 1866) and the New Church Theological School (then at Waltham, Mass., 1868); in 1864-65 he served in the Union Army as first lieutenant of the 108th Colored Volunteers; after the completion of his studies was pastor of the Church of the New Jerusalem at Bridgewater, Mass, (1868-1889); and after 1889 was dean of the New Church Theological School at Cambridge, Mass., where he was professor of history after 1884. He was also honorary American secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund after 1890. In addition to editing The New Church Review after 1893, he wrote The Realities of Heaven (New York, 1880); Life Eternal (Boston, 1885); The Human and its Relation to the Divine (Philadelphia, 1892); and Psalms from Swedenborg's Latin Translations (Germantown, Pa., 1900).

WRIGHT, THOMAS

Church of England layman; b. at Olney (51 m. n.w. of London), Bucks, May 16, 1859. He was educated at Buxton College, Forest Gate, London; since 1882 he has been principal of Cowper School, Olney. Besides being a trustee and the secretary of the Cowper Museum, formed by the gift of the poet Cowper's house to the town of Olney in 1900, he is the founder and secretary of the Cowper Society (founded in 1900) and of the John Payne Society (founded in 1905). Theologically he belongs to the Evangelical school of the Church of England. Besides being editor of all works published by the Cowper and John Payne societies, he has edited the letters of Cowper (4 vols., London, 1904); and has written: The Town of Cowper(London, 1886); The Chalice of Carden (1889); The Blue Firedrake (1892); The Mystery of St. Dunstan's (1892); The Life of William Cowper (1892); The Life of Daniel Defoe (1894); The Acid Sisters (poems; 1897); Hind Head (1898); Ianthe (1900); The Ivory Coffer (poems; 1903); The Life of Edward Fitzgerald (2 vols., 1904); The Life of Sir Richard Burton (2 vols., 1906); The Life of Walter Pater (2 vols., 1907); The Life of Colonel Fred Burnaby(1908); The Life of William Huntington (1909); and Joseph Hart. Being personal Memoirs . . . from unpublished Materials (1910).

WRIGHT, WILLIAM

Orientalist; b. at Mallye or Mallai, on the Nepal frontier, India, Jan. 17, 1830; d. at Cambridge, England, May 22, 1889. He early developed a fondness for oriental languages; studied at St. Andrews, from which he was graduated; then at Halle, devoting his main efforts to Syriac, but acquiring all the Semitic languages together with Sanskrit; and lastly at Leyden; was professor of Arabic at University College, London, 1855-56; and at Trinity College, Dublin, 1856-61, lecturing there on Hindustani; for the opportunity of original work, he held a post in the department of manuscripts at the British Museum, 1861-70; and was professor of Arabic at Cambridge, 1870-89, where he also became a fellow. As a member of the Old-Testament revision committee he had a field for the exercise of his extensive scholarship. His cooperative activity

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yielded such fruits as the oriental series of the Palæographical Society, drawn up under his editorship, and contributions to the lexical works of Payne Smith in Syriac, of Dozy in Arabic, and of Neubauer in Hebrew. He was an eminent teacher. He edited the book of Jonah in four Semitic versions (1857); Fragments of the Curetonian Gospels (1872); Fragments of the Homilies of Cyril of Alexandria on the Gospel of S. Luke (1874); translated and edited Caspari's Grammar of the Arabic Language (2 vols., London, 1859-62); collected and edited Opuscula Arabica (Leyden, 1859); and with English translation and notes Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of the New Testament (London, 1865); edited and translated Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (2 vols., 1871); edited with English translation and notes The Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite (1882); and wrote Lectures on the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (Cambridge, 1890); and A Short History of Syriac Literature (London, 1894).

Bibliography: R. L. Benaly, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1889, pp. 708 sqq.; DNB, lxiii. 138-139.

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