Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen

Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen (30 December 1792 – 2 May 1836) was an English poet and writer, known as translator of Torquato Tasso.

Life The eldest son of John Wiffen, an ironmonger, by his wife Elizabeth Pattison, both from Quaker backgrounds, he was born at Woburn, Bedfordshire, on 30 December 1792; Benjamin Barron Wiffen was his younger brother, and his youngest sister Priscilla married Alaric Alexander Watts. His father died young, leaving six children to Elizabeth's care. At the age of ten Jeremiah entered Ackworth School in Yorkshire, where he acquired some skill in wood engraving.

At age 14, Wiffen was apprenticed to Isaac Payne, a schoolmaster at Epping, Essex. In 1811 he returned to Woburn and opened a school in Leighton Road. By hard study he made himself at home in the classics and Hebrew, French, and Italian, and later, Spanish and Welsh. On a visit to the Lake District with his brother in the summer of 1819 he made the acquaintance of Robert Southey and of William Wordsworth, whose "white pantaloons" and "hawk's nose" are described in his diary. In the summer of 1821 he was appointed librarian at Woburn Abbey to John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford. The Quarterly Review concluded that Wiffen, as a translator of Tasso, was ahead of John Hoole and James Leigh Hunt, but some way behind Edward Fairfax.

Wiffen's other poetical works were:

Verses … on the Alameda, 1827; Appeal for the Injured African, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1833; and Verses … at Woburn Abbey, on … the statues of Locke and Erskine, 1836.

Eight years' work went into Wiffen's compilation of Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell, 1833, 2 vols. He made some of the researches over a four months' tour in Normandy. Other publications were a Geographical Primer (1812), and Thoughts on the Creation, Fall, and Regeneration, 1826, by John Humbles, "a Bedfordshire peasant" which Wiffen edited. A selection of his poems and ballads was given in The Brothers Wiffen (1880), by S. R. Pattison.

Family Wiffen married Mary Whitehead, on 28 November 1828, at the Friends' meeting-house in Leeds. They had three daughters.