Chapter Wishing-Cap to Wolf of W by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Wititterly (Mr. Henry), an important gentleman, 38 years of age; of rather plebeian countenance, and with very light hair. He boasts everlastingly of his grand friends. To shake hands with a lord was a thing to talk of, but to entertain one was the seventh heaven to his heart.

Mrs. Wititterly [Julia], wife of Mr. Wititterly of Cadogan Place, Sloane Street, London; a faded lady living in a faded house. She calls her page Alphonse , “although he has the face and figure of Bill.” Mrs. Wititterly toadies the aristocracy, and, like her husband, boasts of her grand connections and friends.—Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby (1838). (See Tibbs, p. 1107.)

Witiza. (See Vitiza, p. 1180.)

Witling of Terror, Bertrand Barere; also called “The Anacreon of the Guillotine” (1755–1841).

Wits. “Great wits to madness nearly are allied.”—Pope.

The idea is found in Seneca: Nullum magnun ingenium absque mixtura dementiæ est. Festus said to Paul, “Much learning doth make thee mad” (Acts xxvi. 24).

Wits (Your five). Stephen Hawes explains this expression in his poem of Graunde Amoure, xxiv., from which we gather that the five wits are: Common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory (1515).

Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?
   —Shakespeare: Twelfth Night, act iv. sc. 2 (1602).

Wittenbold, a Dutch commandant, in the service of Charles II.—Sir W. Scott: Old Mortality (time, Charles II.).

Wittol (Sir Joseph), an ignorant, foolish simpleton, who says that Bully Buff “is as brave a fellow as Cannibal.” —Congreve: The Old Bachelor (1693).

Witwould (Sir Jerry) in Thomas Brown’s comedy called Stage Beaux tossed in a Blanket (1704), is meant for Jeremy Collier.

A pert, talkative, half-witted coxcomb; vain of a very little learning, he always swims with the stream of popular opinion; he is a great censurer of men and books, always positive, seldom in the right—a noisy pretender of virtue, and an impudent pretender of modesty. … He sets up for a reformer of the stage … finding out smut and obscenity which escape every other eye. He was once a divine, but for reasons best known to himself, he cast away his surplice and gown for a sword and blue wig.

Witwould (Sir Wilful), of Shropshire, half-brother of Anthony Witwould, and nephew of lady Wishfort. A mixture of bashfulness and obstinacy, but when in his cups as loving as the monster in the Tempest. He is “a superannuated old bachelor,” who is willing to marry Millamant; but as the young lady prefers Edward Mirabell, he is equally willing to resign her to him. His favourite phrase is, “Wilful will do it.”

Anthony Witwould, half-brother to sir Wilful. “He has good nature and does not want wit.” Having a good memory, he has a store of other folks’ wit, which he brings out in conversation with good effect.—Congreve: The Way of the World (1700).

Wives as they Were and Maids as they Are, a comedy by Mrs. Inchbald (1797). Lady Priory is the type of the former, and Miss Dorrillon of the latter. Lady Priory is discreet, domestic, and submissive to her husband; but Miss Dorrillon is gay, flighty, and fond of pleasure. Lady Priory, under false pretences, is allured from home by a Mr. Bronzely, a man of no principle and a rake, but her quiet, innocent conduct quite disarms him, and he takes her back to her husband, ashamed of himself, and resolves to amend. Miss Dorrillon is so involved in debt that she is arrested, but her father from the Indies pays her debts. She also repents, and becomes the wife of sir George Evelyn.