Jeremiah Wiffen

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

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.

Wiffen declined the degree of LL.D. from Aberdeen University in 1827. His death was sudden, at Froxfield, near Woburn, on 2 May 1836; he was buried on 8 May in the Friends' graveyard, Woburn Sands, Buckinghamshire.

Wiffen's first appearance in print was in the European Magazine of October 1807, with an Address to the Evening Star versified from Ossian. His first contribution on an antiquarian subject was an account of Broxbourne church, Hertfordshire, with an etching by himself.

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