Wordsworth, CHRISTOPHER

Wordsworth, CHRISTOPHER, youngest brother of the poet, was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, June 9, 1774. From Hawkeshead grammar-school he passed in 1792 to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was elected a fellow in 1798. Successively rector of Ashby-with-Oby and Thirne in Norfolk (1804), dean of Bocking, Essex (1808), rector of St Mary's, Lambeth, Surrey, and of Sundridge in Kent (1815), he exchanged these two last livings for the rectory of Buxted-with-Uckfield, Sussex, in 1820. He was master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1820 until 1841, when he retired to Buxted, where he died, February 2, 1846. His best-known book is his Ecclesiastical Biography, a fine collection of selected and annotated lives (6 vols. 1809; 4 vols. 1839). His books, Who wrote Icon Basilike? (1824) and King Charles the First the Author of Icon Basilike further proved (1828), are learned if not conclusive. His Christian Institutes (4 vols. 1836) is a good selection from the writings of the great English divines.—Of his sons, the eldest, JOHN WORDSWORTH, was born at Lambeth, July 1, 1805, became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1830, took orders in 1837, and was preparing an edition of Æschylus and a classical dictionary, when he was surprised by death, December 31, 1839.—The second son, CHARLES WORDSWORTH, was born at Lambeth, 22d August 1806, passed from a private school to Harrow in 1820, and thence in 1825 to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained the college and university prizes for Latin hexameters (1827), and graduated with a first-class in 1830. While an undergraduate he had played in the first cricket-match and rowed in the first boat-race between the universities. In 1830 he became private tutor, among his first pupils being Gladstone and Manning, and in 1834 public tutor at Christ Church, and was ordained deacon in 1835; he did not proceed to priest's orders until 1840. From 1835 to 1846 he was second master at Winchester, and then till 1854 warden of the new Episcopal college at Glenalmond (q.v.) in Perthshire. In 1852 he was elected Bishop of St Andrews, and for years thereafter was one of the foremost figures in Scottish ecclesiastical life, which he did much to sweeten by his numerous writings in favour of reunion between the churches. He was one of the New Testament revisers. His many works include, among others, the well-known Greek grammar (first published in 1839); Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible (1854; 4th ed. 1892), and Shakespeare's Historical Plays (3 vols. 1883); sermons, charges, and a collection of discourses and charges published as Public Appeals on Behalf of Christian Unity (2 vols. 1886); and the valuable Outlines of the Christian Ministry (1872; new ed. 1893). See his Annals of My Life (2 vols. 1891-93). He died 5th December 1892.—The youngest son, CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, was born at Bocking, October 30, 1807, and had his education at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he carried off the Chancellor's medal for his poem, The Druids (1827), the Browne medals for the Latin ode and Greek epigram (1828), and graduated senior classic in 1830. He travelled in Greece in 1832-33, took holy orders, was elected fellow of his college in 1830, and in 1836 public orator to the university. He was an unsuccessful head-master of Harrow from 1836 till 1844, when he became canon of Westminster, was appointed vicar of Stanford-in-the-Vale, Berkshire, and rural dean in 1850, archdeacon of Westminster in 1865, and in 1868 was raised to be Bishop of Lincoln. He died at Lincoln, March 20, 1885, only a few weeks after resigning his see. His ideal of episcopal duty was high, but he lacked that breadth of view and of sympathy necessary to make a really great administrator. He was obstinate, incapable of seeing when he was in the wrong, and often harsh in phrase, but the singleness of his aims and his real nobility of character commanded the respect of all men. His Athens and Attica (1836), Inscriptiones Pompeianæ (1837), Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical (1839; revised by H. F. Tozer, 1883), Theocritus (1844), and even Conjectural Emendations (1884) were sound contributions to classical scholarship. In 1842 he edited the Correspondence of Bentley, but he cannot in any sense be said to have achieved success in his Memoir (1851) of his illustrious uncle, the poet. Other works were his Theophilus Anglicanus (1843), Hulsean Lectures on the Canon (1848) and on the Apocalypse (1849); S. Hippolytus and the Church of Rome in the Third Century (1853); The Greek New Testament (1856-60); and The Old Testament in the Authorised Version (6 vols. 1864-71), a vast work of labour and research of the pre-scientific stage of such scholarship; Miscellanies, Literary and Religious (3 vols. 1878); and a Church History to the Council of Chalcedon, 481 A.D. (4 vols. 1881-83); besides countless sermons and vigorous but one-sided controversial pamphlets and treatises on such questions of the day as baptism, secession to Rome, secular education, tithes, divorce, marriage with a deceased wife's sister, cremation, confession, Wesleyanism, sisterhoods, future punishment, the Revised Version, &c. See the Life by J. H. Overton and E. Wordsworth (1888).—The eldest son of the last, JOHN WORDSWORTH, was born at Harrow, September 21, 1843, had his education at Ipswich, Winchester, and New College, Oxford, graduated with a classical second class in 1865, and carried off the Chancellor's prize for Latin essay (1866) and the Craven scholarship (1867). For a short time assistant-master at Wellington College, he became a fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1867, and served as tutor from 1868 till 1883. He was a prebendary of Lincoln (1870-83), examining chaplain to his father (1870-85), Grinfield lecturer on the Septuagint (1876), Bampton lecturer—The One Religion (1881), and from 1883 the first Oriel professor of the interpretation of Scripture (with canonry of Rochester attached). In 1885 he was raised to be Bishop of Salisbury. His chief books are Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin (1874), University Sermons (1878), Old Latin Biblical Texts—I. (1883; vols. ii. and iii. mainly by other scholars), and a critical edition of the Vulgate New Testament (parts i.-ii. 1889-90). He had a share also in the first series of the Oxford Studia Biblica (1885).