Calverley

Calverley, CHARLES STUART, the prince of modern English parodists, was the son of the Rev. Henry Blayds, who in 1852 took the name of Calverley, and was born on 22d December 1831. From Harrow he passed to Balliol College, Oxford, whence after a brief period he migrated to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated as second classic in 1856. Within two years he was elected a fellow of his college. In 1865 he was called to the bar, and settled in London, but a fall on the ice in the winter of 1866-67 put an end to what might have been an exceptionally brilliant career. He died at Folkestone on the 17th of February 1884. One of the most gifted men of his time, and unrivalled as a humorist, Calverley will be remembered by his two little volumes, Verses and Translations (1862) and Fly Leaves (1872). His parodies, particularly that of Jean Ingelow, are the best that have appeared since the Rejected Addresses, and the delicacy of his scholarship finds admirable expression in his numerous renderings from Latin into English, and from English into Latin. The translation of Theocritus (1869) shows at once his ripe scholarship and his facile mastery of English verse. His Literary Remains, with a memoir by Mr W. J. Sendall, were published in 1885.