Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/51

 ALEXANDER, WILLIAM (1824–1911), archbishop of Armagh, was born in Derry on 13 April 1824. His father, Robert Alexander, rector of Aghadowey, was nephew of Nathanael Alexander, bishop of Meath, and a cousin of James Alexander, first earl of Caledon. His mother was Dorothea, daughter of Henry M'Clintock of Ballyarton, co. Donegal. William was the eldest son in a family of three sons and five daughters; of his two brothers, Henry became a rear admiral, and Robert was killed at the siege of Delhi. Educated at Tonbridge School, Kent, William matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, in November 1841, afterwards migrating to Brasenose. Residence at the university during the last years of the Oxford movement permanently affected his life and his attitude towards religious questions. In later years he used to recall the spell of Newman's sermons. He graduated in classical honours (fourth class) in 1847, but in spite of the low class he had proved command of poetic and literary gifts. On 19 Sept. 1847 he was ordained deacon by [q. v.], bishop of Derry, accepting the curacy of the cathedral parish. He received priest's orders on 16 June 1848, when the ordination sermon was preached by [q. v.] Subsequently he held in turn the benefices of Termonamongan (1850), Fahan (1855), and Camus-juxta-Mourne (1860), and was appointed dean of Emly (a sinecure office) in 1864.

Meanwhile in 1850 Alexander won at Oxford the Denyer theological prize for an essay on the 'Divinity of Christ'; in 1853 he recited in the Sheldonian theatre a congratulatory ode to Lord Derby, then assuming the chancellorship of the university, and in 1860 he obtained the university prize for his sacred poem 'The Waters of Babylon.' In 1867 he was a candidate for the university professorship of poetry at Oxford,when Sir [q. v. Suppl.I] was elected by a narrow majority. In the same year Alexander became bishop of Derry, being consecrated in Armagh cathedral on 6 Oct. 1867, and proceeding D.D. at Oxford. At Derry he lived for the next twenty-nine years. The requirements of his episcopal office were exacting and he diligently discharged his pastoral duties, confirmations, ordinations, visitations and the like, gaining in a marked degree the affection of his clergy. He never cared for the routine work of committees or for the details of financial organisation. The disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869 was a blow to him, and he held that it had done serious injury to religion in Ireland. By conviction a high churchman, although with no leaning to what is called ritualism, Alexander was not in full sympathy with the party which became dominant for a time in the councils of the disestablished Irish church, and synodal controversy was distasteful to his spirit. On the death of Archbishop [q. v. Suppl. I] in 1893 he was elected by the Irish bishops to the see of Armagh and the primacy of all Ireland. It was not until his succession to the primacy, with the full concurrence of all ecclesiastical parties, that he became the recipient of that full measure of honour and respect in Ireland which had already been accorded to him in England and in the colonial churches. 'I have been, perhaps,' said Alexander of himself in 1893, with modesty and some justice, 'enough of a writer to prevent me being a very good speaker. I have been enough of a speaker to prevent me being a thinker. And I have been enough of a writer and speaker and thinker to prevent me being a very good bishop for these troublous times.' Poetry and literature were always the delight of Alexander's leisure, although not a chief occupation. Through life he wrote verses, which good critics recognised as genuine poetry. In 1886 he published 'St. Augustine's Holiday and other Poems' (with a preface of autobiographical interest), and in 1900 another edition of his poems appeared under the title of 'The Finding of the Book.' Many striking verses of his on occasions of public interest appeared in 'The Times' and the 'Spectator' during later years.

But from the early stages of his clerical career it was as an eloquent and accomplished speaker, preacher, and lecturer that he made his mark. In America his power was no less recognised than in England. Literary themes attracted him as well as religious or theological ones. A Dublin lecture on Matthew Arnold's poetry (1863) was full of suggestiveness and of nice critical discrimination. Another on Virgil and St. Augustine was printed in 1869 along with a spirited blank verse translation of part of the 'Æneid.' To the end of his days Alexander was under the spell of St. Augustine, and one of his most characteristic lectures, delivered in 1876 in St. James's, Piccadilly, dealt with St. Augustine's Confessions. Not only was he sensible of the merits of the African bishop as a theologian and a spiritual guide, but he was strongly attracted