Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/148

 He left particular directions for the foundation of six almshouses at Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire, which the troubles had prevented him from erecting in his lifetime. His portrait, by Vandyck, has been engraved by Gunst..



GOODWIN, CHARLES WYCLIFFE (1817–1878), Egyptologist, was born in 1817 at King's Lynn, where his father was a solicitor in large practice. He was the eldest of four sons, the second of whom, Harvey, is now bishop of Carlisle. He received his early education at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and when a schoolboy of nine or so was led to take a lively interest in Egyptology by reading an article on ‘Hieroglyphics’ in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ for December 1826 (erroneously identified by the Bishop of Carlisle with an article in the ‘Quarterly’). Egyptology became the favourite study of his life, and during his school holidays he wrote essays on the early history of Egypt. He was also in early life a fair Hebraist, botanist, and geologist, an accomplished Anglo-Saxon and a good German scholar. In 1834 he was entered at St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge, taking his B.A. degree with high classical honours in 1838, proceeding M.A. in 1842, and being afterwards elected a fellow of his college Goodwin had intended to take orders, but his views undergoing a change he resigned his fellowship, which was only tenable by a clergyman. In 1848 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, and devoted himself to the uncongenial study of the law. In the same year he published ‘The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Life of St. Guthlac, hermit of Crowland. Originally written in Latin by Felix (commonly called of Crowland). Now first printed from a MS. in the Cottonian Library. With a translation and notes,’ chiefly grammatical and philological. He had for years contributed to the publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, when in 1851 he edited for it ‘The Anglo-Saxon Legends of St. Andrew and St. Veronica … with an English translation.’ For the ‘Cambridge Essays’ for 1858 he wrote the valuable disquisition on ‘Hieratic Papyri,’ his first noticeable contribution to Egyptology. This was followed in 1859 by the anonymous republication from the ‘Law Magazine’ of his ‘Curiosities of Law,’ consisting of translated extracts from deeds of grant of various kinds in favour of a monastery near Thebes in Egypt, written in Coptic, of which Goodwin was a diligent student. In 1860 he acquired a wider reputation by his paper, ‘The Mosaic Cosmogony,’ in ‘Essays and Reviews,’ to which he was the only lay contributor. This plain-spoken essay produced five or six specific replies, one of them by Professor Young of Belfast, to none of which does Goodwin seem to have made any rejoinder. According to the catalogue of the British Museum library he succeeded Mr. John Morley as the last editor of the second series of the ‘Literary Gazette.’ He certainly edited the two volumes of the ‘Parthenon,’ 1862–3, with which the ‘Literary Gazette’ was incorporated, giving prominence in it to Egyptological subjects. In May 1862 at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, to which Goodwin sent several communications on those subjects, he replied to Sir George Cornewall Lewis's scepticism, expressed in person, as to the possibility of interpreting the ancient Egyptian by arguing that Coptic was in some degree a continuation of that language. Various contributions of Goodwin's, chiefly Egyptological, appeared in the second series of Chabas' ‘Mélanges Egyptologiques,’ 1864.

In March 1865 Goodwin was appointed assistant judge in the newly created supreme court for China and Japan. A paper which he contributed to ‘Fraser's Magazine’ for February of that year was in 1866, after his departure to the East, separately issued (Mr. Le Page Renouf correcting the proofs) as ‘The Story of Saneha, an Egyptian Tale of Four Thousand Years ago, translated from the Hieratic Text.’ It was prefaced by an admirable summary of the history and chronology of ancient Egypt in connection with the previous development of its varied civilisation. Goodwin executed his translation from the facsimile of the original papyrus printed in 1860 in Lepsius's ‘Denkmäler Aegyptens.’ His version was read before the Society of Antiquaries in December 1863, the month following the publication of another version by M. Chabas, both of them executed simultaneously, but without concert, and, though not identical, agreeing in all essential points. For the ‘Records of the Past’ Goodwin revised his version of the ‘Story of Saneha’ and others of his translations of hieratic texts. In 1866 also appeared ‘Voyage d'un Egyptien en Phénicie, en Palestine, &c., au XIVe siècle avant notre ère, d'un papyrus du Musée Britannique, comprenant le facsimile du texte hiératique et sa transcription complète en hiéroglyphes et en lettres coptes. Par F. Chabas, avec la collaboration de C. W. Goodwin.’ In his essay on ‘Hieratic Papyri’ Goodwin had translated the first eight pages