Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/25



WORDSWORTH, CHARLES (1806−1892), bishop of St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, second son of (1774−1846) [q. v.], master of Trinity College, Cambridge, was nephew of [q. v.], the poet, and elder brother of (1807−1885) [q. v.], bishop of Lincoln.

Charles was born at Lambeth on 22 Aug. 1806, his father then being chaplain to Archbishop Manners-Sutton. His mother died in 1815 at the age of thirty-three, and Mrs. Hoare, widow of the banker, Samuel Hoare of Hampstead, and his sister, did much to supply a mother's place. At Sevenoaks school, near his father's benefice of Sundridge, he began to show his taste for Latin verse and cricket. In 1820, when his brothers went to Winchester, Charles, having somewhat delicate health, was sent to the milder discipline of Harrow, whither his friend and neighbour Henry Edward (afterwards Cardinal) Manning was also sent. Other contemporaries were the two Merivales, Herman and Charles (dean of Ely), and the two Trenches, Francis and Richard (the archbishop of Dublin). Here this special tastes abundantly developed. Charles Merivale calls him ‘king of our cricket field’  (Autobiogr. p. 44), though his nervousness prevented him from scoring largely in set matches. His name must, however, always be associated with the history of the game. He played in the first regular Eton and Harrow match in 1822, in the first Winchester and Harrow match in 1825, and brought about the first Oxford and Cambridge match in 1827. He had also much to do with the first inter-university boatrace in 1828. He played tennis at Oxford, and was an excellent skater to a late period of his life. He did not take to golf, which he never played till he reached the age of eighty-four. He was brilliant as a classical scholar, and in writing Greek and Latin verses he became a poet. Latin-verse composition was his peculiar delight and solace to the end of his long life.

His Harrow successes were crowned by greater distinctions at Christ Church, Oxford, which he entered in 1825 as a commoner, Charles Thomas Longley [q. v.] (afterwards archbishop) and Thomas Vowler Short [q. v.] (afterwards bishop of St. Asaph) being his tutors. His Virgilian poem on Mexico, with which he won the chancellor's prize for Latin verse in 1827, is one of the best of its kind; it is printed in appendix to ‘Annals’, vol. i., with the Latin essay, which also gained him the chancellor's prize in 1831. It led to his obtaining a studentship in 1827 from Dean Smith. He took his degree (first-class classics) in the spring of 1830, and shortly afterwards gathered, in succession up to 1833, a brilliant company of private pupils, including James Hope (Hope-Scott), William Ewart Gladstone, Henry E. Manning, Francis Doyle, Walter Kerr Hamilton, Lord Lincoln (Duke of Newcastle), Thomas Dyke-Acland, Charles J. Canning (Lord Canning), and Francis L. Popham. In September 1831 he went with William Wordsworth and Dora, his uncle and cousin, on their last visit to Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. From July 1833 to June 1834 he travelled as tutor to Lord Cantelupe in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, returning by Greifswald and Berlin, where he learnt something of German university education, and became more or less acquainted with Professors Schleiermacher, Neander, Böckh, Henning, Immanuel Bekker, and D. F. Strauss. He also visited Dresden and Leipzig. In the VOL. LXIII.