Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/286

 COLFAX— COLLIER.

being appointed to a judgeship in ' the Judicial Department of the Privy Council^ Sir John Duke Cole- ridge was appointed to succeed him as Attorney-General. On the re- ] tirement of Lord Bomilly^ in 1873, from the Mastership of the BoUs^ Sir John Coleridge, as Attorney- General, though a member of the Common Law bar, received the first offer of that appointment, but after mature consideration he declined the office, which was conferred upon Sir George Jessel, the Solicitor- General, who was a member of the £qmty bar. Soon afterwards, how- ever, the death of Sir William Bo- vill left the Chief Justiceship of the Court of Common Pleas at the dis- posal of the Government, and this liigh office was at once conferred upon Sir John Coleridge, who was sworn in as Lord Chief Justice, Nov. 19, 1873. In the following month he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Coleridge of Ottery St. Mary, in the ooun^ of Devon. He was appointed Lord Chief Justice of England on th^ death of Sir Alexander Cockbum in Nov. 1880. Lord Coleridge was at one time a contributor to the Edinburgh Review, and other periodicals. His lordship married, in 1846, Jane Fortescue, third daughter of the Kev. Creorge Turner Seymour, of Farringford- hill. Isle of Wight, and has issue three sons and a daughter, the sons being — ^the Hoii. Bernard John Sey- mour Coleridge, born in 1851 ; the Hon. Stephen William Buchanan Coleridge, born in 1854; and the Hon. Gilbert James Duke Coleridge, bom in 1859.

COLFAX, ScHUYLBB, born at New York, March 23, 1823. His early education was very limited. In 1836 he removed with his mother (who had re-married) to Indiana, where he was for a time clerk in a country store, and afterwards De- puty Auditor of St. Joseph Co. He studied law, was for two years a newspaper reporter, and in 1845 establisned, at South Bend, a weekly

newspaper, the 8t. Joseph Valley Register. In 1848 he was a delegate to the National Whig Convention, and in 1850 a member of the con- vention to frame a new constitution for the State of Indiana. He was defeated for Congress in 1851, but was elected in 1854, and successively re-elected until 1869. From Dec. 1863, to March, 1869, he was Speaker of the House of Representatives. In 1868 he was elected Vice-Presi- dent on the ticket with Gen. Grant for President, and in the Convention of 1872 was again a candidate for the nomination, but was defeated by Henry Wilson. In 1873 Mr. Colfax was implicated in charges of cor- ruption brought against many mem- bers of Congress, but the Judiciary Committee of the House reported (Feb. 24, 1873) that there was no ground for the impeachment of Mr. Colfax, since, if there had been any offence committed by him, it was before he became Vice-President. Since that time he has taken no part in politics, but has frequently appeared as a public lecturer.

COLLIER, John Payne, philolo- gist, bibliographer, and commen- tator on Shakespeare, was born in London, Jan. 11, 1789. His grand- father, descended from the famous Jeremy Collier, was, about 1775, one of the medical attendants on the household of Queen Charlotte. The father of the subject of the present memoir, who devoted himself to letters, was editor of the Monthly Register, and was connected with the management of the Times. The son, called to the bar by the Society of the Middle Temple, acting as a law reporter and as parliamentary re- porter for the Morning Chronicle, met with so much success as a pub- lic writer in the newspaper that Mr. Perry introduced him to many of the leaders of the Whig party, in- cluding Sir James Maclontosh, Mr. Tiemey, Mr. Windham, and others. Having acquired, at an early age, a taste for the Elizabethan poets and dramatists, he published in the