Christopher Wordsworth - Life

Life

Wordsworth was born in London, the youngest son of the Rev. Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Master of Trinity and a nephew of the poet William Wordsworth. He was the younger brother of the classical scholar John Wordsworth and Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of Saint Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane. He was educated at Winchester and Trinity, Cambridge. Like his brother Charles, he was distinguished as an athlete as well as for scholarship. He won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for poetry in 1827 and 1828.

He became senior classic, and was elected a fellow and tutor of Trinity in 1830; shortly afterwards he took holy orders. He went for a tour in Greece in 1832-1833, and published various works on its topography and archaeology, the most famous of which is "Wordsworth's" Greece (1839). In 1836 he became Public Orator at Cambridge, and in the same year was appointed Headmaster of Harrow, a post he resigned in 1844. In 1844 Sir Robert Peel appointed him as a Canon of Westminster (1844–1869). He was Vicar of Stanford in the Vale, Berkshire (1850–1869) and Archdeacon of Westminster (1864–1869). In 1869 Benjamin Disraeli appointed him Bishop of Lincoln which he retained until his death in 1885.

He was a man of fine character, with a high ideal of ecclesiastical duty, and he spent his money generously on church objects.

Read more about this topic:  Christopher Wordsworth

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
    The brook runs down in sending up our life.
    The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
    And there is something sending up the sun.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive. But strong natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire giants, Napoleons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are inevitable patriots, until their life ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy and money, warp them.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    He did not live, he observed life from a window, and too often was inclined to content himself with no more than what his friends told him they saw when they looked out of a window.... In the end the point of Henry James is neither his artistry nor his seriousness, but his personality, and this was curious and charming and a trifle absurd.
    W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)