Henry Charles Beeching

Henry Charles Beeching (15 May 1859 - 1919) was an English poet and clergyman.

Life
Beeching was born on the 15th of May 1859, and educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford. He took holy orders in 1882, and after three years in a Liverpool curacy he was for fifteen years rector of Yattendon, Berkshire. From 1900 to 1903 he lectured on pastoral and liturgical theology at King’s College, London, and was chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn, where he became preacher in 1903. He became a canon of Westminster in 1902, and examining chaplain to the bishop of Carlisle in 1905.

He gave the Clark Lecture in 1900 on The history of lyrical poetry in England. He wrote a book on Francis Atterbury.

To him is attributed the popular epigram on Benjamin Jowett:
 * First come I; my name is Jowett.
 * There's no knowledge but I know it.
 * I am master of this college:
 * What I don't know isn't knowledge.

This is the first verse of The Masque of B-ll—l (1880), a scurrilous undergraduate production in 40 verses satirising Balliol figures. It was suppressed at the time; later research has given Beeching credit for 19 of the verses.

Writing
As a poet he is best known by his share in two volumes — Love in Idleness (1883) and Love’s Looking Glass (1891) — which also contained poems by J.W. Mackail and J. Bowyer Nichols. He was a sympathetic editor and critic of the works of many 16th and 17th century poets, of Richard Crashaw (1905), of Robert Herrick (1907), of John Milton (1900), and of Henry Vaughan (1896). Under the pseudonym of “Urbanus Sylvan” he published two successful volumes of essays, Pages from a Private Diary (1898) and Provincial Letters and other Papers (1906). His works also include numerous volumes of sermons and essays on theological subjects.

Recognition
Two of his poems, "Prayers" and "Going Down Hill on a Bicycle (A Boy's Song)" were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.

Poetry

 * Love in Idleness: A volume of poems (with J.W. Mackail and J.B.B. Nichols), 1883.
 * Love's Looking Glass (with J.W. Mackail and J.B.B. Nichols), 1892.
 * Lyra Sac­ra, 1894
 * In a Gar­den, and other po­ems, 1895

Non-fiction
===On [[
 * Seven Sermons to Schoolboys. London: 1894.
 * Pages from a Private Diary, 1898.
 * Conferences on Books and Men. London: Smith, Elder, 1900.
 * Provincial Letters and other Papers. London: Smith, Elder, 1906.
 * The Religion of Shakespeare: The sonnets. 1907.
 * William Shakespeare: Player, playmaker, and poet. London: John Murray, 1909.
 * ''The Epistle to the Hebrews: An experiment in conservative revision" (by "Two Clerks": Beeching and Frederick Brooke Westcott]). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press1912.
 * The Character of Shakespeare. London: British Academy / Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1917.

Edited
Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy Hymntime.  
 * A Paradise of English Poetry, 1892.
 * The Poetical Works of John Milton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900.

Paradise of English Poetry

 * A Paradise of English Poetry, an anthology compiled by Beeching including works by A.W. - Joseph Addison - Sir Francis Bacon - Richard Barnfield - Francis Beaumont - Thomas Lovell Beddoes - William Blake - Nicholas Breton - Emily Jane Brontë - William Browne - Robert Burton - George Gordon, Lord Byron - Thomas Campbell - Thomas Campion - Thomas Carew - George Chapman - Thomas Chatterton - Geoffrey Chaucer - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - William Collins - Henry Constable - Richard Corbet - Abraham Cowley - William Cowper - Richard Crashaw - Samuel Daniel - Sir William D'Avenant - Sir John Davies - Walter Davison - Thomas Dekker - John Donne - Michael Drayton - William Drummond - John Dryden - Ebenezer Elliott - Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex - Sir Richard Fanshawe - John Fletcher - Oliver Goldsmith - Thomas Gray - Robert Greene - Frances Greville - Fulke Greville - William Habington - Edward Herbert, Lord Herbert of Cherbury - George Herbert - Robert Herrick - Thomas Heywood - Thomas Hood - Samuel Johnson - Ebenezer Jones - Benjamin Jonson - John Keats - Henry King - Charles Lamb - Mary Lamb - Walter Savage Landor - Richard Lovelace - John Lylye - James Mabbe - Christopher Marlowe - Andrew Marvell - Jasper Mayne - John Milton - James Graham, Marquis of Montrose - Thomas Moore - Sir Thomas More - Thomas Nash - Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford - George Peele - Mary, Countess of Pembroke - Ambrose Philips - Katherine Philips - Alexander Pope - Matthew Prior - Sir Walter Ralegh - Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset - Sir Walter Scott - Sir Charles Sedley - William Shakespeare - Percy Bysshe Shelley - James Shirley - Sir Philip Sidney - John Skelton - Robert Southwell - Edmund Spenser - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey - James Thomson - Henry Vaughan - Edmund Waller - John Webster - George Wither - Charles Wolfe - William Wordsworth - Sir Henry Wotton - Sir Thomas Wyatt - Edward Young