Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol II (1901).djvu/74

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Corner
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Cory

and honoured life. Unfortunately the work on which he bestowed his higher energies, the frescoes in the House of Lords, are for the most part in a deplorable condition. Of his smaller work good specimens are included in the Sheepshanks bequest at South Kensington.

[Reminiscences of Charles West Cope, R.A. by his son Charles Henry Cope, M.A.; Men of the Time; Annual Register; Returns to House of Commons, 23 of 1854, 295 of 1861, and 19 of 1872; Art Journal, 1869; Athenæum 1890, ii. 328, and 1892 ii. 166; Hamerton's Etching and Etchers.]

C. M.

CORNER, JULIA (1798–1875), writer for the young, daughter of John Corner [q. v.], an engraver, was born in London in 1798. She was the author of stories and plays for children, and of a number of educational works dealing chiefly with history, which are still extremely popular. Of her 'History of France' (1840), for instance, thirty-one thousand copies had been sold by 1889. All the histories have lately been revised and brought out in new editions, some illustrated with engravings after designs by Sir John Gilbert. Some of the plays for young people, mostly adaptations of well-known fairy tales, are now in a sixteenth edition. She wrote altogether over sixty books. The chief educational works that have been reprinted are 'The Play Grammar' (1848); the histories of England (1840), of Scotland (1840), of Ireland (1840), of Greece (1841), of Rome (1841), of Italy (1841), of Holland and Belgium (1842), of Germany and the German Empire (1841). The 'Historical Library,' in 14 vols., appeared first in 1840-8. Miss Corner died at 92 Clarendon Road, Netting Hill, London, on 16 Aug. 1875.

[Allibone's Dict. i. 430, Suppl. i. 390; Boase's Modern English Biogr. i. 720-21.]

E. L.

CORY, WILLIAM JOHNSON (1823–1892), poet and master at Eton, was the second son of Charles Johnson of Torrington, Devonshire, and was born there on 9 Jan. 1823. His mother, Theresa, daughter of the Rev. Peter Wellington Furse of Halsdon, was a great-niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His elder brother, Charles Wellington Johnson (1821-1900), assumed his mother's surname of Furse; he was well known from 1894 till his death (on 2 Aug. 1900) as canon and archdeacon of Westminster. William Johnson received his education at Eton, where he was elected king's scholar in 1831, and Newcastle scholar in 1841, and at King's College, Cambridge, where he was elected to a scholarship on 23 Feb. 1842. In 1843 he gained the chancellor's medal, 'won by a casting vote,' for an English poem on Plato. In 1844 he won the Craven scholarship, succeeded to a fellowship at King's in February 1845, graduated B.A., and in September of the same year was appointed an assistant master at Eton, where he remained for upwards of twenty-six years. 'He will long be remembered as the most brilliant Eton tutor of his day,' says Mr. G. W. Prothero in his memoir of Henry Bradshaw. Among his pupils were Lord Rosebery and Sir F. Pollock. Between 1861 and 1865 Johnson took a leading part in the throwing open of King's College, Cambridge, previously an exclusive foundation, and in the introduction of mathematics and natural science into its course of study. He led the way to the creation of an exhibition fund by the gift of 400l., to which he afterwards made many additions.

In 1872 Johnson, who had two years previously inherited an estate at Halsdon, assumed the name of Cory and retired from Eton, resigning also his fellowship at King's. In 1878 he went for his health to Madeira, where he married, in August 1878, Rosa Caroline, daughter of George de Carteret Guille, rector of Little Torrington, Devonshire. He spent four years entirely in Madeira, and on his return in September 1882 settled at Hampstead, where he devoted much time to giving oral classical instruction to ladies, for his own sake as well as theirs. 'Women,' he says, 'are as divining rods to me; they relish everything that is taught.' He died on 11 June 1892, and was buried at Hampstead on 16 June. He left a son, Andrew Cory, born in July 1879.

Cory has a permanent and exceptional place among English lyrists as the singer of the affection of a teacher for his pupils. The first edition of his ‘Ionica,’ published anonymously in 1858, at first neglected, soon came to be sought and hoarded, and is now among the most prized of modern editiones principes. A new enlarged edition was reissued in 1891. In such pieces as 'Anteros' and ‘Mimnermus in Church’ emotional glow and pathetic tenderness are blended with indescribable charm. In the poems written subsequently, and published along with the original ‘Ionica’ in 1891, Cory has forsaken his ground of vantage, and appears as merely the elegant and melodious versifier. He practised Latin and Greek verse composition with consummate taste and skill; the original verses which accompany his ‘Lucretilis,’ a technical ‘introduction to the art of writing Latin lyric verses’ (2 parts, Eton, 1871), were pronounced by H. A. J. Munro ‘the best and