Chapter Clinton to Colenso of C by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

Cockton, Henry (1807-1852).—Novelist, born in London, is only remembered as an author for his novel of Valentine Vox (1840), the adventures of a ventriloquist.

Colenso, John William (1814-1883).—Mathematician and Biblical critic, born at St. Austell, Cornwall, and educated at St. John’s Coll., Cambridge, where he was a tutor, entered the Church, and published various mathematical treatises and Village Sermons. In 1853 he was appointed first Bishop of Natal. He mastered the Zulu language, introduced printing, wrote a Zulu grammar and dictionary, and many useful reading-books for the natives. His Commentary on the Romans (1861) excited great opposition from the High Church party, and his Critical Examination of the Pentateuch (1862-1879), by its then extreme views, created great alarm and excitement. He was in 1863 deposed and excommunicated by Bishop Gray of Cape Town, but confirmed in his see by the Courts of Law. His theological writings are now largely superseded; but his mathematical text-books, for the writing of which he was much better equipped, hold their place.