Henry Charles Beeching (15 May 1859 - 1919) was an English clergyman, author and poet. He was educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford. He took holy orders in 1882, and began work in a Liverpool parish. He later became Dean of Norwich. 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 those.

A Paradise of English Poetry

Anthology compiled by Beeching. Poets included were:

A. W. - Joseph Addison - Sir Francis Bacon - Richard Barnfield - Francis Beaumont - Thomas Lovell Beddoes - William Blake - Nicholas Breton - Emily Jane Brontë - Fulk Greville - 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 - Mrs. 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

External link

• The Masque of B-ll—l online