Dix, William Chatterton

Author

b Bristol 1837, d Cheddar, Axbridge, Som 1898. He was named after the young poetic genius Thos Chatterton, whose tragically brief life had been chronicled by WCD’s father; Wm J Dix was a high church Bristol surgeon who nevertheless wrote a vivid and appreciative account of the preaching of Thos Binney (qv). William junr attended Bristol Grammar Sch; trained for a mercantile career and he became manager of a marine insurance company in Glasgow. He also wrote some very competent verse, marked by the high Anglicanism of his adult convictions. Among his published collections were Hymns of Love and Joy (1861), Altar Songs; verses on the Holy Eucharist (1867), Vision of All Saints (1871) and Seekers of a City (1878). He published two other devotional works and a children’s book on the life and example of Christ, and put into metrical form the prose translations of Gk and Abyssinian (Ethiopian) hymns made respectively by Richard Littledale and Rodwell. Many late-19th-c Anglocatholic books such as Lyra Eucharistica included his hymns; 5 of them were in EH and in the 1950 A&M. Two of his most popular have each been titled ‘The manger throne’: Like silver lamps in a distant shrine, and What child is this who, laid to rest, the latter written for and set to GREENSLEEVES. Both appeared in Christmas Carols New and Old (ed Bramley and Stainer, 1871) and many other collections since then. Nos.386, 918.