CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, b. 1742, d. 1826. --------------------------------------------- | | Charles Wentworth Dilke = Maria Dover William Dilke, b. 1796, b. 1789, d. 1864. | Walker. d. 1885. | | ------------------------------------------------------- | | Charles Wentworth Dilke = M. Mary William Wentworth first Baronet, b. 1810, Chatfield. Grant Dilke, killed in d. 1869. Crimea, b. 1826, d. 1854 | | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | Charles Wentworth Dilke = (1) Katherine Ashton Dilke, second Baronet, | M. E. Sheil. b. 1850, d. 1883. b. 1843, d. 1911. | (2) Emilia F. S. | Pattison. | Charles Wentworth Dilke, present Baronet, b. 1874.] The second of them, Charles Wentworth Dilke, his eldest son, and grandfather to the subject of the memoir, was, like his father, a clerk in the Admiralty; but early in life showed qualities which fitted him to succeed in another sphere of work--qualities through which he exercised a remarkable influence over the character and career of his grandson. So potent was this influence in moulding the life which has to be chronicled, that it is necessary to give some clear idea of the person who exercised it. Mr. Dilke--who shall be so called to distinguish him from his son Wentworth Dilke, and from his grandson Charles Dilke--at an early period added the pursuit of literature to his duties as a civil servant. By 1815, when he was only twenty-six, Gifford, the editor of the _Quarterly Review_, already spoke highly of him; and between that date and 1830 he was contributing largely to the monthly and quarterly reviews. In 1830 he acquired a main share in the _Athenaeum_, a journal 'but just born yet nevertheless dying,' and quickly raised it into the high position of critical authority which it maintained, not only throughout his own life, but throughout his grandson's. So careful was Mr. Dilke to preserve its reputation for impartial judgment, that during the sixteen years in which he had virtually entire control of the paper, he withdrew altogether from general society "in order to avoid making literary acquaintances which might either prove annoying to him, or be supposed to compromise the independence of his journal." [Footnote: From _Papers of a Critic_, a selection of Mr. Dilke's essays, edited, with a memoir, by Sir Charles Dilke, See _infra_, p. 184.]