ABSTRACT
The athletic ability of the Coleridges was probably derived from the side of their grandmother, the wife of James Coleridge. There is little doubt that Charles Wordsworth inherited his athletic ability from his mother’s, his intellectual mainly, though certainly not entirely, from his father’s, side. He was nephew of the poet, and the athletic distinction achieved by the nephews of William Wordsworth was paralleled by the athletic distinction achieved by the great-nephews of another of the “Lake Poets,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Wells case is a striking and almost isolated example of athletic skill in an earlier, intellectual in a later, generation. In almost all other instances intellect precedes athletics. Three of the supreme writers of the mid-nineteenth century— Macaulay, Thackeray and Tennyson —had each, at least, one really brilliant athletic relative. There remain certain instances of members of distinguished families who signalized themselves in athletic pursuits other than cricket.
