1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chenery, Thomas

CHENERY, THOMAS (1826–1884), English scholar and editor of The Times, was born in 1826 at Barbados. He was educated at Eton and Caius College, Cambridge. Having been called to the bar, he went out to Constantinople as The Times correspondent just before the Crimean War, and it was under the influence there of Algernon Smythe (afterwards Lord Strangford) that he first turned to those philological studies in which he became eminent. After the war he returned to London and wrote regularly for The Times for many years, eventually succeeding Delane as editor in 1877. He was then an experienced publicist, particularly well versed in Oriental affairs, an indefatigable worker, with a rapid and comprehensive judgment, though he lacked Delane’s intuition for public opinion. It was as an Orientalist, however, that he had meantime earned the highest reputation, his knowledge of Arabic and Hebrew being almost unrivalled and his gift for languages exceptional. In 1868 he was appointed Lord Almoner’s professor of Arabic at Oxford, and retained his position until he became editor of The Times. He was one of the company of revisers of the Old Testament. He was secretary for some time to the Royal Asiatic Society, and published learned editions of the Arabic classic The Assemblies of Al-Harirī and of the Machberoth Ithiel. He died in London on the 11th of February 1884.