Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chorley, Charles
CHORLEY, CHARLES (1810?–1874), journalist and man of letters, born at Taunton about 1810, was the son of Lieutenant and Paymaster John Chorley of the 1st Somerset militia (d. Feb. 1839). The greater part of his life was spent at Truro, where he acted for thirty years as sub-editor and reporter of the ‘Cornwall Gazette,’ the old-established tory paper of the county. He held also the posts of secretary to the Truro Public Rooms Company, and sub-manager of the Truro Savings Bank. For eleven years (1863–74) he edited the ‘Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall,’ and did much to promote the energetic management of that society. He died at Lemon Street, Truro, on 22 June 1874, aged 64. Chorley was a man of wide scholarship, well versed in the classics and several modern languages, and of good classical taste. It was his custom to print for the private gratification of his friends, to whom alone the initials ‘C. C.’ revealed the authorship, small volumes of translations from the dead and living languages. The most important of them were versions of George Buchanan's tragedies of ‘Jephtha, or the Vow,’ and ‘The Baptist, or Calumny,’ and two volumes of miscellaneous renderings from the German, Italian, Spanish, and French, as well as from the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The titles of all these works may be read in the pages of the ‘Bibliotheca Cornubiensis.’ When the council of the Royal Institution of Cornwall purposed bringing out a volume under the title just given, the preparatory lists of the publications known to them were drawn up by Chorley and Mr. T. Q. Couch. This scheme did not propose the inclusion of more than the works relating to the topography or the history of the county, and even with that limited area the design was beyond the power of persons not acquainted with the treasures of the British Museum.
[Journ. Royal Instit. of Cornwall, October 1874, pp. iii–iv, vii; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. i. 69, iii. 1009, 1119.]