The Encyclopædia Britannica contains the following entry:

E. C. Bentley (British author)
born July 10, 1875, London, Eng.
died March 30, 1956, London

British journalist and man of letters who is remembered as the inventor of the clerihew and for his other light verse and as the author of Trent’s Last Case (1913), a classic detective story that remains a best-seller.

After attending St. Paul’s School in London (where he met G.K. Chesterton, who became his closest friend) and the University of Oxford, Bentley lived in London and studied law. He soon abandoned the law, however, for journalism, which he practiced for most of his life.

The clerihew, a “baseless biography,” consisting of a four-line stanza of two rhyming couplets, the first rhyme being provided by the name of the subject, was introduced in Biography for Beginners, by “E. Clerihew” (1905), and was immediately popular and soon widely imitated. More Biography (1929) was followed by Baseless Biography (1939), illustrated by Bentley’s son, Nicolas. In Clerihews Complete (1951) all Bentley’s clerihews are collected.

Bentley wrote Trent’s Last Case in exasperation at the infallibility of Sherlock Holmes, and the book has been said to mark the end of the Holmes era in detective fiction. Two decades later, Bentley revived this character in Trent’s Own Case (1936; with Warner Allen) and in Trent Intervenes (1938), a collection of short stories.

The Oxford English Dictionary contains the following definition:

clerihew

[f. the name of Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956).]

A short comic or nonsensical verse, professedly biographical, of two couplets differing in length.

1928 Weekend Book 331 ‘Clerihews’ on your personal friends, with nice slack metres and sly points like ‘Sir Christopher Wren Was going to dine with some men. He said, “If anybody calls, Say I’m designing Saint Paul’s.”’    1940 E. C. BENTLEY in N. & Q. CLXXVIII. 141/2 Clerihew. This formless form of verse was so called because my book, ‘Biography for Beginners’, in which it originated, was published under the name of E. Clerihew, my Christian name. This was in 1906, and the name was applied to the form soon after this by some unknown reader   1958 New Statesman 12 Apr. 483/1 It is some years since we set a clerihew.

So here, without further ado, are some of Bentley’s clerihews, arranged in chronological order according to subject and with links to the Wikipedia entires on each name.

—JLW

CLERIHEWS

by E. C. Bentley

The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.

Edward the Confessor
Slept under the dresser.
When that began to pall,
He slept in the hall.

I doubt if King John
Was a sine qua non.
I could rather imagine it
Of any other Plantagenet.

Dante Alighieri
Seldom troubled a dairy.
He wrote the Inferno
On a bottle of Pernod.

The people of Spain think Cervantes
Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes;
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy.

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, ‘I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St. Paul’s.’

The meaning of the poet Gay
Was always as clear as day,
While that of the poet Blake
Was often practically opaque.

It was a weakness of Voltaire‘s
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.

What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.

George the Third
Ought never to have occurred.
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.

Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote Principles of Political Economy.

Chapman & Hall
Swore not at all.
Mr. Chapman’s yea was yea,
And Mr. Hall’s nay was nay.