Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

When the union with Scotland came into operation in May 1707 the queen in council named Cowper lord high chancellor of Great Britain, he being the first to hold this office. He presided at the trial of Dr Sacheverell in 1710, but resigned the seal when Harley and Bolingbroke took office in the same year. On the death of Queen Anne, George I. appointed Cowper one of the lords justices for governing the country during the king's absence, and a few weeks later he again became lord chancellor. A paper which he drew up for the guidance of the new king on constitutional matters, entitled _An Impartial History of Parties_, marks the advance of English opinion towards party government in the modern sense. It was published by Lord Campbell in his _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_. Cowper supported the impeachment of Lord Oxford for high treason in 1715, and in 1716 presided as lord high steward at the trials of the peers charged with complicity in the Jacobite rising, his sentences on whom have been censured as unnecessarily severe. He warmly supported the septennial bill in the same year. On the 18th of March 1718 he was created Viscount Fordwich and Earl Cowper, and a month later he resigned office on the plea of ill-health, but probably in reality because George I. accused him of espousing the prince of Wales's side in his quarrel with the king. Taking the lead against his former colleagues, Cowper opposed the proposal brought forward in 1719 to limit the number of peers, and also the bill of pains and penalties against Atterbury in 1723. In his last years he was accused, but probably without reason, of active sympathy with the Jacobites. He died at his residence, Colne Green, built by himself on the site of the present mansion of Panshanger on the 10th of October 1723.

Cowper was not a great lawyer, but Burnet says that "he managed the court of chancery with impartial justice and great despatch"; the most eminent of his contemporaries agreed in extolling his oratory and his virtues. He was twice married--first, about 1686, to Judith, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Booth, a London merchant; and secondly, in 1706, to Mary, daughter of John Clavering, of Chopwell, Durham. Swift (_Examiner_, xvii., xxii.) alludes to an allegation that Cowper had been guilty of bigamy, a slander for which there appears to have been no solid foundation. His younger brother, Spencer Cowper (1669-1728), was tried for the murder of Sarah Stout in 1699, but was acquitted; the lady, who had fallen in love with Cowper, having in fact committed suicide on account of his inattention. He was one of the managers of the impeachment of Sacheverell; was attorney-general to the prince of Wales (1714), chief justice of Chester (1717), and judge of the common pleas (1727). He was grandfather of William Cowper, the poet.

The 1st earl left two sons and two daughters by his second wife. The eldest son, William (1709-1764), who succeeded to the title, assumed the name of Clavering in addition to that of Cowper on the death of his maternal uncle. His wife was a daughter of the earl of Grantham, and grand-daughter of the earl of Ossory. The son of this marriage, George Nassau, 3rd Earl Cowper (1738-1789), inherited the estates of the earl of Grantham; and in 1778 he was created by the emperor Joseph II. a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The 5th earl (1778-1837) married a daughter of Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, by whom he had two sons; and his widow married as her second husband Lord Palmerston, who devised his property of Broadlands to her second son, William Francis Cowper-Temple (1811-1888), who was created Baron Mount Temple in 1880. The elder son, George Augustus Frederick (1806-1856), 6th Earl Cowper, married Anne Florence, daughter of Thomas Philip, earl de Grey; and this lady at her father's death became _suo jure_ baroness Lucas of Cradwell. Francis Thomas de Grey, 7th Earl Cowper (1834-1905), in addition to the other family titles, became in 1871 10th Baron Dingwall in the peerage of Scotland, and 8th Baron Butler of Moore Park in the peerage of Ireland as heir-general of Thomas, earl of Ossory, son of the 1st duke of Ormonde; the attainder of 1715 affecting those titles having been reversed in July 1871. On the death of his mother he also inherited the barony of Lucas of Cradwell. On the death without issue in 1905 of the 7th earl, who was lord lieutenant of Ireland 1880-1882, the earldom and barony of Cowper, together with the viscountcy of Fordwich, became extinct; the barony of Butler fell into abeyance among his sisters and their heirs, and the baronies of Lucas and Dingwall devolved on his nephew, Auberon Thomas Herbert (b. 1876).

See _Private Diary of Earl Cowper_, edited by E. C. Hawtrey for the
Roxburghe Club (Eton, 1833); _The Diary of Mary, Countess Cowper_,
edited by the Hon. Spencer Cowper (London, 1864); Lord Campbell,
_Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal_ (8
vols., London, 1845-1869); Edward Foss, _The Judges of England_ (9
vols., London, 1848-1864); Gilbert Burnet, _History of his Own Time_
(6 vols., Oxford, 1833); T. B. Howell, _State Trials_, vol. xii.-xv.
(33 vols., London, 1809-1828); G. E. C., _Complete Peerage_ (London,
1889). (R. J. M.)

COWPER, WILLIAM (1731-1800), English poet, was born in the rectory (now rebuilt) of Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, on the 26th of November (O.S. 15th) 1731, his father the Rev. John Cowper being rector of the parish as well as a chaplain to George II. On both the father's and the mother's side he was of ancient lineage. The father could trace his family back to the time of Edward IV. when the Cowpers were Sussex landowners, while his mother, Ann, daughter of Roger Donne of Ludham Hall, Norfolk, was of the same race as the poet Donne, and the family claimed to have Plantagenet blood in its veins. Of more human interest were Cowper's immediate predecessors. His grandfather was that Spencer Cowper who, after being tried for his life on a charge of murder, lived to be a judge of the court of common pleas, while his elder brother became lord chancellor and Earl Cowper, a title which became extinct in 1905. Here is the poet's genealogical tree.

John Cooper,[1] Alderman of London (d. 1609).
|
Sir William Cowper, Bart. (d. 1642).
|
John Cowper (died in prison 1643).
|
Sir William Cowper, 2nd Bart. (d. 1706).
_____________|__________
| |
William, Earl Cowper, Spencer Cowper,
Lord Chancellor (d. 1723). Judge (1669-1728).
_________________________________|___________
| | |
William Cowper Rev. John Cowper Ashley Cowper
(d. 1740). (d. 1756). (d. 1788).
| |
| ________|________
William Cowper, | |
the poet Lady Hesketh. Theodora.
(1731-1800).

The Rev. John Cowper was twice married. Cowper's mother, to whom the memorable lines were written beginning "Oh that these lips had language," was his first wife. She died in 1737 at the age of thirty-four, when the poet was but six years old, and she is buried in Berkhampstead church. Cowper's stepmother is buried in Bath, and a tablet on the walls of the cathedral commemorates her memory. The father, who appears to have been a conscientious clergyman with no special interest in his sons, died in 1756 and was buried in the Cowper tomb at Panshanger. Only one other of his seven children grew to manhood--John, who was born in 1737.

The poet appears to have attended a dame's school in earliest infancy, but on his mother's death, when he was six years old, he was sent to boarding-school, to a Dr Pitman at Markyate, a village 6 m. from Berkhampstead. From 1738 to 1741 he was placed in the care of an oculist, as he suffered from inflammation of the eyes. In the latter year he was sent to Westminster school, where he had Warren Hastings, Impey, Lloyd, Churchill and Colman for schoolfellows. It was at the Markyate school that he suffered the tyranny that he commemorated in _Tirocinium_. His days at Westminster, Southey thinks, were "probably the happiest in his life," but a boy of nervous temperament is always unhappy at school. At the age of eighteen Cowper entered a solicitor's office in Ely Place, Holborn. Here he had Thurlow, the future lord chancellor, as a fellow-clerk, and it is stated that Thurlow promised to help his less pushful comrade in the days of realized ambition. Three years in Ely Place were rendered happy by frequent visits to his uncle Ashley's house in Southampton Row, where he fell deeply in love with his cousin Theodora Cowper. At twenty-one years of age he took chambers in the Middle Temple, where we first hear of the dejection of spirits that accompanied him periodically through manhood. He was called to the bar in 1754. In 1759 he removed to the Inner Temple and was made a commissioner of bankrupts. His devotion to his cousin, however, was a source of unhappiness. Her father, possibly influenced by Cowper's melancholy tendencies, perhaps possessed by prejudices against the marriage of cousins, interposed, and the lovers were separated--as it turned out for ever. During three years he was a member of the Nonsense Club with his two schoolfellows from Westminster, Churchill and Lloyd, and he wrote sundry verses in magazines and translated two books of Voltaire's _Henriade_. A crisis occurred in Cowper's life when his cousin Major Cowper nominated him to a clerkship in the House of Lords. It involved a preliminary appearance at the bar of the house. The prospect drove him insane, and he attempted suicide; he purchased poison, he placed a penknife at his heart, but hesitated to apply either measure of self-destruction. He has told, in dramatic manner, of his more desperate endeavour to hang himself with a garter. Here he all but succeeded. His friends were informed, and he was sent to a private lunatic asylum at St Albans, where he remained for eighteen months under the charge of Dr Nathaniel Cotton, the author of _Visions_. Upon his recovery he removed to Huntingdon in order to be near his brother John, who was a fellow of St Benet's College, Cambridge. John had visited his brother at St Albans and arranged this. An attempt to secure suitable lodgings nearer to Cambridge had been ineffectual. In June 1765 he reached Huntingdon, and his life here was essentially happy. His illness had broken him off from all his old friends save only his cousin Lady Hesketh, Theodora's sister, but new acquaintances were made, the Unwins being the most valued. This family consisted of Morley Unwin (a clergyman), his wife Mary, and his son (William) and daughter (Susannah). The son struck up a warm friendship which his family shared. Cowper entered the circle as a boarder in November (1765). All went serenely until in July 1767 Morley Unwin was thrown from his horse and killed. A very short time before this event the Unwins had received a visit from the Rev. John Newton (q.v.), the curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire, with whom they became friends. Newton suggested that the widow and her children with Cowper should take up their abode in Olney. This was achieved in the closing months of 1767. Here Cowper was to reside for nineteen years, and he was to render the town and its neighbourhood memorable by his presence and by his poetry. His residence in the Market Place was converted into a Cowper Museum a hundred years after his death, in 1900. Here his life went on its placid course, interrupted only by the death of his brother in 1770, until 1773, when he became again deranged. It can scarcely be doubted that this second attack interrupted the contemplated marriage of Cowper with Mary Unwin, although Southey could find no evidence of the circumstance and Newton was not informed of it. J. C. Bailey brings final evidence of this (_The Poems of Cowper_, page 15). The fact was kept secret in later years in order to spare the feelings of Theodora Cowper, who thought that her cousin had remained as faithful as she had done to their early love.

It was not until 1776 that the poet's mind cleared again. In 1779 he made his first appearance as an author by the _Olney Hymns_, written in conjunction with Newton, Cowper's verses being indicated by a "C." Mrs Unwin suggested secular verse, and Cowper wrote much, and in 1782 when he was fifty-one years old there appeared _Poems of William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq.: London, Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72 St Paul's Churchyard_. The volume contained "Table Talk," "The Progress of Error," "Truth," "Expostulation" and much else that survives to be read in our day by virtue of the poet's finer work. This finer work was the outcome of his friendship with Lady Austen, a widow who, on a visit to her sister, the wife of the vicar of the neighbouring village of Clifton, made the acquaintance of Cowper and Mrs Unwin. The three became great friends. Lady Austen determined to give up her house in London and to settle in Olney. She suggested _The Task_ and inspired _John Gilpin_ and _The Royal George_. But in 1784 the friendship was at an end, doubtless through Mrs Unwin's jealousy of Lady Austen. Cowper's second volume appeared in 1785;--_The Task: A Poem in Six Books. By William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq.; To which are added by the same author An Epistle to Joseph Hill, Esq., Tirocinium or a Review of Schools, and the History of John Gilpin: London, Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72 St Paul's Church Yard; 1785._ His first book had been a failure, one critic even declaring that "Mr Cowper was certainly a good, pious man, but without one spark of poetic fire." This second book was an instantaneous success, and indeed marks an epoch in literary history. But before its publication--in 1784--the poet had commenced the translation of Homer. In 1786 his life at Olney was cheered by Lady Hesketh taking up a temporary residence there. The cousins met after an interval of twenty-three years, and Lady Hesketh was to be Cowper's good angel to the end, even though her letters disclose a considerable impatience with Mrs Unwin. At the end of 1786 a removal was made to Weston Underwood, the neighbouring village which Cowper had frequently visited as the guest of his Roman Catholic friends the Throckmortons. This was to be his home for yet another ten years. Here he completed his translation of Homer, materially assisted by Mr Throckmorton's chaplain Dr Gregson. There are six more months of insanity to record in 1787. In 1790, a year before the _Homer_ was published, commenced his friendship with his cousin John Johnson, known to all biographers of the poet as "Johnny of Norfolk." Johnson also aspired to be a poet, and visited his cousin armed with a manuscript. Cowper discouraged the poetry, but loved the writer, and the two became great friends. New friends were wanted, for in 1792 Mrs Unwin had a paralytic stroke, and henceforth she was a hopeless invalid. A new and valued friend of this period was Hayley, famous in his own day as a poet and in history for his association with Romney and Cowper. He was drawn to Cowper by the fact that both were contemplating an edition of "Milton," Cowper having received a commission to edit, writing notes and translating the Latin and Italian poems. The work was never completed. In 1794 Cowper was again insane and his lifework was over. In the following year a removal took place into Norfolk under the loving care of John Johnson. Johnson took Cowper and Mary Unwin to North Tuddenham, thence to Mundesley, then to Dunham Lodge, near Swaffham, and finally in October 1796 they moved to East Dereham. In December of that year Mrs Unwin died. Cowper lingered on, dying on the 25th of April 1800. The poet is buried near Mrs Unwin in East Dereham church.

Cowper is among the poets who are epoch-makers. He brought a new spirit into English verse, and redeemed it from the artificiality and the rhetoric of many of his predecessors. With him began the "enthusiasm of humanity" that was afterwards to become so marked in the poetry of Burns and Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron. With him began the deep sympathy with nature, and love of animal life, which was to characterize so much of later poetry.

Although Cowper cannot rank among the world's greatest poets or even among the most distinguished of poets of his own country, his place is a very high one. He had what is a rare quality among English poets, the gift of humour, which was very singularly absent from others who possessed many other of the higher qualities of the intellect. Certain of his poems, moreover,--for example, "To Mary," "The Receipt of my Mother's Portrait," and the ballad "On the Loss of the Royal George,"--will, it may safely be affirmed, continue to be familiar to each successive generation in a way that pertains to few things in literature. Added to this, one may note Cowper's distinction as a letter-writer. He ranks among the half-dozen greatest letter-writers in the English language, and he was perhaps the only great letter-writer with whom the felicity was due to the power of what he has seen rather than what he has read.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The first important life of Cowper was by Hayley in
1803. In its complete form it appeared in 4 volumes in 1806 and was
reprinted in 1809 and 1812. It was reprinted again by the Rev. T. S.
Grimshawe with the Correspondence in 8 volumes in 1835. Robert
Southey's much more valuable _Life and Letters_ appeared also in 15
volumes in 1834-1837. The _Private Correspondence_, edited by John
Johnson, appeared in 2 volumes in 1824 and again in 1835. The
_Complete Correspondence_, edited by Thomas Wright, was published in
1904, but more correspondence appeared in _Notes and Queries_, July,
August and September 1904, and in _The Poems of William Cowper_,
edited by J. C. Bailey (1905). Edward Dowden unearthed new
correspondence with William Hayley in _The Atlantic Monthly_ (1907).
Short lives of Cowper have appeared in many quarters, from Thomas
Taylor's (1833) to Goldwin Smith's in the "English Men of Letters"
series (1880). Another brief biography of great merit is attached to
the Globe edition of Cowper's _Works_. Essays by Leslie Stephen,
Stopford Brooke, Whitwell Elwin, George Eliot and Walter Bagehot
deserve attention. See also St Beuve's _Causeries du Lundi_ (1868),
vol. xi.; _Letters of Lady Hesketh to John Johnson_ (1901); _John
Newton_, by the Rev. Josiah Bull (1868); _Cowper and Mary Unwin_, by
Caroline Gearey (1900); and _A Concordance to the Poetic Works of
William Cowper_, by John Neave (1887). (C. K. S.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Alderman Cooper thus spelt his name and all the family from that
day to this, including the poet, have so pronounced it.

COWRY, the popular name of the shells of the _Cypraeida_, a family of mollusks. Upwards of 100 species are recognized, and they are widely distributed over the world--their habitat being the shallow water along the sea-shore. The best known is the money cowry or _Cypraea moneta_, a small shell about half an inch in length, white and straw-coloured without and blue within, which derives its distinctive name from the fact that in various countries it has been employed as a kind of currency. (See SHELL-MONEY.) In Africa among those tribes, such as the Niam-Niam, who do not recognize their monetary value, the shells are in demand as fashionable decorations, just as in Germany they were in use as an ornament for horses' harness, and were popular enough to acquire several native names, such as _Brustharnisch_ or breastplates, and _Otterkopfchen_ or little adders' heads. Besides the _Cypraea moneta_ various species are employed in this decorative use. The _Cypraea aurora_ is a mark of chieftainship among the natives of the Friendly Islands; the _Cypraea annulus_ is a favourite with the Asiatic islanders; and several of the larger kinds have been used in Europe for the carving of cameos. The tiger cowry, _Cypraea tigris_, so well known as a mantelpiece ornament in England and America, is commonly used by the natives of the Sandwich Islands to sink their nets; and they have also an ingenious plan of cementing portions of several shells into a smooth oval ball which they then employ as a bait to catch the cuttle-fish. While the species already mentioned occur in myriads in their respective habitats, the _Cypraea princeps_ and the _Cypraea umbilicata_ are extremely rare.

COW-TREE, or MILK-TREE, _Brosimum Galactodendron_ (natural order Moraceae), a native of Venezuela. As in other members of the order, the stem contains a milky latex, which flows out in considerable quantities when a notch is cut in it. The "milk" is sweet and pleasant tasting. Another species, _B. Alicastrum_, the bread-nut tree, a native of central America and Jamaica, bears a fruit which is cooked and eaten. The bread-fruit (_Artocarpus_) is an allied genus of the same natural order.

COX, DAVID (1783-1859), English painter, was born on the 29th of April 1783, in a small house attached to the forge of his father, a hardworking master smith, in a mean suburb of Birmingham. Turning his hand to what he could get to do, Joseph Cox, the father, was both blacksmith and whitesmith, and when the war with France began took to the making of bayonets and horse shoes, on wholesale commission, and immediately the boy David was thought able to assist he was taken from the poor elementary school in the neighbourhood, and set to the anvil. The attempt to turn the boy to this kind of labour had, however, been made too early; it was too heavy for his strength, and he was sent to what was called by the cyclops of Birmingham a "toy trade," making lacquered buckles, painted lockets, tin snuff-boxes and other "fancy" articles. Here David very soon acquired some power of painting miniatures, and his talents might have been misdirected had his master, Fieldler by name, not released him from his apprenticeship by dying by his own hand; and David found an opening as colour-grinder and scene-painter's fag in the theatre then leased, with several others, by the father of Macready, the tragedian.

This obscure step, not one of promotion at the time, was really the most important incident in the uneventful career of Cox. The boy, who had inherited a rather weakly body, and had been trained with care by a pious mother, while intellectually negative and unable to cope with any kind of learning whatever, had endless perseverance, great strength of application, and all through life remained genial, gentle, simple-minded and modest, his penetration and self-reliance being wholly professional, inspired by his love of nature and his knowledge of his subject. Not very quick, and with little versatility, he went step by step in one line of study from the time he began to get the smallest remuneration for his pictures to the age of seventy-five, when he painted large in oil very much the same class of subjects he had of old produced small in water-colours, with the same impressive and unaffectedly noble sentiment, only increased by the mastery of almost infinite practice. He was never led astray by fictitious splendour of any kind, except once indeed in 1825, when he imitated Turner, and produced a classic subject he called "Carthage, Aeneas, and Achates." He never visited Venice or Egypt, or crossed the Channel except for a week or two in Belgium and Paris, and never even went to Scotland for painting purposes. Bettws-y-Coed and its neighbourhood was everything to him, and characteristics most truly English were beloved by him with a sort of filial instinct. So completely did he love the country, that even London, where it was his interest to live, had few attractions, and did not retain him long.

This residence in the metropolis which began in 1804 was, however, of the most essential educational advantage to him. The Water-Colour Society was established the year after he arrived, and was mainly supported by landscape-painters. He was not, of course, admitted at first into membership, not till 1813, before which time an attempt to establish a rival exhibition had been made. In this Cox joined, the result being very serious to him, an entire failure entailing the seizure and forced sale of all the pictures. At that time the tightest economy was the rule with him, and to save the trifling cost of new strainers or stretching boards, he covered up one picture by another. When these works were prepared for re-sale, fifty years afterwards, some of them yielded picture after picture, peeled off the boards like the waistcoats from the body of the gravedigger in Hamlet!

While lodging near Astley's Circus he married his landlady's daughter, and then took a modest cottage at Dulwich, where he gradually left off scene-painting and became teacher, giving lessons at ten shillings a lesson. This entailed walking to the pupils' homes, and the gift of the paintings done before the pupils. These have since been frequently sold for large sums, but his own price, when lucky enough to sell his best works, was never over a few pounds, and more frequently about fifteen shillings. Sometimes, indeed, he sold them in quantities at two pounds a dozen to be resold to country teachers. By and by he resisted the leaving of the work done to the pupil, but with little advantage to himself, as he saw no end to the accumulation of his own productions, and actually tore them up, and threw them into areas, or pushed them into drains during his trudge homeward. A number of years after he pointed out a particular drain to a friend, and said, "Many a work of mine has gone down that way to the Thames!"

Shortly after he had turned thirty, his stay in London suddenly ended. He was offered the enormous sum of L100 per annum, by a ladies' college in Hereford, and thither he went. This sum he supplemented by teaching in the Hereford grammar school for many years, at six guineas a year, and in other schools at better pay, but still, and up to his fortieth year, we find his prices for pictures from eight to twenty-five shillings. Cox has no history apart from his productions, and these particulars as to his remuneration possess an interest almost dramatic when we contrast them with the enormous sums realized by his later works, and with the "honours and observance, troops of friends," that accompanied old age with him, when settled down in his own home at Harborne, near his native town, where he died on the 7th of June 1859.

Cox's second short residence in London, dating from 1835 to 1840, marks the period of his highest powers. During those years, and for twelve years after, his productiveness kept pace with his mastery, and it would be difficult to overrate the impressiveness of effect, and high feeling, within the narrow range of subject displayed by many of these works. He was now surrounded by dealers, and wealth flowed in upon him. Still he remained the same, a man with few wants and scarcely any enjoyments except those furnished by his brush and his colours. The home at Harborne was a pleasant one, but the approach to the front was useless as the door was kept fastened up, the only entrance being through the garden at the back, and the principal room appropriated as his studio he was content to reach by a narrow stair from the kitchen. Neither in it nor elsewhere was there any luxury or even taste visible:--no _bric-a-brac_, no objects of interest, few or no books, no pictures except landscapes by his friends. When in winter, after his wife's death, the fire went out, and the cold at last surprised him, he lifted his easel into the little dining-room and began again. A union of his friends was formed in 1855 to procure a portrait of him, which was painted by Sir J. Watson Gordon; and an exhibition of his works was opened in London in 1858 and again another in 1859. This was actually open when the news of his death arrived.

The number of David Cox's works, great and small, is enormous. He produced hundreds annually for perhaps forty-five years. Before his death and for ten years thereafter, their prices were remarkable, as witness the following obtained at auction--"Going to the Mill," L1575; "Old Mill at Bettws-y-Coed," L1575; "Outskirts of a Wood, with Gipsies," L2305; "Peace and War," L3430.

See Hall, _Biography of David Cox_ (1881). (W. B. Sc.)

COX, SIR GEORGE WILLIAM (1827-1902), English divine and scholar, was born on the 10th of January 1827, at Benares, India, and was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Oxford. In 1850 he was ordained, and in 1860 took a mastership at Cheltenham College, which he held for only a year. He had already contributed to the _Edinburgh Review_, and had published in 1850 _Poems, Legendary and Historical_ (with E. A. Freeman), and in 1853 a _Life of St Boniface_. From 1861 he devoted himself entirely to literary work, chiefly in connexion with history and comparative mythology. Many of his works were avowedly popular in character, and the most important, the _History of Greece_, has been superseded and is now of little value. His studies in mythology were inspired by Max Muller, but his treatment of the subjects was his own. He was an extreme supporter of the solar and nebular theory as the explanation of myths. He also edited (with W. T. Brande) _A Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art_ (1875). Sir George Cox (who succeeded to the baronetcy in 1877) was a Broad Churchman, and a prominent supporter of Bishop Colenso in 1863-1865; and five years after Colenso's death he published (1888) his _Life_ of the bishop. He was himself nominated to the see of Natal, but was refused consecration. In 1881 he was made vicar of Scrayingham, York, but resigned the living in 1897. In 1896 he was given a civil list pension. He died at Walmer on the 9th of February 1902.

WORKS.--_Tales from Greek Mythology_ (1861); _A Manual of Mythology_
(1867); _Latin and Teutonic Christendom_ (1870); _The Mythology of the
Aryan Nations_ (1870, new ed., 1882); _History of Greece_ (1874);
_General History of Greece_ (1876); _History of the Establishment of
British Rule in India_, and _An Introduction to the Science of
Comparative Mythology_ (1881); _Lives of Greek Statesmen_ (1885);
_Concise History of England_ (1887).

COX, JACOB DOLSON (1828-1900), American general, political leader and educationalist, was born on the 27th of October 1828 in Montreal, Canada. His father, a shipbuilder of German descent (Koch), and his mother, a descendant of William Brewster, were natives of New York City, where the boy grew up, studying law in an office in 1842-1844, and working in a broker's office in 1844-1846, and where, under the influence of Charles G. Finney (1792-1875), whose daughter he afterwards married, he prepared himself for the ministry. He graduated at Oberlin College in 1851, having in the meantime given up his theological studies in rebellion at Finney's dogmatism. In 1851-1853 he was superintendent of schools at Warren, Ohio; in 1853 was admitted to the Ohio bar, being at that time an anti-slavery Whig; and in 1859 was elected to the state senate, in which with Garfield and James Monroe (1821-1898) he formed the "Radical Triumvirate," Cox himself presenting a petition for a personal liberty law and urging woman's rights, especially larger property rights to married women. Appointed by Governor Dennison one of three brigadiers-general of militia in 1860, he eagerly undertook the study of tactics, strategy and military history. He rendered great assistance in raising troops for the Union service in 1861, enlisted himself in spite of poor health and a family of six small children, and in April was commissioned a brigadier-general, U.S.V. He took part in the West Virginia campaign of 1861, served in the Kanawha region, in supreme command after Rosecrans's relief in the spring, until August 1862, when his troops were ordered to join Burnside's 9th Corps in Virginia. After the death at his side of General Reno in the battle of South Mountain, and during Antietam, Cox commanded the corps, and at the close of the campaign (6th Oct. 1862) he was appointed major-general, U.S.V., but the appointment was not confirmed. In April-December 1863 he was head of the department of Ohio. In 1864 he took part in the Atlanta campaign under Sherman, as a divisional and subsequently corps-commander: at the battle of Franklin he commanded the 23rd Corps, and he served at Nashville also. He led an expedition following Sherman into the Carolinas and fought two successful actions with Bragg at Kinston, N.C. He was governor of Ohio in 1866-1867, and as such advocated the colonization of the freedmen in a restricted area, and sympathized with President Johnson's programme of Reconstruction and worked for a compromise between Johnson and his opponents, although he finally deserted Johnson. In 1868 he was chairman of the Republican national convention which nominated Grant. He was secretary of the interior in 1869-1870; opposed the confirmation of the treaty for the annexation of Santo Domingo, negotiated by O. E. Babcock and urged by President Grant; introduced the merit system in his department, and resigned in October 1870 because of pressure put on him by politicians piqued at his prohibition of campaign levies on his clerks, and because of the interference of Grant in favour of William McGarrahan's attempt by legal proceedings to obtain from Cox a patent to certain California mining lands. He took up legal practice in Cincinnati, became president in 1873, and until 1877 was receiver, of the Toledo & Wabash & Western. In 1877-1879 he was a representative in Congress. From 1881 to 1897 he was dean of the Cincinnati law school, and from 1885 to 1889 president of the University of Cincinnati. He died at Magnolia, Massachusetts, on the 4th of August 1900. A successful lawyer, and in his later years a prominent microscopist, who won a gold medal of honour for microphotography at the Antwerp Exposition of 1891, he is best known as one of the greatest "civilian" generals of the Civil War, and, with the possible exception of J. C. Ropes, the highest American authority of his time on military history, particularly the history of the American Civil War. He wrote _Atlanta_ (New York, 1882) and _The March to the Sea, Franklin and Nashville_ (New York, 1882), both in the series _Campaigns of the Civil War_; _The Second Battle of Bull Run, as Connected with the Fitz-John Porter Case_ (Cincinnati, 1882); and the valuable _Military Reminiscences of the Civil War_ (2 vols., New York, 1900) published posthumously.

See J. R. Ewing, _Public Services of Jacob Dolson Cox_ (Washington,
1902), a Johns Hopkins University dissertation; and W. C. Cochran,
"Early Life and Military Services of General Jacob Dolson Cox," in
_Bibliotheca Sacra_, vol. 58 (Oberlin, Ohio, 1901).

COX, KENYON (1856- ), American painter, was born at Warren, Ohio, on the 27th of October 1856, being the son of Gen. Jacob Dolson Cox. He was a pupil of Carolus-Duran and of J. L. Gerome in Paris from 1877 to 1882, when he opened a studio in New York, subsequently teaching with much success in the Art Students' League. His earlier work was mainly of the nude drawn with great academic correctness in somewhat conventional colour. Receiving little encouragement for such pictures, he turned to mural decorative work, in which he achieved prominence. Among his better-known examples are the frieze for the court room of the Appellate Court, New York, and decorations for the Walker Art Gallery, Bowdoin College; for the Capitol at Saint Paul, Minnesota, and for other public and private buildings. He wrote with much authority on art topics, and is the author of the critical reviews, _Old Masters and New_ (1905) and _Painters and Sculptors_ (1907), besides some poems. He became a National Academician in 1903. His wife, _nee_ Louise H. King (b. 1865), whom he married in 1892, also became a figure and portrait-painter of note.

COX, RICHARD (1500?-1581), dean of Westminster and bishop of Ely, was born of obscure parentage at Whaddon, Buckinghamshire, in 1499 or 1500. He was educated at the Benedictine priory of St Leonard Snelshall near Whaddon, at Eton, and at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1524. At Wolsey's invitation he became a member of the cardinal's new foundation at Oxford, was incorporated B.A. in 1525, and created M.A. in 1526. In 1530 he was engaged in persuading the more unruly members of the university to approve of the king's divorce. A premature expression of Lutheran views is said to have caused his departure from Oxford and even his imprisonment, but the records are silent on these sufferings which do not harmonize with his appointment as master of the royal foundation at Eton. In 1533 he appears as author of an ode on the coronation of Anne Boleyn, in 1535 he graduated B.D. at Cambridge, proceeding D.D. in 1537, and in the same year subscribing the Institution of a Christian Man. In 1540 he was one of the fifteen divines to whom were referred crucial questions on the sacraments and the seat of authority in the Church; his answers (printed in Pocock's _Burnet_, iii. 443-496) indicate a mind tending away from Catholicism, but susceptible to "the king's doctrine"; and, indeed, Cox was one of the divines by whom Henry said the "King's Book" had been drawn up when he wished to impress upon the Regent Arran that it was not exclusively his own doing. Moreover, he was present at the examination of Barnes, subscribed the divorce of Anne of Cleves, and in that year of reaction became archdeacon and prebendary of Ely and canon of Westminster. He was employed on other royal business in 1541, was nominated to the projected bishopric of Southwell, and was made king's chaplain in 1542. In 1543 he was employed to ferret out the "Prebendaries' Plot" against Cranmer, and became the archbishop's chancellor. In December he was appointed dean of Oseney (afterwards Christ Church) Oxford, and in July was made almoner to Prince Edward, in whose education he took an active part. He was present at Dr Crome's recantation in 1546, denounced it as insincere and insufficient, and severely handled him before the privy council.

After Edward's accession, Cox's opinions took a more Protestant turn, and he became one of the most active agents of the Reformation. He was consulted on the compilation of the Communion office in 1548, and the first and second books of Common Prayer, and sat on the commission for the reform of the canon law. As chancellor of the university of Oxford (1547-1552) he promoted foreign divines such as Peter Martyr, and was a moving spirit of the two commissions which sought with some success to eradicate everything savouring of popery from the books, MSS., ornaments and endowments of the university, and earned Cox the sobriquet of its cancellor rather than its chancellor. He received other rewards, a canonry of Windsor (1548), the rectory of Harrow (1547) and the deanery of Westminster (1549). He lost these preferments on Mary's accession, and was for a fortnight in August 1553 confined to the Marshalsea. He was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made; he remained in obscurity until after the failure of Wyatt's rebellion, and then in May 1554 escaped in the same ship as the future archbishop Sandys, to Antwerp. Thence in March 1555 he made his way to Frankfort, where he played an important part in the first struggle between Anglicanism and Puritanism. The exiles had, under the influence of Knox and Whittingham, adopted Calvinistic doctrine and a form of service far more Puritanical than the Prayer-Book of 1552. Cox stood up for that service, and the exiles were divided into Knoxians and Coxians. Knox attacked Cox as a pluralist, Cox accused Knox of treason to the emperor Charles V. This proved the more dangerous charge: Knox and his followers were expelled, and the Prayer-Book of 1552 was restored.

In 1559 Cox returned to England, and was elected bishop of Norwich, but the queen changed her mind and Cox's destination to Ely, where he remained twenty-one years. He was an honest, but narrow-minded ecclesiastic, who held what views he did hold intolerantly, and was always wanting more power to constrain those who differed from him (see his letter in _Hatfield MSS._ i. 308). While he refused to minister in the queen's chapel because of the crucifix and lights there, and was a bitter enemy to the Roman Catholics, he had little more patience with the Puritans. He was grasping, or at least tenacious of his rights in money matters, and was often brought into conflict with courtiers who coveted episcopal lands. The queen herself intervened, when he refused to grant Ely House to her favourite, Sir Christopher Hatton; but the well-known letter beginning "Proud Prelate" and threatening to unfrock him seems to be an impudent forgery which first saw the light in the _Annual Register_ for 1761. It hardly, however, misrepresents the queen's meaning, and Cox was forced to give way. These and other trials led him to resign his see in 1580, and it is significant that it remained vacant for nineteen years. Cox died on the 22nd of July 1581: a monument erected to his memory twenty years later in Ely cathedral was defaced, owing, it was said, to his evil repute. Strype (Whitgift, i. 2) gives Cox's hot temper and marriage as reasons why he was not made archbishop in 1583 in preference to Whitgift, who had been his chaplain; but Cox had been dead two years in 1583. His first wife's name is unknown; she was the mother of his five children, of whom Joanna married the eldest son of Archbishop Parker. His second wife was the widow of William Turner (d. 1568), the botanist and dean of Wells.

Voluminous details about Cox's life are given in Strype's Works,
Parker Soc. Publ., and Cooper's _Athenae Cantab._ i. 437-445. See also
Letters and Papers of Henry VIII.; Acts of the Privy Council; Cal.
Dom. State Papers; Cal. Hatfield MSS.; Lit. Rem. of Edward VI.;
Whittingham's _Troubles at Frankfort_; Machyn's _Diary_; Pocock's
_Burnet_; Bentham's _Ely_; Willis's _Cathedrals_; Le Neve's _Fasti_;
R. W. Dixon's _Church History_. (A. F. P.)

COX, SAMUEL (1826-1893), English nonconformist divine, was born in London on the 19th of April 1826. For some years he worked as an apprentice in the London docks, and then entered the Baptist College at Stepney. In 1851 he became pastor of a Baptist church at Southsea, removing in 1855 to Ryde, and in 1863 to Nottingham. He was president of the Baptist Association in 1873 and received the degree of D.D. from St Andrews in 1882. Cox had distinct gifts as a biblical expositor and was the founder and first editor of a monthly journal _The Expositor_ (1875-1884). Among the best known of his numerous theological publications are _Salvator Mundi_ (1877), _A Commentary on the Book of Job_ (1880), _The Larger Hope_ (1883).

COX, SAMUEL HANSON (1793-1880), American Presbyterian divine, was born at Rahway, N.J., on the 25th of August 1793, of Quaker stock. He was pastor of the Presbyterian church at Mendham, N.J., in 1817-1821, and of two churches in New York from 1821 to 1834. He helped to found the University of the City of New York, and from 1834 to 1837 was professor of pastoral theology at Auburn. The next seventeen years were passed in active ministry at Brooklyn, whence in 1854, owing to a throat affection, he removed to Owego, N.Y. He died at Bronxville, N.Y., on the 2nd of October 1880. Cox was a fine orator, and a speech made in Exeter Hall in 1833, in which he put the responsibility for slavery in America on the British government, made a great impression. It was he who described the appellation D.D. as a couple of "semi-lunar fardels."

His son, ARTHUR CLEVELAND COXE (1818-1896), who changed the spelling of the family name, graduated at the University of the City of New York in 1838 and at the General Theological Seminary in 1841. He was rector of St John's Church, Hartford, in 1843-1854, of Grace Church, Baltimore, in 1854-1863, and of Calvary Church, New York City, in 1863. In 1863 he became assistant bishop and in 1865 bishop of western New York. He was strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement. Bishop Coxe wrote spirited defences of Anglican orders and published several volumes of verse, notably _Christian Ballads_ (1845).

COXCIE, MICHAEL (1499-1592), Flemish painter, was born at Malines, and studied under Bernard van Orley, who probably induced him to visit Italy. At Rome in 1532 he painted the chapel of Cardinal Enckenvoort in the church of Santa Maria dell' Anima; and Vasari, who knew him, says with truth "that he fairly acquired the manner of an Italian." But Coxcie's principal occupation was designing for engravers; and the fable of Psyche in thirty-two sheets by Agostino Veneziano and the Master of the Die are favourable specimens of his skill. During a subsequent residence in the Netherlands Coxcie greatly extended his practice in this branch of art. But his productions were till lately concealed under an interlaced monogram M.C.O.K.X.I.N. Coxcie returned in 1539 to Malines, where he matriculated, and painted for the chapel of the gild of St Luke the wings of an altarpiece now in Sanct Veit of Prague. The centre of this altarpiece, by Mabuse, represents St Luke portraying the Virgin; the side pieces contain the Martyrdom of St Vitus and the Vision of St John in Patmos. At van Orley's death in 1541 Coxcie succeeded to the office of court painter to the regent Mary of Hungary, for whom he decorated the castle of Binche. He was subsequently patronized by Charles V., who often coupled his works with those of Titian; by Philip II., who paid him royally for a copy of van Eyck's "Agnus Dei"; and by the duke of Alva, who once protected him from the insults of Spanish soldiery at Malines. There are large and capital works of his (1587-1588) in St Rombaud of Malines, in Ste Gudule of Brussels, and in the museums of Brussels and Antwerp. His style is Raphaelesque grafted on the Flemish, but his imitation of Raphael, whilst it distantly recalls Giulio Romano, is never free from affectation and stiffness. He died at Malines on the 5th of March 1592.

COXE, HENRY OCTAVIUS (1811-1881), English librarian and scholar, was born at Bucklebury, in Berkshire, on the 20th of September 1811. He was educated at Westminster school and Worcester College, Oxford. Immediately on taking his degree in 1833, he began work in the manuscript department of the British Museum, became in 1838 sub-librarian of the Bodleian, at Oxford, and in 1860 succeeded Dr Bandinel as head librarian, an office he held until his death in 1881. Having proved himself an able palaeographer, he was sent out by the British government in 1857 to inspect the libraries in the monasteries of the Levant. He discovered some valuable manuscripts, but the monks were too wise to part with their treasures. One valuable result of his travels was the detection of the forgery attempted by Constantine Simonides. He was the author of various catalogues, and under his direction that of the Bodleian, in more than 720 volumes, was completed. He published _Rogeri de Wendover Chronica_, 5 vols. (1841-1844); the _Black Prince, an historical poem written in French by Chandos Herald_ (1842); and _Report on the Greek Manuscripts yet remaining in the Libraries of the Levant_ (1858). He was not only an accurate librarian but an active and hardworking clergyman, and was for the last twenty-five years of his life in charge of the parish of Wytham, near Oxford. He was likewise honorary fellow of Worcester and Corpus Christi Colleges. He died on the 8th of July 1881.

COXE, WILLIAM (1747-1828), English historian, son of Dr William Coxe, physician to the royal household, was born in London on the 7th of March 1747. Educated at Marylebone grammar school and at Eton College, he proceeded to King's College, Cambridge, and was elected a fellow of this society in 1768. In 1771 he took holy orders, and afterwards visited many parts of Europe as tutor and travelling companion to various noblemen and gentlemen. In 1786 he was appointed vicar of Kingston-on-Thames, and in 1788 rector of Bemerton, Wiltshire. He also held the rectory of Stourton from 1801 to 1811 and that of Fovant from 1811 until his death. In 1791 he was made prebendary of Salisbury, and in 1804 archdeacon of Wiltshire. He married in 1803 Eleanora, daughter of William Shairp, consul-general for Russia, and widow of Thomas Yeldham of St Petersburg. He died on the 8th of June 1828.

During a long residence at Bemerton Coxe was mainly occupied in literary work. His _Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole_ (London, 1798), _Memoirs of Horatio, Lord Walpole_ (London, 1802), _Memoirs of John, duke of Marlborough_ (London, 1818-1819), _Private and Original Correspondence of Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury_ (London, 1821), _Memoirs of the Administrations of Henry Pelham_ (London, 1829), are very valuable for the history of the 18th century. His _History of the House of Austria_ (London, 1807, new ed. 1853 and 1873), and _Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain_ (London, 1813), give evidence of careful and painstaking work on the part of the author. The style, however, as in all his works, is remarkably dull. His other works are mainly accounts of his travels: _Sketches of the Natural, Political and Civil State of Switzerland_ (London, 1779), _Account of the Russian Discoveries between Asia and America_ (London, 1780), _Account of Prisons and Hospitals in Russia, Sweden and Denmark_ (London, 1781), _Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden and Denmark_ (London, 1784), _Travels in Switzerland_ (London, 1789), _Letter on Secret Tribunals of Westphalia_ (London, 1796), _Historical Tour in Monmouthshire_ (London, 1801). He also edited Gay's _Fables_, and wrote a _Life of John Gay_ (Salisbury, 1797), _Anecdotes of G. F. Handel and J. C. Smith_ (London, 1798), and a few other works of minor importance. Some of his books have been translated into French, and several have gone through two or more editions.

COXSWAIN (properly "cockswain," and pronounced _cox'n_, usually shortened to "cox"; from "cock," a small boat, and _swain_, a servant), in the navy, a petty officer in charge of a ship's boat and its crew, who steers; the coxswain of the captain's gig takes a special rank among petty officers. In the National Lifeboat Institution of Great Britain the "coxswain" is a paid permanent official on each station, who has charge of the lifeboat and house, is responsible for its care, and steers and takes command when afloat. The word is also used, generally, of any one who steers a boat.

COXWELL, HENRY TRACEY (1819-1900), English aeronaut, was born at Wouldham, Kent, on the 2nd of March 1819, the son of a naval officer. He was educated for the army, but became a dentist. From a boy he had been greatly interested in ballooning, then in its infancy, but his own first ascent was not made until 1844. In 1848 he became a professional aeronaut, making numerous public ascents in the chief continental cities. Returning to London, he gave exhibitions from the Cremorne and subsequently from the Surrey Gardens. By 1861 he had made over 400 ascents. In 1862 in company with Dr James Glaisher, he attained the greatest height on record, about 7 m. His companion became insensible, and he himself, unable to use his frost-bitten hands, opened the gas-valve with his teeth, and made an extremely rapid but safe descent. The result of this and other aerial voyages by Coxwell and Glaisher was the making of some important contributions to the science of meteorology. Coxwell was most pertinacious in urging the practical utility of employing balloons in time of war. He says: "I had hammered away in _The Times_ for little less than a decade before there was a real military trial of ballooning for military purposes at Aldershot." His last ascent was made in 1885, and he died on the 5th of January 1900.

See his _My Life and Balloon Experiences_ (1887).