Part 10

CONYBEARE, WILLIAM DANIEL (1787-1857), dean of Llandaff, one of the most distinguished of English geologists, who was born in London on the 7th of June 1787, was a grandson of John Conybeare, bishop of Bristol (1692-1755), a notable preacher and divine, and son of Dr William Conybeare, rector of Bishopsgate. Educated first at Westminster school, he went in 1805 to Christ Church, Oxford, where in 1808 he took his degree of B.A., with a first in classics and second in mathematics, and proceeded to M.A. three years later. Having entered holy orders he became in 1814 curate of Wardington, near Banbury, and he accepted also a lectureship at Brislington near Bristol. During this period he was one of the founders of the Bristol Philosophical Institution (1822). He was rector of Sully in Glamorganshire from 1823 to 1836, and vicar of Axminster from 1836 to 1844. He was appointed Bampton lecturer in 1839, and was instituted to the deanery of Llandaff in 1845. Attracted to the study of geology by the lectures of Dr John Kidd (q.v.) he pursued the subject with ardour. As soon as he had left college he made extended journeys in Britain and on the continent, and he became one of the early members of the Geological Society. Both Buckland and Sedgwick acknowledged their indebtedness to him for instruction received when they first began to devote attention to geology. To the _Transactions of the Geological Society_ as well as to the _Annals of Philosophy_ and _Philosophical Magazine_ he contributed many geological memoirs. In 1821 he distinguished himself by the description of a skeleton of the _Plesiosaurus_, discovered by Mary Anning, and his account has been confirmed in all main points by subsequent researches. Among his most important memoirs is that on the south-western coal district of England, written in conjunction with Dr Buckland, and published in 1824. He wrote also on the valley of the Thames, on Elie de Beaumont's theory of mountain-chains, and on the great landslip which occurred near Lyme Regis in 1839 when he was vicar of Axminster. His principal work, however, is the _Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales_ (1822), being a second edition of the small work issued by William Phillips (q.v.) and written in co-operation with that author. The original contributions of Conybeare formed the principal portion of this edition, of which only Part I., dealing with the Carboniferous and newer strata, was published. It affords evidence throughout of the extensive and accurate knowledge possessed by Conybeare; and it exercised a marked influence on the progress of geology in this country. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and a corresponding member of the Institute of France. In 1844 he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London. The loss of his eldest son, W. J. Conybeare, preyed on his mind and hastened his end. He died at Itchenstoke, near Portsmouth, a few months after his son, on the 12th of August 1857. (Obituary in _Gent. Mag._ Sept. 1857, p. 335.)

His elder brother JOHN JOSIAS CONYBEARE (1779-1824), also educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and an accomplished scholar, became vicar of Batheaston, and was professor of Anglo-Saxon and afterwards of poetry at Oxford. He likewise was an ardent student of geology and communicated several important papers to the _Annals of Philosophy_ and the _Transactions of the Geological Society_ of London. (Obituary in _Ann. Phil._ vol. viii., Sept. 1824, p. 162.)

CONYBEARE, WILLIAM JOHN (1815-1857), English divine, son of Dean W. D. Conybeare, was born on the 1st of August 1815, and was educated at Westminster and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1837. From 1842 to 1848 he was principal of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, which he left for the vicarage of Axminster. He published _Essays, Ecclesiastical and Social_, in 1856, and a novel, _Perversion, or the Causes and Consequences of Infidelity_, but is best known as the joint author (with J. S. Howson) of _The Life and Epistles of St Paul_ (1851). He died at Weybridge in 1857.

COODE, SIR JOHN (1816-1892), English engineer, was born at Bodmin, Cornwall, on the 11th of November 1816, the son of a solicitor. After considerable experience as an engineer in the west of England he came to London, and from 1844-1847 had a consulting practice in Westminster. In the latter year he was appointed resident engineer in charge of the extensive national harbour works at Portland then in progress. In 1856 he was appointed engineer-in-chief of this undertaking, and this post he retained till the completion of the works in 1872. His services at Portland were rewarded with a knighthood. He was now recognized as the leading authority on harbour construction, and his advice was sought by many of the colonial governments, especially by those of South Africa and Australia, and by the Indian government. After the Portland harbour his best-known work is the harbour of Colombo, Ceylon. He was made a K.C.M.G. in 1886. From 1884 till his death he was a member of the Suez Canal Commission, and from 1889-1891 president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He died at Brighton on the 2nd of March 1892.

COOK, ALBERT STANBURROUGH (1853- ), American scholar, was born on the 6th of March 1853 in Montville, Morris county, New Jersey. He graduated at Rutgers College in 1872, and also studied at Göttingen and Leipzig (1877-1878), and, after spending the years 1879-1881 as associate in English at Johns Hopkins University, in London, and under Sievers at Jena, he became in 1882 professor of English in the University of California, and in 1889 professor of English language and literature in Yale University. He re-organized the teaching of English in the state of California, and edited many texts for reading in secondary schools; but he is best known for his work in Old English and in poetics. He translated, edited, and revised Sievers' _Old English Grammar_ (1885), edited _Judith_ (1888), _The Christ of Cynewulf_ (1900), _Asser's Life of King Alfred_ (1905), and _The Dream of the Rood_ (1905), and prepared _A First Book in Old English Grammar_ (1894). He also edited, with annotations, _Sidney's Defense of Poesie_ (1890); _Shelley's Defense of Poetry_ (1891); _Newman's Poetry_ (1891); _Addison's Criticisms on Paradise Lost_ (1892); _The Art of Poetry_ (1892), being the essays of Horace, Vida and Boileau; and _Leigh Hunt's What is Poetry_ (1893); and published _Higher Study of English_ (1906).

COOK, EDWARD DUTTON (1829-1883), English dramatic critic and author, was born in London on the 30th of January 1829, the son of a solicitor. He was educated at King's College school, London, and, after four years in his father's office, obtained a situation in the London office of a railway company, at first utilizing only his spare time in literary work, but eventually devoting himself entirely to literature. He was dramatic critic of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ from 1867 to 1875, and of the _World_ from 1875 till his death. He also wrote freely on art topics, and was the author of several novels. He died in London on the 11th of September 1883.

COOK, ELIZA (1818-1889), English author, was born on the 24th of December 1818, in Southwark, being the daughter of a local tradesman. She was self-taught, and began when a girl to write poetry for the _Weekly Dispatch_ and _New Monthly_. In 1838 she published _Melaia and other Poems_, and from 1849 to 1854 conducted a paper for family reading called _Eliza Cook's Journal_. She also published _Jottings from my Journal_ (1860), and _New Echoes_ (1864); and in 1863 she was given a civil list pension of £100 a year. As the author of a single poem, "The Old Armchair," Eliza Cook's name was for a generation after 1838 a household word both in England and in America, her kindly domestic sentiment making her a great favourite with the working-class and middle-class public. She died at Wimbledon on the 23rd of September 1889.

COOK, JAMES (1728-1779), English naval captain and explorer, was born on the 28th of October 1728, at Marton village, Cleveland, Yorkshire, where his father was first an agricultural labourer and then a farm bailiff. At twelve years of age he was apprenticed to a haberdasher at Staithes, near Whitby, and afterwards to Messrs Walker, shipowners, of Whitby, whom he served for years in the Norway, Baltic and Newcastle trades.

In 1755, having risen to be a mate, Cook joined the royal navy, and after four years' service was, on the recommendation of Sir Hugh Palliser, his commander, appointed master successively of the sloop "Grampus," of the "Garland" and of the "Solebay," in the last of which he served in the St Lawrence. He was employed also in sounding and surveying the river, and he published a chart of the channel from Quebec to the sea. In 1762 he was present at the recapture of Newfoundland, and was employed in surveying portions of this coast (especially Placentia Harbour); in 1763, on Palliser becoming governor of Newfoundland, Cook was appointed "marine surveyor of the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador"; this office he held till 1767; and the volumes of sailing directions he now brought out (1766-1768) showed remarkable abilities. At the same time he began to make his reputation as a mathematician and astronomer by his observation of the solar eclipse of the 5th of August 1766, at one of the Burgeo Islands, near Cape Ray, and by his account of the same in the _Philosophical Transactions_ (vol. lvii. pp. 215-216).

In 1768 Cook was appointed to conduct an expedition, suggested by the revival of geographical interest now noticeable, and resolved on by the English admiralty at the instance of the Royal Society, for observing the impending transit of Venus, and prosecuting geographical researches in the South Pacific Ocean. For these purposes he received a commission as lieutenant (May 25th), and set sail in the "Endeavour," of 370 tons, accompanied by several men of science, including Sir Joseph Banks (August 25th). On the 13th of April 1769, he reached Tahiti, where he observed the transit on the 3rd of June. From Tahiti he sailed in quest of the great continent then supposed to exist in the South Pacific, explored the Society Islands, and thence struck to New Zealand, whose coasts he circumnavigated and examined with great care for six months, charting them for the first time with fair accuracy, and especially observing the channel ("Cook Strait") which divided the North and South Islands. His attempts to penetrate to the interior, however, were thwarted by native hostility. From New Zealand he proceeded to "New Holland" or Australia, and surveyed with the same minuteness and accuracy the whole east coast. New South Wales he named after a supposed resemblance to Glamorganshire; Botany Bay, sighted on the 28th of April 1770, was so called by the naturalists of the expedition. On account of the hostility of the natives his discoveries here also were confined to the coast, of which he took possession for Great Britain. From Australia Cook sailed to Batavia, satisfying himself upon the way that (as Torres had first shown in 1607) New Guinea was in no way an outlying part of the greater land mass to the south.

Arriving in England, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, on the 12th of June, Cook was made a commander, and soon after was appointed to command another expedition for examining and determining once for all the question of the supposed great southern continent. With the "Resolution" of 462 tons, the "Adventure" (Captain Furneaux) of 330 tons, and 193 men, he sailed from Plymouth on the 13th of July 1772; he touched at the Cape of Good Hope, and striking thence south-east (November 22nd) passed the Antarctic Circle (January 16th, 1773), repassed the same, and made his way to New Zealand (March 26th) without discovering land. From New Zealand he resumed his "search for a continent," working up and down across the South Pacific, and penetrating to 67° 31' and again to 71° 10' S., with imminent risk of destruction from floating ice, but with the satisfaction of disproving the possibility of the disputed continent in the seas south-eastward of New Zealand. He then made for Easter Island, whose exact position he determined, for the first time, with accuracy; noticing and describing the gigantic statues which Roggewein, the first discoverer of the island, had made known. In the same manner he accomplished a better determination and examination of the Marquesas, as well as of the Tonga or Friendly Islands, than had yet been made; and after a stay at Tahiti to rest and refit, crossed the central Pacific to the "New Hebrides," as he renamed Quiros's "Southern Land of the Holy Spirit" (a name preserved in the modern island of _Espiritu Santo_), called by Bougainville the "Great Cyclades" (_Grandes Cyclades_), whose position, extent, divisions and character were now verified as never before. Next followed the wholly new discoveries of New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, and the Isle of Pines. Another visit to New Zealand, and yet another examination of the far southern Pacific, which was crossed from west to east through the whole of its extent, from south Australia to Tierra del Fuego, were now undertaken by Cook before he finally closed his work in refutation of the Antarctic continent, as previously understood, on this side of the world. The voyage closed with a rapid survey of the "Land of Fire," the rounding of Cape Horn, the rediscovery of the island now named Southern Georgia, the discovery of Sandwich Land, the crossing of the South Atlantic (here also exploding the great _Terra Australis_ delusion), and visits to the Cape of Good Hope, St Helena, Ascension, Fernando Noronha and the Azores. The voyage (reckoning only from the Cape of Good Hope and back to the same) had covered considerably more than 20,000 leagues, nearly three times the equatorial circumference of the earth; it left the main outlines of the southern portions of the globe substantially as they are known to-day; and it showed a possibility of keeping a number of men for years at sea without a heavy toll of lives. Cook only lost one man out of 118 in more than 1000 days; he had conquered scurvy.

The discoverer reached Plymouth on the 25th of July 1775, and his achievements were promptly, if meanly, rewarded. He was immediately raised to the rank of post-captain, appointed a captain in Greenwich hospital, and soon afterwards unanimously elected a member of the Royal Society, from which he received the Copley gold medal for the best experimental paper which had appeared during the year.

Cook's third and last voyage was primarily to settle the question of the north-west passage, practically abandoned since before the middle of the 17th century, but now taken up again, as a matter of scientific interest, by the British government. The explorer, who had volunteered for this service, was instructed to sail first into the Pacific through the chain of the newly discovered islands which he had recently visited, and on reaching New Albion to proceed northward as far as latitude 65° and endeavour to find a passage to the Atlantic. Several ships were at the same time fitted out to attempt a passage on the other side from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Sailing from the Nore on the 25th of June 1776 (Plymouth, July 12), with the "Resolution" and "Discovery," and touching at the Cape of Good Hope, which he left on the 30th of November, Cook next made Tasmania and thence passed on to New Zealand and the Tonga and Society Islands, discovering on his way several of the larger members of the Hervey or Cook Archipelago, especially Mangaia and Aitutaki (March 30th-April 4th, 1777); some smaller isles of this group he had already sighted on his second voyage, September 23rd, 1773. From Tahiti, as he moved north towards the main object of his expedition, he made a far more important discovery, or rather rediscovery, that of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, the greatest and most remarkable of the Polynesian archipelagos (early February 1778). These had perhaps first been seen by the Spanish navigator Gaetano in 1555; but their existence had been kept a close secret by Spain at the time, and had long been forgotten. Striking the west American coast in 44° 55' N. on the 7th of March following, he made an almost continuous survey of the same up to Bering Straits and beyond, as far as 70° 41', where he found the passage barred by a wall, or rather continent, of ice, rising 12 ft. above water, and stretching as far as the eye could reach. The farthest point visible on the American shore (in the extreme north-west of Alaska) he called Icy Cape. On his way towards Bering Straits he discovered and named King George's ("Nootka") and Prince William's Sound, as well as Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost extremity of North America, never yet seen by English navigators, but well known to Russian explorers, who probably first sighted it in 1648; he also penetrated into the bay afterwards known as Cook's Inlet or River, which at first seemed to promise a passage to the Arctic Seas, to the south-east of the Alaska peninsula. Cook next visited the Asiatic shores of Bering Straits (the extreme north-east of Siberia); returning to America, he explored Norton Sound, north of the Yukon; touched at (Aleutian) Unalaska, where he met with some Russian-American settlers; and thence made his way back to the Hawaiian group, which he had christened after his friend and patron Lord Sandwich, then head of the British admiralty (January 17th, 1779). Here he visited Maui and Hawaii itself, whose size and importance he now first realized, and in one of whose bays (Kealakekua) he met his death early in the morning of the 14th of February 1779. During the night of the 13th, one of the "Discovery's" boats was stolen by the natives; and Cook, in order to recover it, made trial of his favourite expedient of seizing the king's person until reparation should be made. Having landed on the following day with some marines, a scuffle ensued which compelled the party to retreat to their boats. Cook was the last to retire; and as he was nearing the shore he received a blow from behind which felled him to the ground. He rose immediately, and vigorously resisted the crowds that pressed upon him, but was soon overpowered.

Had Cook returned from his third voyage, there is ground for believing King George would have made him a baronet. Distinguished honours were paid to his memory, both at home and by foreign courts, and a pension was settled upon his widow. But in his life a very inadequate share of official reward was dealt out to the man who not only may be placed first among British maritime discoverers, but also gave his country her title, and so her colonies, in Australasia. As a commander, an observer and a practical physician, his merits were equally great. Reference has been made to his survey work and to his victory over scurvy; it must not be forgotten that along with a commanding personal presence, and with sagacity, decision and perseverance quite extraordinary, went other qualities not less useful to his work. He won the affection of those who served under him by sympathy, kindness and unselfish care of others as noteworthy as his gifts of intellect.

See the _Account of a Voyage round the World in 1769-1771, by Lieut. James Cook_, in vols. ii. and iii. of Hawkesworth's Voyages (1773); the _Voyage towards the South Pole and round the World ... in ... 1772-1775, written by James Cook_ ... (1777); a _Voyage to the Pacific Ocean ... in 1776-1780_, vols. i. and ii. written by Cook (1784); also the _Narrative of the Voyages round the World performed by Captain James Cook_, by A. Kippis, D.D., F.R.S. (1788), long the standard life of the navigator, but now superseded by Arthur Kitson's _Captain James Cook, the Circumnavigator_ (1907). (C. R. B.)

COOK, THOMAS (1808-1892), English travelling agent, was born at Melbourne in Derbyshire on the 22nd of November 1808. Beginning work at the age of ten, he was successively a gardener's help and a wood-turner at Melbourne, and a printer at Loughborough. At the age of twenty he became a Bible-reader and village missionary for the county of Rutland; but in 1832, on his marriage, combined his wood-turning business with that occupation. In 1836 he became a total abstainer, and subsequently became actively associated with the temperance movement, and printed at his own expense various publications in its interest, notably the _Children's Temperance Magazine_ (1840), the first of its kind to appear in England. In June 1841 a large meeting was to be held at Loughborough in connexion with this movement, and Cook was struck with the idea of getting the Midland Counties Railway Company to run a special train from Leicester to the meeting. The company consented, and on the 5th of July there were carried 570 passengers from Leicester to Loughborough and back at a shilling a head. This is believed to be the first publicly-advertised excursion train ever run in England--private "specials," reserved for members of institutes and similar bodies, were already in use. The event caused great excitement, and Cook received so many applications to organize similar parties that he henceforward deserted wood-turning, while continuing his printing and publishing. The summers of the next three years were occupied with excursions like the first; but in 1845 Cook advertised a pleasure-trip on a more extensive scale, from Leicester to Liverpool and back, with opportunities for visiting the Isle of Man, Dublin and Welsh coast. A _Handbook of the Trip to Liverpool_ was supplied for the use of travellers. In the previous year Cook had entered into a permanent arrangement with the Midland Railway Company to place trains at his disposal, for which he should provide the passengers. A trip to Scotland followed, and the excursionists were received in Glasgow with music and salute of guns.