Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/447

 fifth of which correspond with the now popular version) into a hymn book, ‘Service of Praise,’ prepared for his congregation in 1865. The refrain of the hymn gave the leading title to Mrs. Cousin's ‘Immanuel's Land and other Pieces’ (1876; second edition, revised, 1896). Next in popularity among her hymns are ‘O Christ, what burdens bowed Thy head,’ which Mr. Sankey eulogised as a ‘Gospel hymn’ that had been ‘very much blessed,’ and ‘King Eternal! King Immortal,’ which has been frequently set to music and sung at great choral festivals.

 COWELL, EDWARD BYLES (1826–1903), scholar and man of letters, born at Ipswich on 23 Jan. 1826, was eldest son (in a family of three sons and one daughter) of Charles Cowell, who had inherited a successful business of merchant and maltster, and as a cultured liberal was active in local affairs. His mother was Marianne, elder daughter of Nathaniel Byles Byles of the Hill House, Ipswich, also a successful merchant of that town. Cowell developed early an appetite for study. From his eighth year he attended the Ipswich grammar school. In 1841 he compiled a few numbers of ‘The Ipswich Radical Magazine and Review,’ in which he showed sympathy with his father's politics, combined with a singularly wide reading in classical literature. To Oriental literature he was first drawn by finding (1841) in the public library of Ipswich a copy of Sir William Jones's works, including the ‘Persian Grammar’ and the translation of Kālidāsa's ‘Śakuntalā.’ In the same year Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings made him aware of Wilson's ‘Sanskrit Grammar,’ a copy of which he promptly acquired. Meanwhile he took his first steps in Persian, at first by himself, but soon with the aid of a retired Bombay officer, Major Hockley, who probably also initiated him into Arabic. As early as 1842, while still at school, he contributed to the ‘Asiatic Journal’ a number of verse renderings from the Persian.

On his father's death in 1842 Cowell was taken from school to be trained for the management of the business. But during the next eight years, while engaged in commerce, he read in his spare hours with extraordinary zeal and variety. Of his scholarship and width of knowledge he soon gave proof in a series of contributions to the ‘Westminster Review,’ writing on Oriental and Spanish literature. At the same time he formed the acquaintance of many who shared his interests, among them the Arabic and Persian scholar, William Hook Morley [q. v. Suppl. I], and Duncan Forbes [q. v.], the Persian scholar, and he also called upon Carlyle in London. In 1846 he sought an introduction to ‘the great professor,’ Horace Hayman Wilson [q. v.], and four years later he read in the East India library and obtained a loan of a Prākrit MS. (Vararuci's ‘Prākrta-Prakāśa’), his edition of which was destined (1854) to establish his reputation as a Sanskrit scholar. Through John Charlesworth, rector of Flowton near Ipswich, whose daughter he married in 1845, he came to know Edward FitzGerald [q. v.], the most interesting of his many friends and correspondents. Their correspondence at first related chiefly to classical literature.

In 1850, the next brother being now of an age to carry on the Ipswich business, Cowell matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, going with his wife into lodgings. ‘I went there [to Oxford],’ he wrote later, ‘a solitary student, mainly self-taught; and I learned there the method of study.’ During the six years of his university life he greatly widened his social circle, receiving visits not only from FitzGerald, who now read Persian with him, but from Tennyson and Thackeray, to whom FitzGerald introduced him. He saw much of Jowett, Morfill, Max Müller, and Theodor Aufrecht, and was greatly aided by the lectures and tuition of the Sanskrit professor, H. H. Wilson. In 1854 he took a first class in literæ humaniores and an honorary fourth in mathematics. While missing the scholarship in Hebrew, he was awarded a special prize of books. The next two years were spent in coaching, chiefly in Aristotle's ‘Ethics.’ He also catalogued Persian and other Oriental MSS. for the Bodleian Library.

As an undergraduate he had made a reputation by his Oriental publications. A translation of Kālidāsa's ‘Vikramorvaśī,’ though finished earlier, was published in 1851. His admirable edition of Vararuci's ‘Prākrta-Prakāśa’ followed in 1854. On taking his degree he wrote on the Persian poets for ‘Fraser's Magazine,’ besides contributing to ‘Oxford Essays’ (1855) an essay on ‘Persian Literature.’

In June 1856 Cowell was appointed