Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/225

  

COFFIN, ROBERT ASTON, D.D. (1819–1885), catholic prelate, was born at Brighton on 19 July 1819. and educated at Harrow School and at Christ Church, Oxford (B.A. 1841, M.A. 1843). In 1843 he became vicar of St. Mary Magdalene, Oxford, but he resigned this preferment two years later,and was received into the Roman catholic church on 3 Dec. 1845. For a year after this he resided with Mr. Ambrose Lisle Phillips at Grace Dieu manor, and then be proceeded with Dr. (now Cardinal) Newman to Rome, where he was ordained priest in 1847. He joined the oratory of St. Philip Neri, and in 1848-9 he was superior of St. Wilfrid's, Cotton Hall, Staffordshire. Feeling strongly drawn to the congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, he entered the novitiate of the Redemptorist Fathers at Trond in Belgium, and made his profession on 2 Feb. 1852. In 1855 he was chosen rector of St. Mary's, Clapham, and in 1865 appointed to the office of provincial, in which he was successively confirmed every three years until his elevation to the episcopate. From 1852 to 1872 he was almost constantly employed in preaching missions and giving clergy retreats throughout England, Ireland, and Scotland. In April 1882 Pope Leo XIII nominated him to the see of Southwark, in succession to Dr. James Danell. He was consecrated by Cardinal Howard in the church of St, Alfonso, on the Esquiline, at Rome, 11 June 1882, and enthroned at St. George's Cathedral, Southwark, on the 27th of the following month. He died at the house of the Redemptorists at Teignmouth on 6 April 1885.

He published excellent English translations of many of the works of St. Alphonso de' Liguori; and of Blosius's 'Oratory of the Faithful Soul.'



COGAN, ELIEZER (1762–1855), scholar and divine, born at Rothwell, Northamptonshire, in 1762, was the son of John Cogan, a surgeon, then sixty-four years old. The father, who survived until 1784, and was the author of ‘An Essay on the Epistle to the Romans’ and of other anonymous pieces, married twice; by his first wife he had a son, called [q. v.], the physician, and by the second he was the father of Eliezer. The boy had a wonderful memory, and mastered the Latin grammar before he was six years old. For six months he was placed at Market Harborough in the school of the Rev. [q. v.], but his early life was mainly passed under his father's roof, and he was self-taught in the rudiments of Greek. To complete his education he was sent to the dissenting academy at Daventry, where for the space of six years, three as pupil and three as assistant tutor, he had the advantage of the society of [q. v.] There were at this time about fifty pupils in that institution, and nearly the whole of them became distinguished in after life as unitarians. When the Rev. John Kenrick moved from Daventry to Exeter in 1784, his place was taken by Cogan, who thus became Belsham's colleague in the work of instruction. In the autumn of 1787 Cogan was elected as minister of the ancient presbyterian congregation at Cirencester, and continued in that position until 1789. During this period of his life he printed for his friends, though he did not publish, a ‘Fragment on Philosophical Necessity.’ On 21 Sept. 1790 he married Mary, the daughter of David Atchison of Weedon, and in the following July he settled for a short time at Ware in Hertfordshire, but after a few months he removed first to Enfield and then to Cheshunt. Cogan was elected minister of the chapel in Crossbrook Street, Cheshunt, in 1800, and in January of the subsequent year he was appointed to a like position over the dissenting congregation at Walthamstow. During that year he preached alternately there and at Cheshunt, but at its close he transferred his school from Cheshunt to Higham Hill, Walthamstow, and confined his ministerial services to the congregation of the latter village. The school over which he presided soon reached to great fame, the secret of his success as a teacher lying in his zeal for his labours and his skill in laying the foundations of instruction. Among his pupils were Samuel Sharpe, the Egyptologist and translator of the Bible, Benjamin Disraeli, afterwards earl of Beaconsfield (of whom he used to say, ‘I don't like Disraeli; I never could get him to understand the subjunctive’), Mr. Milner Gibson, Mr. Russell Gurney, and Lord