Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/228

 in 1767, and its operations became known to Cogan. On his return to England a few years later he found that Dr. William Hawes had expended much time and money on a similar project, and the two doctors thereupon united their energies in the undertaking. Each of them brought fifteen friends to a meeting at the Chapter Coffeehouse in St. Paul's Churchyard in the summer of 1774, when the Royal Humane Society was duly formed. Cogan translated from the original Dutch in 1773 the ‘Memoirs of the Society instituted at Amsterdam in favour of Drowned Persons,’ 1767–71, and prepared the first six annual reports of the English society. His interest in this charitable work lasted unimpaired throughout his life. He started a branch at Bath in 1805, and left the mother-foundation in his will the sum of 100l. One of the five gold medals minted for the society is inscribed to the memory of Cogan, and in its annual report for 1814 is a portrait of him, with a handsome eulogy of his talents as an author and of his zeal as the co-founder of the Royal Humane Society. His next publication was an anonymous account of ‘John Buncle, junior, gentleman,’ 1776, which purported to be a memoir of the youngest son of Thomas Amory's whimsical creation of John Buncle, by his seventh wife, Miss Dunk. In 1793 he published, without his name, two volumes entitled ‘The Rhine; or, a Journey from Utrech [sic] to Francfort [sic], described in a series of letters in 1791 and 1792.’ The success of this labour justified its republication in 1794 with his name on the title-page, and the printing at Haarlem of a Dutch translation in 1800. This translation of Cogan's work into Dutch was balanced by his translating into English from that language in 1794 the work of Professor Peter Camper, ‘On the Connexion between the Science of Anatomy and the Arts of Drawing, Painting, Statuary.’ All these books were, however, eclipsed by his elaborate treatises on the passions. The first of them bore the name of ‘A Philosophical Treatise on the Passions,’ 1800, 2nd edit. 1802. Then succeeded an ‘Ethical Treatise on the Passions,’ in two parts, the first of which appeared in 1807 and the second in 1810. Two volumes of ‘Theological Disquisitions on Religion as affecting the Passions and on the Characteristic Excellencies of Christianity’ followed in 1812 and 1813 respectively, and the whole five treatises were published in a set in 1813. Last of all came in 1817 a bundle of ‘Ethical Questions, or Speculations on the principal subjects of Controversy in Moral Philosophy.’ His design was ‘to trace the moral history of man in his pursuits, power, and motives of action,’ and the excellence of his definitions and illustrations has been highly extolled. He analysed the subject with as much tenderness as he had been taught to dissect the human body. A long analysis of Cogan's writings will be found in Jared Sparks's ‘Collection of Essays and Tracts in Theology’ (1824), iii. 196–233, which also contains (pp. 237–362) a reprint of his ‘Letters to William Wilberforce on the doctrine of Hereditary Depravity, by a Layman’ (pseud. i.e. T. Cogan), in which he warmly denounced the view supported by Wilberforce in his ‘Practical View of the prevailing Religious Systems of Professed Christians,’ and strongly argued, as he always did, for the happiness of all mankind. These letters originally appeared in 1799, and were printed in more than one cheap edition for the use of the unitarian book societies. A fragment of his ‘Disquisition on the Characteristic Excellencies of Christianity’ was appended in 1822 to a discourse by Lant Carpenter [q. v.] A miniature portrait of Cogan is preserved in the museum at Bristol.

[Gent. Mag. lxxxviii. pt. i. pp. 177–8, 648 (1818); Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 181, 239, 732; Jay's Autobiography, pp. 465–70; Monthly Repository, xiv. 1–5, 74–6, 105 (1819), with portrait; Annual Biography, iii. 73–99 (1819); Hunter's Old Age in Bath, Sherwen and Cogan (1873), pp. 29–56; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. ix. 116 (1878).]   COGAN, WILLIAM (d. 1774), philanthropist, son of John Cogan by Elizabeth, daughter of John Battie, was a citizen of Kingston-upon-Hull of which town he was chamberlain in 1712, sheriff in 1714, and mayor in 1717 and 1736. In 1753 he founded a charity school for twenty girls In Salthouse Lane, Kingston-upon-Hull, endowing it with stock to the amount of 2.000l., which he subsequently increased by 500l. He lived on terms of intimacy with the Wilberforces and other benevolent families. By his will he bequeathed 2,000l. in trust for apprenticing poor lads to certain trades. He died in 1774.  COGGESHALL, HENRY (1623–1690), mathematician, was the third son of John Coggeshall of Orford in Suffolk, where he was baptised 23 Dec. 1623, and buried 19 Feb. 1690. He married, and left one son, William Coggeshall of Diss, Norfolk. He invented the sliding-rule known by his name, first described by him in 1677 in a pamphlet entitled. 'Timber-Measure by a Line of more Ease, Dispatch, and Exactness than any other