Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/101

 the return of King Edward, feigned sickness and kept his house. Edward returned in April, and Cooke, attempting to leave this country for France, was taken with his son by a ship of Flanders, where he was kept in prison many days, and was afterwards delivered up to King Edward. Cooke lived seven years after this, and though he was probably again heavily fined, he left a large amount of landed and other property. In 1483, when the Duke of Buckingham addressed the citizens of London in the Guildhall in favour of the pretensions of Richard III to the throne, he referred at length to the sufferings and losses of Cooke as a notable instance of the tyranny of the late king (, ed. 1808, iii. 391). Cooke died in 1478, and was buried, in compliance with his wish, in the church of the Augustine friars, within the ward of Broad Street in London. His will, dated 15 April, was proved at Lambeth 1 June 1478 (Probate Reg., Wattis, 36). His great-grandson was Sir [q. v.]



COOKE, THOMAS (1703–1756), author, commonly called, born 16 Dec. 1703, was the son of John Cooke, an innkeeper of Braintree, Essex, by his wife Rebeckah (Braintree Parish Reg., kindly communicated by the Rev. J. W. Kenworthy). His father, according to Pope, was a Muggletonian. Cooke was educated at Felstead, and made great progress there in classics. While a lad he obtained an introduction to the Earl of Pembroke, who gave him some employment and encouraged him in his classical studies. In 1722 he came to London to earn his living by his pen; contributed articles to the daily papers, and attached himself to the whigs. He thus came to know Tickell, Philips, Welsted, Steele, and Dennis. His earliest publication was a poem on the death of the Duke of Marlborough (1722); a translation of the poems of Moschus and Bion, and ‘Albion, or the Court of Neptune,’ a masque, followed in 1724. In 1725 he issued anonymously (in folio) a poem entitled ‘The Battle of the Poets,’ in which he attacked Pope, Swift, and their friends, and eulogised the writers of his own school. He continued the campaign by publishing in the ‘Daily Journal’ for 6 April 1728 notes on Pope's version of the Thersites episode in the second book of the ‘Iliad,’ and proved to his own satisfaction that Pope was no Greek scholar. Pope was intensely irritated, and resolved to pillory Cooke in the ‘Dunciad.’ News of Pope's intention reached Cooke, and Cooke, taking alarm, sent two letters to Pope (11 Aug. and 16 Sept. 1728) repudiating his connection with the offensive publications. With the second letter he forwarded a copy of his newly issued translation of ‘Hesiod.’ In letters to Lord Oxford Pope showed some sign of accepting Cooke's denial, but when the ‘Dunciad’ appeared at the close of the year, Cooke occupied a place in it (ii. 138), and was held up to ridicule in the notes. By way of reply, Cooke reissued his ‘Battle of the Poets’ and his letters on the Thersites episode, with new and caustic prefaces, in 1729. The volume (dedicated to Lord Carteret) was entitled ‘Tales, Epistles, Odes, Fables, &c.,’ and contained several other of Cooke's published poems, some translations from the classics, ‘proposals for perfecting the English language,’ and an essay on grammar. Pope was here described as ‘a person who with but a small share of learning and moderate natural endowments has by concurring and uncommon accidents acquired as great a reputation as the most learned and exalted genius could ever hope.’ In 1731 Cooke collected a number of letters on the political and literary controversies of the day, which he had contributed under the pseudonym of Atticus to the ‘London Journal’ in 1729 and 1730, and dedicated the book to Horace Walpole. Letter V. is on ‘the controversy betwixt the poets and Mr. Pope.’ Pope renewed his attack on Cooke in his ‘Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,’ l. 146 (1735).

Cooke tried his hand with unflagging energy at every kind of literary work. In 1726 he published (1) ‘The Bath, or the Knights of the Bath,’ a poem suggested by the revival of the order, to which was added ‘The Scandalous Chronicle, a Ballad of Characters. Written for the Use of the Poets and proper to be sung at their next Sessions,’ which is rarely met with; (2) ‘Philander and Cydippe,’ a poem, and (3) an edition of Marvell's works, with a memoir. Subsequently he issued separately a long series of odes, with dedications addressed to Lord Chesterfield and other persons of influence. Oldys says that Cooke compiled ‘Seymour's Survey of London’ in 1734. Five years later he wrote a dull poem entitled ‘The Battle of the Sexes.’ Another edition of his collected poems appeared in 1742.

By his translations from the classics Cooke achieved a wider and deserved reputation. In 1728 he translated ‘Hesiod,’ and his early patron, the Earl of Pembroke, and Theobald contributed notes. This book gave him his popular nickname of Hesiod Cooke. It was reissued in Anderson's ‘Poets’ (1793), vol. xiii.; in F. Lee's ‘English Translations from