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 , surgeon to University College Hospital. After his wife's death Cooper (in 1813) entered the army as surgeon, and served on the field of Waterloo. Retiring on the conclusion of peace, he devoted his chief attention to editing the successive editions of his two principal works, and also gained a considerable surgical practice. In 1827 he became a member of the council of the College of Surgeons, and from 1831 to 1848 was surgeon to University College Hospital and professor of surgery in the college. In 1845 he was elected president of the College of Surgeons, and in 1846 fellow of the Royal Society. He died of gout on 2 Dec. 1848.

Besides his principal works Cooper wrote a book on ‘Cataract,’ 1805, and edited the third and fourth editions of Dr. Mason Good's ‘Study of Medicine.’ He delivered the Hunterian oration in 1834. The ‘Dictionary’ was translated into French, German, and Italian, and several times republished in America.



COOPER or COUPER, THOMAS (1517?–1594), bishop of Winchester, was born in Oxford, the son of a very poor tailor in Cat Street, and educated as one of the choristers in Magdalen College school. He made so much progress that he was elected probationer of the college in 1539, and after graduating became a fellow and master of the school in which he had been educated. Among his eminent pupils was William Camden. It had been Cooper's intention to take orders, but having adopted protestant views he found himself checked by the accession of Queen Mary; he therefore changed his purpose, took a degree in physic, and began to practise in Oxford. In 1545 Thomas Lanquet died while writing a ‘Chronicle of the World.’ He had brought it down from the creation to A.D. 17, and now Cooper undertook to carry it on to the reign of Edward VI. His portion is about thrice as much as Lanquet's, and the whole was published in 1549. Another edition was surreptitiously put forth, with additions by a third writer, in 1559, greatly to Cooper's annoyance, who published two more editions under the title of ‘Cooper's Chronicle,’ one in 1560, and another in 1565. All these are in quarto.

Simultaneously with the ‘Chronicle’ he had engaged in another work, which was published in folio in 1548, ‘Bibliotheca Eliotæ. Sive Dictionarium Lat. et Angl. auctum et emend. per Tho. Cooper.’ A second edition was published in 1552, entitled ‘Eliot's Dictionary, the second time enriched and more perfectly corrected by Thos. Cooper, school-master of Maudlen's in Oxford.’ And a third edition appeared in 1559.

On the death of Queen Mary he recurred to his original purpose and was ordained, speedily gaining the character of a zealous preacher. And now he engaged in by far his greatest literary work, ‘Thesaurus Linguæ Romanæ et Britannicæ … op. et ind. T. Cooperi Magdalenensis. Accessit Dictionarium Historicum et Poeticum,’ Lond. 1565. It was reprinted in 1573, 1578, and 1584. This book, commonly known as ‘Cooper's Dictionary,’ delighted Queen Elizabeth so much that she expressed her determination to promote the author as far as lay in her power. His life, however, was anything but happy. He had married unhappily, his wife was utterly profligate. He condoned her unfaithfulness again and again, refusing to be divorced when the heads of the university offered to arrange it for him, and declaring that he would not charge his conscience with so great a scandal. On one occasion his wife, in a paroxysm of fury, tore up half his ‘Thesaurus,’ and threw it into the fire. He patiently set to work and rewrote it ( Lives, ii. 290).

In 1562 he began to engage in controversy. A reply to Bishop Jewel's ‘Apology’ had been written and circulated, apparently in manuscript only, entitled ‘An Apology of Private Mass.’ To this an answer now appeared: ‘An Answer in Defence of the Truth against the Apology of Private Mass,’ the work replied to being prefixed. In the ‘Biographia Britannica,’ and in Jelf's edition of Jewel's works, this treatise is attributed to Jewel, but erroneously. In the preface Jewel is referred to as ‘a worthy learned man,’ and Dr. Cradocke, Margaret professor of divinity of Oxford, writing in 1572, speaks of it as ‘the treatise of the right reverend father, Bishop Cowper.’ And Fulke, also writing in Cooper's lifetime, calls it his. This treatise was reprinted under the auspices of the Parker Society, and edited by Dean Goode in 1850. In 1567 Cooper was made dean of Christ Church, and for several years was vice-chancellor. In 1569 he was appointed to the deanery of Gloucester, and in 1570–1 to the bishopric of Lincoln. In 1573 he published a ‘Brief Exposition’ of the Sunday lessons, of which Archbishop Parker thought so