Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/332

  and chancery bar business was the branch to which he wisely, for he was no orator, confined his attention, and in this division of the law he quickly attained to a leading position. By these labours he gained a competency as well as reputation, and was thus enabled, when differences of opinion arose between him and the proprietors of the ‘Globe,’ to resign the editorship. He was long the parliamentary draughtsman or counsel for the home department, when his labours, though not generally known, were warmly appreciated by the leading politicians of the age. The act for the sale of encumbered estates in Ireland was draughted by him and Lord Romilly, and it is styled by Lord Russell (Recollections, pp. 195–6) an admirable tribute to their ‘constructive skill.’ When the great change in the administration of Indian affairs was effected, the duty of collecting information on its laws and of drawing up a legal code was offered to Coulson, but he loved the social life of London, and preferred to stop at home, even though he acquired wealth less rapidly. He died at North Bank, St. John's Wood, London, on 21 Nov. 1860, and was buried at Kensal Green. His will was proved 14 Dec. 1860, most of his landed property and personalty being left to his brother [q. v.], the surgeon, for his life, and afterwards to his two nephews. Coulson lived in early life on intimate terms with the chief men of letters in London. At Charles Lamb's evening parties he was a frequent guest, and he enjoyed the reputation, according to Crabb Robinson (Diary, i. 488, 506), of being ‘a prodigy of knowledge.’ Cowden Clarke confirms this opinion, stating that the wits used to tease him with the nickname of ‘the giant Cormoran,’ in allusion to his Cornish descent, but to dub him also ‘the walking Encyclopædia,’ as almost boundless in his varied extent of knowledge (Recollections, p. 26). He was godfather to Hazlitt's first child, and was an occasional guest at the critic's house in York Street, Westminster (, Life of Hazlitt, p. 26). Leigh Hunt was another of Coulson's friends, and through Hunt he was introduced to Procter. Hunt calls him ‘the admirable Coulson.’ Procter says that although ordinarily grave Coulson was good in ‘comic imitations,’ but that the ‘vis comica left him for the most part in later life’ (, Autobiog. 136, 196). Barham, of the ‘Ingoldsby Legends,’ and Thomas Love Peacock wrote in his paper through their friendship with him, and he was one of James Mill's associates in his Sunday walks. Coulson is said to have contributed to the ‘Edinburgh Review’ a review of Mill's ‘History of India,’ and when the ‘Parliamentary History and Review’ was started about 1825 with the object of publishing the debates in a classified form he wrote an article ‘of great merit.’ In June 1821 he was elected a member of the Political Economy Club, and from 1823 to 1858 brought forward at its meetings numerous questions for discussion, and he was placed on the royal commission for the exhibition of 1851, when he took an active part in its proceedings. It was in a cottage on Coulson's Kentish estate near Maidstone that John Black, the editor of the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ lived from 1843 to 1855. 

COULSON, WILLIAM (1802–1877), surgeon, younger son of Thomas Coulson, master painter in Devonport dockyard, was born at Penzance in 1802. [q. v.] was an elder brother. His father was an intimate friend of Sir Humphry Davy; his mother was Catherine Borlase. After receiving some classical education at the local grammar school, Coulson spent two years in Brittany (1816–18), and became proficient in the French language and literature. Having first been apprenticed to a Penzance surgeon, he entered as a pupil at Grainger's School of Anatomy in the Borough, and attended St. Thomas's Hospital, where he became dresser to Tyrrell. Here, about the time when the ‘Lancet’ was first published in 1823, Coulson attracted Mr. Wakley's attention, and was at once accepted as a contributor, and afterwards regularly engaged on the staff of the ‘Lancet.’ From 1824 to 1826 he studied in Berlin, supplying the ‘Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal’ with foreign correspondence, and making the friendship of the poet Campbell under circumstances highly honourable to both (see Campbell's Life by Beattie, ii. 448). After some months' stay in Paris, Coulson returned to London and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on 26 Sept. 1826. He at once joined in the establishment of the Aldersgate Street School of Medicine with Tyrrell, Lawrence, and others, and acted for three years as demonstrator of anatomy. At the same time he superintended the foreign department of the ‘Lancet,’ and made many translations from foreign works. In 1828 he was elected surgeon to the Aldersgate Street Dispensary,