Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/384

 satirising the Great Exhibition excitement of 1851. He twice appeared at Windsor Castle before her majesty at her court theatricals. In August 1852 he was at St. James's Theatre. In 1860, after immense success in provincial towns, he returned to America. The vessel encountered such stormy weather that his health was permanently injured. He had been wonderfully robust, but the seeds of consumption became rapidly developed after his return to London in 1862. Always of singularly amiable disposition, devoid of jealousy or malice, and of domestic habits, although with such genial sociality that his company was sought and welcomed everywhere, he was invited to Blandford in Dorsetshire, to recruit his health if possible, by his friend, Mr. Robert Eyers of the Crown Hotel. He was kindly received, but soon afterwards died, on 11 March 1864. He was buried in the cemetery at Blandford on 15 March, and a monument has been erected by his friends. Few comedians have been better loved, or, on the whole, passed through life so successfully. Collections of ‘Sam Cowell's Songs,’ and photographic portraits of him in character, used to be enormously numerous, and popular. Wherever he went he was loved, and by all who had known him he was mourned. His only fault was improvidence. An excellent full-length portrait of him as ‘Billy Barlow’ was painted in oils by Richard Alexander, Edinburgh, 1842. 

COWEN, WILLIAM (fl. 1811–1860), landscape painter, was a native of Rotherham in Yorkshire. He travelled a great deal, making many sketches in the United Kingdom, and was liberally patronised by Earl Fitzwilliam, at whose expense he proceeded through Switzerland to Italy; there he studied for some time, returning with a stock of landscape sketches, which he turned to good account during a long career as an artist. He first appears as an exhibitor at the Society of Artists in 1811. In 1823 he exhibited at the British Institution, sending three landscapes, two Irish and one Swiss; and he continued to be a constant contributor of landscapes to that exhibition up to 1860. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1824, and contributed several landscapes up to 1839. In 1840 Cowen started with his sister on a visit to Corsica, then an unexplored country for artists, and resided for some time in that island, making many sketches. In 1843 he published a series of twelve etchings of Corsica, especially of scenes connected with the early life of Napoleon Bonaparte. These were very favourably criticised, and afterwards with two additions formed the illustrations to a book Cowen published in 1848, called ‘Six Weeks in Corsica,’ containing an account of his adventures and some translations of Corsican poetry. After his return from Corsica, Cowen took up his residence at Gibraltar Cottage, Thistle Grove, Old Brompton, and in 1844 contributed to the fresco competition in Westminster Hall a view of ‘Kilchurn Castle, Loch Awe, Scotland.’ In 1848–9 he contributed several of his landscape works to the Free Exhibition of Modern Art at Hyde Park Corner. Besides the etchings of Corsica mentioned above, Cowen published an etching of a church in 1817, ‘Six Views of Italian and Swiss Scenery’ in 1824; ‘A View of Rotherham,’ published 1826 in Rhodes's ‘Yorkshire Scenery,’ in which there are also two engravings of Roche Abbey from Cowen's drawings; ‘Six Views of Woodsome Hall,’ lithographs, published in 1851; two large aquatints of Harrow-on-the-Hill and Chatsworth; a lithograph view of Kirkstall Abbey, and a lithographed portrait of Jan Tzatzoe, a Kaffir chief. The date of Cowen's death is uncertain, but it was probably in 1860 or 1861. 

COWHERD, WILLIAM (1763–1816), sect-founder, was born at Carnforth, Lancashire, in 1763. Little is known of his early life. He describes himself as ‘formerly classical teacher in Beverley College,’ an institution for the preparation of candidates for the ministry, and from Beverley he went to Manchester as curate to John Clowes [q. v.], the Swedenborgian rector of St. John's. Leaving Clowes, he preached in the Swedenborgian ‘Temple,’ Peter Street, for a short time before 1800, in which year he opened a chapel, called Christ Church, built for himself in King Street, Salford. Here he founded a congregation on Swedenborgian principles; he is said to have been the only man who ever read through all Swedenborg's Latin writings. His preaching, into which he freely introduced his radical politics, made him a favourite with the populace. Cowherd broke with the Swedenborgians after their conference at Birmingham in 1808, mainly on the ground of renewed attempts to esta-