Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/906

 , but differ in having rooted molar teeth. The typical pocket-mouse P. fasciatus, which is a native of Montana, Missouri, and Wyoming, is a sandy-coloured rodent marked with black lines above and with white beneath, and measuring about 6 in. in length, this length being equally divided between the head and body and the tail. (See .)

 POCOCK, SIR GEORGE (1706–1792), British admiral, son of Thomas Pocock, chaplain in the navy, was born on the 6th of March 1706, and entered the navy under the protection of his maternal uncle, Captain Streynsham Master (1682–1724), in the “Superbe” in 1718. He became lieutenant in April 1725, commander in 1733, and post-captain in 1738. After serving in the West Indies he was sent to the East Indies in 1754 as captain of the “Cumberland” (58) with Rear-Admiral Charles Watson (1714–1757). Watson’s squadron co-operated with Clive in the conquest of Bengal. In 1755 Pocock became rear-admiral, and was promoted vice-admiral in 1756. On the death of Watson he took the command of the naval forces in the eastern seas. In 1758 he was joined by Commodore Charles Steevens (d. 1761), but the reinforcement only raised the squadron to seven small line-of-battle ships. War being now in progress between France and England the French sent a naval force from their islands in the Indian Ocean into the Bay of Bengal to the assistance of Pondicherry. To intercept the arrival of these reinforcements for the enemy now became the object of Pocock. The French force was indeed of less intrinsic strength than his own. Count D’Aché (1700?–1775), who commanded, had to make up his line by including several Indiamen, which were only armed merchant ships. Yet the number of the French was superior and Pocock was required by the practice of his time to fight by the old official fighting instructions. He had to bring his ships into action in a line with the enemy, and to preserve his formation while the engagement lasted. All Pocock’s encounters with D'Aché were indecisive. The first battle, on the 29th of April 1758, failed to prevent the Frenchmen from reaching Pondicherry. After a second and more severe engagement on the 3rd of August, the French admiral returned to the Mauritius, and when the monsoon set in Pocock went round to Bombay. He was back early in spring, but the French admiral did not return to the Bay of Bengal till September. Again Pocock was unable to prevent his opponent from reaching Pondicherry, and a well contested battle between them on the 10th of September 1759 proved again indecisive. The French government was nearly bankrupt, and D'Aché could get no stores for his squadron. He was compelled to return to the islands, and the English were left in possession of the Coromandel and Malabar coasts. Pocock went home in 1760, and in 1761 was made Knight of the Bath and admiral. In 1762 he was appointed to the command of the naval forces in the combined expedition which took Havana. The siege, which began on the 7th of June, and lasted till the 13th of August, was rendered deadly by the climate. The final victory was largely attributable to the vigorous and intelligent aid which Pocock gave to the troops. His share in the prize money was no less than £122,697. On his return to England Pocock is said to have been disappointed because another officer, Sir Charles Saunders (1713–1775), was chosen in preference to himself as a member of the admiralty board, and to have resigned in consequence. It is certain that he resigned his commission in 1766. He died on the 3rd of April 1792. His monument is in Westminster Abbey.

 POCOCKE, EDWARD (1604–1691), English Orientalist and biblical scholar, was born in 1604, the son of a Berkshire clergyman, and received his education at the free school of Thame in Oxfordshire and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (scholar in 1620, fellow in 1628). The first-fruit of his studies was an edition from a Bodleian MS. of the four New Testament epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude) which were not in the old Syriac canon, and were not contained in European editions of the Peshito This was published at Leiden at the instigation of G. Vossius in 1630, and in the same year Pococke sailed for Aleppo as chaplain to the English factory. At Aleppo he made himself a. profound Arabic scholar, and collected many valuable MSS. At this time Wm. Laud was bishop of London and chancellor of the university of Oxford, and Pococke became known to him as one who could help his schemes for enriching the university. Laud founded an Arabic chair at Oxford, and invited Pococke home to fill it, and he entered on his duties on the 10th of August 1636; but next summer he sailed again for Constantinople to prosecute further studies and collect mo1e books, and remained there for about three years. When he returned to England Laud was in the Tower, but had taken the precaution to place the Arabic chair on a permanent footing. Pococke does not seem to have been an extreme churchman or to have meddled actively in politics. His rare scholarship and personal qualities raised him up influential friends among the opposite party, foremost among these being John Selden and John Owen. Through their offices he was even advanced in 1648 to the chair of Hebrew, though as he could not take the engagement of 1649 he lost the emoluments of the post soon after, and did not recover them till the Restoration. These cares seriously hampered Pococke in his studies, as he complains in the preface to his Eutychius; he seems to have felt most deeply the attempts to remove him from his parish of Childrey, a college living which he had accepted in 1643. In 1649 he published the Specimen historiae arabum, a short account of the origin and manners of the Arabs, taken from Barhebraeus (Abulfaragius), with notes from a vast number of MS. sources which are still valuable. This was followed in 1655 by the Porta Mosis, extracts from the Arabic commentary of Maimonides on the Mishna, with translation and very learned notes; and in 1656 by the annals of Eulychius in Arabic and Latin. He also gave active assistance to Brian Walton’s polyglot bible, and the preface to the various readings of the Arabic Pentateuch is from his hand. After the Restoration Pococke’s political and pecuniary troubles were removed, but the reception of his Magnum opus—a complete edition of the Arabic history of Barhebraeus (Greg. Abulfaragii historia compendiosa dynastiarum), which he dedicated to the king in 1663, showed that the new order of things was not very favourable to profound scholarship. After this his most important works were a Lexicon heptaglotton (1669) and English commentaries on Micah (1677), Malachi (1677), Hosea (1685) and Joel (1691), which are still worth reading. An Arabic translation of Grotius’s De veritate, which appeared in 1660, may also be mentioned as a proof of Pococke’s interest in the propagation of Christianity in the East. This was an old plan, which he had talked over with Grotius at Paris on his way back from Constantinople. Pococke married in 1646, and died in 1691. One of his sons, Edward (1648–1727), published several contributions to Arabic literature—a fragment of Abdallatif’s description of Egypt and the Philosophus autodidactus of Ibn Tufail.

 PODĚBRAD, GEORGE OF (1420–1471), king of Bohemia, was the son of Victoria of Kunstat and Poděbrad, a Bohemian nobleman, who was one of the leaders of the “Orphans” or modern Taborites during the Hussite wars. George himself as a boy of fourteen took part in the great battle of Lipan, which marks the downfall of the more advanced Taborites. Early in life, as one of the leaders of the Calixtine party, he defeated the Austrian troops of the German King Albert II., son-in-law and successor of King Sigismund. He soon became a prominent member of the national or Calixtine party, and after the death of Ptacek of Pirkstein its leader. During the minority of Ladislas, son of Albert, who was born after his father’s death, Bohemia was divided into two parties—the Romanist or Austrian one, led by Ulrich von Rosenberg (1403–1462), and the national one, led by Poděbrad. After various attempts at reconciliation, Poděbrad decided to appeal to the force of arms. He gradually raised an armed force in north-eastern Bohemia, where the Calixtine cause had most adherents and where his ancestral castle was situated. With this army, consisting of about 9000 men, he marched in 1448 from Kutna Hora to Prague, and obtained possession of the capital almost without resistance. Civil war, however, broke