Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/1205

COV atrocities that followed the reduction of the city, comprised a wanton destruction of property, as well as an indiscriminate massacre of the inhabitants. Couthon fell with his chief, Robespierre. He tried to kill himself in prison, but had not sufficient nerve to inflict more than a scratch. He was guillotined, July, 1794. He was weak in constitution; bland and almost feminine in countenance; eloquent in speech; but so cruel and faithless that he was called the Panther of the Triumvirate.—T. J.  COVENTRY,, Lord-keeper of the great seal, was born in Worcestershire in 1578, and died in 1640. He was educated at Oxford, whence he removed to the inner temple. In 1616 he received the honour of knighthood, after being appointed to the office of solicitor-general. He was made attorney-general in 1621, and four years afterwards lord-keeper by Charles I. He was, finally, made a baron of the realm, on the 10th April, 1628, with the title of Lord Coventry of Aylesborough.—R. M., A.  COVERDALE,, the celebrated translator of the bible, was born in the district of Coverdale in Yorkshire in the year 1488. He was sent to the Augustine monastery in Cambridge, of which Barnes, the martyr, was then prior. Ordained in 1514, he soon after renounced popery, and devoted himself wholly to the advancement of the Reformation. During this time Coverdale found a valuable patron in Cromwell, by whom he must certainly have been often shielded from danger. In 1532 he went abroad, assisted Tyndale in his biblical labours, and in 1535, encouraged probably by the course of events in England, hastened through the press the first translation of the whole bible in English. Three years after he was employed in editing the bible, which Grafton had received permission to print in Paris. The French capital was chosen because the best paper and presswork could be commanded there. The fate of this magnificent edition is well known. Pounced upon by the harpies of the inquisition, only a small part of it escaped destruction. Some copies were fortunately brought to London, by the aid of which, with Coverdale still as editor, Grafton was enabled at last to publish what is called Cranmer's, or the Great Bible. In 1551 Coverdale was raised to the see of Exeter, but was ejected on the accession of Mary, and thrown into prison. Released in two years, he repaired to Geneva, where he assisted the English exiles with their translation of the scriptures—usually called the Geneva Translation. He returned into England on the accession of Elizabeth, but found that the principles of the Geneva reformers, which he had imbibed, would not permit him to resume his bishopric. Bishop Grindal collated him to the rectory of St. Magnus, London Bridge, which he resigned in 1566, two years before his death.—R. M., A.  COWARD,, an English physician, born at Winchester, and died in 1725. He devoted much of his time to literary pursuits. His book, entitled "Second Thoughts concerning the Human Soul," was followed by "The Grand Essay." The latter, which is a defence of the "Second Thoughts," was, on account of its doctrines, condemned by an order of the house of commons to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman.  COWLEY,, born in London in 1618, at Fleet Street, near the end of Chancery Lane. His parents are described by Dr. Sprat, his first biographer, as "citizens of a virtuous life and sufficient estate." Before he was twelve years the reading of Spenser made him irrecoverably a poet. His early education was at Westminster school, from which he passed to Trinity college, Cambridge. He was elected scholar of the house in 1636. In the same year that he entered Westminster, he published his "Poetical Blossoms." In 1638 he published "Love's Riddle," a pastoral comedy, written while he was at Westminster, and "Naufragium Joculare," which was acted by his fellow-students at Cambridge. While at Cambridge he wrote the greater part of his poem the "Davideis." These quiet studies he was not allowed to pursue. The great civil war of England was raging—Cowley's lot was cast with the royalists. He was ejected from Cambridge by the parliamentarians, and found a temporary refuge at St. John's, Oxford. While there he published his satire of the "Puritan and Papist." On the surrender of Oxford, Cowley followed the queen to Paris, and as secretary to Lord Jermyn (afterwards earl of St. Albans), conducted the correspondence, carried on chiefly in cypher, of the king and queen. He was for ten years away from England, engaged in the service of the royalist cause, for which he had made several journeys to Jersey, Scotland, Holland, &c. In 1656 he was sent to London, to give such assistance there as circumstances might admit. He then published, 1st, "Miscellanies;" 2nd, "The Mistress;" a series of love-poems, first printed a few years before; 3rd, "Pindaric odes;" and 4th, "The Davideis." In the year 1657 Cowley took the degree of doctor of physic at Oxford. On Cromwell's death he returned to France, and remained in the character of secretary to the royal family till the Restoration. His studies as a physician led to the composition of his Latin work on plants. The Restoration came, and with it much expectation and much disappointment. If Cowley was not rewarded in proportion to the real service he rendered, he yet was not neglected. Through the interest of the duke of Buckingham he was given a beneficial lease of some of the queen's lands, and he now retired from all public business to five in the country. Pope's account of Cowley's death represents him and Dean Sprat as walking home from the house of a friend with whom they had dined. "They did not set out for their walk till it was late, and had drunk so deep that they lay out in the fields all night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried him off (1667). Sprat does not record this, but the statement is not inconsistent with his narrative. Cowley was in his domestic relations a kindly man. His mother lived to old age, supported and venerated by her son. Cowley was one of three brothers, of whom one survived him and inherited his property. The poet's courtesy of manners is commemorated by his affectionate panegyrist, who records with gratitude that Cowley did not, like other poets, inflict his verses on such friends as fell into his power. He was interred in Westminster abbey near Chaucer and Spenser. Eight years after his death a monument was erected to him by the duke of Buckingham. King Charles, who knew him well, said that he had not left behind him a better man in England.—J. A. D.  * COWLEY, , second lord, is a son of the eminent diplomatist, the first lord, who was the youngest brother of the great duke of Wellington. Lord Cowley adopted his father's career, and has been a diplomatist from his youth upwards. Born in 1804, he was attached to the embassy at Vienna at the age of twenty. In 1829 he was appointed paid attaché at the Hague, whence he was transferred to Stuttgart as secretary of legation in 1832; and in 1838 he was removed to fill the same position at Constantinople. In 1848 he was elevated to higher diplomatic rank, being sent in February as minister plenipotentiary to Switzerland, and in the July of the same year on a special mission to Frankfort. In the June of 1851, he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to the Germanic confederation. After the coup d'état Lord Normanby was removed from the embassy at Paris, and Lord Cowley was appointed to the very responsible post. On him devolved the negotiations which formed the Anglo-French alliance against Russia in 1853; and his mission to Vienna in 1859, to mediate between France and Austria, he is understood to have discharged with singular tact. His lordship succeeded his father in 1847.—F. E.  COWPER,, an eminent English poet, was born at the parsonage house of Great Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, on the 26th November, 1731, being the eldest son of John Cowper, who held the living of that place. The family was an ancient and distinguished one, dating from the time of Edward IV., and numbering amongst them a lord chancellor and a judge of the common pleas—the granduncle and grandfather of the poet. From his birth he was a frail child, both in physical and mental organization, and the death of a tender mother, ere he had attained his sixth year, deprived him of that care which might have counteracted the tendencies which so sadly overshadowed his whole life. Shortly after this event he was sent to a public school, whence he was sent, in his tenth year, to Westminster school. The change seems to have operated unfavourably upon his mind, increasing his constitutional despondency, which took the form of brooding over his spiritual condition, and alternately fluctuating between the extremes of hope and despair. He applied himself, notwithstanding, to his studies with diligence, and acquired a high character for scholarship. In his eighteenth year he was transferred, by his father, from the sixth form at Westminster to a stool in a solicitor's office; a change than which nothing could have been more uncongenial to him, intellectually or morally. Here it was his fortune to have as a fellow apprentice one who, as a boy, had been clever, daring, and r efractory, and, as a young man, had a singular aptitude for acquiring knowledge, even without the appearance of study. This was Edward Thurlow, afterwards lord chancellor of 