Jan. 27. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



57 



LONDON. SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 1855. 



ARITHMETICAL NOTES, NO. I. 



BoswelVs Arithmetic (Vol. x., pp. 363. 471.). — 

 Could any correspondent, who knows the neigh- 

 bourhood of Lichfield, tell me what was, and what 

 is, the common mode of measuring fence work in 

 that part of the country ? 



Francis Walkingame (Vol. v., p. 441.). — The 

 Query there made has never received any answer. 

 This writer, whose editors do not agree within 

 twenty as to the number of the editions, is wholly 

 unknown. There must be some grandson or 

 great-nephew who could give a little information. 

 A friend has recently presented me with an earlier 

 edition than any I had ever seen ; it is " the tenth 

 edition with several additions," printed for the 

 author, London, duodecimo in threes. The date 

 is 177 [2 i*] in the print, but the last figure has 

 been neatly erased both in the title and preface, 

 and a written I has been supplied. The author 

 calls himself writing-master and accomptant; from 

 the preface it appears that he kept a school, and 

 from an advertisement that he taught writing 

 and arithmetic abroad. He lived in Great Rus- 

 sell Street, Bloomsbury. We may suppose that 

 the work appeared before 1760 ; the author 

 affirms that it was (1771) established in almost 

 every school of eminence throughout the kingdom. 



William Milns. — He is mentioned in my Arith- 

 metical Books (p. 80.) as author of a work on 

 arithmetic published at New York in 1797, the 

 preface of which shows him to have been at St. 

 Mary Hall, Oxford. Join this to the following 

 anecdote given by William Seward : 



" A gentleman born at Salonica in Turkey, when he 

 was at St. Mary Hall in Oxford, as a gentleman-com- 

 moner, was verj' kind to a worthy young man, whose 

 circumstances obliged him to be a servitor of the college. 

 The servitor taking orders had some preferment in 

 America given him by his friend's recommendation. On 

 the breaking out of the war he was accidentally informed 

 that the estates of his benefactor were to be confiscated, 

 as supposed to belong to a British subject. On this he 

 took horse immediately, and proved to the Assembly that 

 his friend was not a British subject." 



Edward Cocker. — In my Arithmetical Books I 

 have sufficiently shown that the great work, the 

 English Bareme, was probably a forgery by John 

 Hawkins, under the name of Cocker. This 

 Hawkins published in succession Cocher's Arith- 

 metic, Decimal Arithmetic, and English Dictionary. 

 For the circumstances which indicate forgery, I 

 must refer to the work above cited, to which I 

 now make the following additions. 



Cocker died between 1671 and 1675. By the 

 inscriptions under his portraits he was born in 

 1632. He was a writing-master and engraver, of 



writing at least. He is said to have published 

 fourteen engraved copy-books. At the end of 

 one of the almanacs for 1688 is advertised, as a 

 reprint. Cocker's Pen's Transcendency. Evelyn 

 (cited by Granger) mentions him and three others 

 as comparable to the Italians both for letters and 

 flourishes. His genuine work on arithmetic, pub- 

 lished during his life, before 1664, is the Tutor to 

 Writing and Arithmetic, which I suspect to have 

 been an engraved book of writing copies and 

 arithmetical examples. Some of his works are in 

 the Museum. (Penny Cycl., " Cocker.") 



It seems that as soon as the breath was out of 

 Cocker's body, this John Hawkins constituted 

 himself his editor and continuer. Hawkins began 

 by reprinting an undoubted work of Cocker, with 

 a preface signed J. H. : 



" The Young Clerk's Tutor Enlarged : Being a most 

 useful Collection of the best Presidents of Recognizances, 

 Obligations, Conditions, Acquittances, Bills of Sale, War- 

 rants of Attorney, &c. ... To which is annexed, 

 several of the best Copies both Court and Chancery- 

 Hand now extant. By Edward Cocker. Ex studiis N. 

 de Latibulo 90\.ov6^av. The eighth edition." London, 

 1675, 8vo. 



The goodness of Cocker's alleged work on arith- 

 metic lies chiefly in this : of all the small and 

 cheap school-books of the time, it is the one which 

 adopts the now universal mode of performing 

 division, to the exclusion of the older method, in 

 which figures are written down and scratched out. 

 In its explanations it is inferior to many of the 

 works which it Supplanted. 



When did the name of Cocker become a pro- 

 verbial representative of arithmetic? Can any 

 one carry this higher than the year 1756 ? In 

 that year appeared the farce of The Apprentice., 

 in which the old merchant's strong point is the 

 recommendation of Cocker's Arithmetic, " the best 

 book that ever was written," to the young tra- 

 gedian, his son. Arthur Murphy had evidently 

 been looking up the names of arithmeticians ; the 

 old man who reverences Cocker is called Wingate, 

 the name of a writer second only to Cocker in the 

 number of his editions. Is it to this farce that 

 Cocker owes his position ? If Murphy had hap- 

 pened to call his old citizen Cocker, and make 

 him recommend Wingate's book, would the two 

 have changed places ? These are questions which 

 may have to be answered affirmatively, if no one 

 can establish a usage prior to 1756. 



Any one who took the trouble might make a 

 curious list of extracts in which dramatists and 

 novelists have exposed the want of sufficient tech- 

 nical knowledge to represent the characters they 

 intended. Both Wingate and Cocker would have 

 been shocked to hear the Wingate of the farce 

 (who is obviously intended for a keen mercantile 

 arithmetician) going on thus : 



" Five-eighths of three-sixteenths of a pound ! mul- 

 tiply the numerator by the denominator! five times six- 



