cox 



and occasionally 1m iiiutlo brief visits to the Con- 

 tinent, e\eciiting water-colours of noble quality 

 which slowly but steadily made their way with 

 the public, and HIT now recognUed a> entitling 

 their painter to a place among the very lirst of 

 English: lamU.-apisis. In lsn< In- turned his atten- 

 timi seriously t<> oil painting, a medium which he 

 hud hitherto used only for sketching, and B<MHI IK- 

 had ma-tnvd the process. He executed in all 

 about a hundred works in oil. These are less widely 

 known than his water colours, but they are of at 

 leo-st equal quality. In 1H41 he settled at Harborne, 

 near Birmingham, where he resided for the rest of his 

 life. It was during this period that he produced 

 his greatest works, those most rapidly synthetic in 

 execution, and most deeply poetic in feeling. They 

 mainly owe their inspiration to the scenery of 

 North Wales, and especially of Bettws-y-Coed (a. v. ), 

 which he visited every autumn. He died at 

 Hurborne, 15th June 1859. The manliness and 

 simplicity of the painter's own character is reflected 

 in his direct, faithful, and forcible art. His works 

 are distinguished by great breadth, purity of tint, 

 truth of tone, and brilliancy of effect, and they 

 are admirable in their rendering of atmosphere, 

 and in their suggestion of the sparkle and breezy 

 motion of nature. Among the more celebrated of 

 his oil pictures are ' Lancaster Castle ' (1846) ; ' Peace 

 and War' (1846), a small picture 18by 24 in., for 

 which Cox received 20, but which fetched 3602 

 in 1872 (his lifelong ambition had been 'some day, 

 D.V., to get 100 for a picture); 'The Vale of 

 Clwyd' (1846 and 1848); 'The Skylark' (1849); 

 'Boys Fishing' (1849); and 'The Church of 

 Bettws-y-Coed.' Among his very numerous water- 

 colours are 'Lancaster Sands' (1835); ' Ulverston 

 Sands' (1835); ' Bolton Abbey' (1847); 'Welsh 

 Funeral' (1850); and 'Broom Gatherers on Chat 

 Moss' (1854). His water-colour titled 'The Hay- 

 liel.l,' fetched 2950 in 1875. His works have 

 been frequently brought together in exhibitions, 

 and he was admirably represented by forty-six 

 examples in the Manchester Exhibition, 1887. 

 See the Memoir by N. N. Solly (1875), and the 

 Biography by William Hall (1881). His son, 

 David Cox the younger (1809-85), was also known 

 as a water-colour painter. 



Cox, SIR GEORGE, an eminent mythologist, 

 was born in 1827, and educated at Rugby and 

 Trinity College, Oxford. He took orders in 1850, 

 and after holding curacies in Devonshire, and an 

 assistant-mastership at Cheltenham, became vicar 

 of Bekesbourne in Kent, and afterwards rector 

 of Scrayingham, York. In 1877 he succeeded to 

 his uncle's baronetcy. An industrious man of 

 letters, he has written much on ancient history 

 and on mythology. His Titles of Ancient Greece 

 (1868) was a collected edition of several admirable 

 earlier volumes of Greek history. His most im- 

 portant work, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations 

 (2 vols. 1870), was an uncompromising develop- 

 ment of the solar and nebular hypothesis as the 

 key to all mythologies. It is learned, lucid, and 

 courageous ; but the extreme to which a serviceable 

 enough theory has been pushed in an attempt to 

 account for the unaccountable, and to reconcile 

 the irreconcilable, has exposed its real weakness. 

 His History of Greece (2 vols. 1874) was a work of 

 great learning, and his Introduction to the Science 

 of Comparative Mythology and Folklore ( 1881 ) 

 showed its author's old ingenuity and erudition, 

 but none the less the singular limitation of his 

 knowledge. Other works are Latin and Teutonic 

 Christianiti/ (1870), The Crusades (1874), History 

 of British Rule in India ( 1881 ), and Lives of Greek 

 Statesmen (2 vols. 1886), and concise History of 

 England (1887). With W. T. Brande he edited 

 the useful Dictionary of Science, Literature, and 



COYPU 



837 



Art (3 vole. 1805-67). Hia Life of Jiuhop Coletuo 

 appeared in 1888. 



Coxe, HENRY OCTAVIUS, librarian, wan born 

 at Bucklebury vicarage in Berkshire, September 

 20, 1811. He had his education at \\VHiiiinnter 

 and Worcester College, Oxford, and entered the 

 manuscript department O f the British Museum in 

 1833, soon after taking orders. In 1838 he be- 

 came attached to the Bodleian Library, in 1860 

 its head, and here his marvellous knowledge and 

 patient kindliness made him the very ideal of 

 the librarian. Already in 1857 he had been sent 

 by Sir G. C. Lewis to the East on a tour of 

 discovery, which resulted indeed in his finding 

 niany codices, though the grasping greed of the 

 ignorant monks, at last awakened to their value, 

 made it impossible to buy them. Coxe held in 

 succession several curacies near Oxford, and in 1868 

 became rector of Wytham. He wan Select preacher 

 in 1842, Whitehall preacher in 1868, and in 1878 

 presided at the first annual meeting of the Library 

 Association at Oxford. Coxe died July 8, 1881. 

 Although himself an excellent palieographer and 

 ripe scholar, Coxe did much more for others' 

 reputations than his own. The most important 

 of his own works were an edition of Roger of 

 Wendover's Chronicle (5 vols. 1841-44), and of 

 Gower's Vox Clamantia for the Roxburghe Club 

 (1850), and his Catalogues of MSS. in the col- 

 leges and halls of Oxford (1852), and of the Bod- 

 leian MSS. ( 1853-54). See Dean Burgon's Lives of 

 Twelve Good Men (1888). 



Coxe, WILLIAM, historical writer, was born in 

 London, 7th March 1747, and from Eton passed to 

 King's College, Cambridge, of which he became a 

 fellow in 1768. As tutor to the sons of four persons 

 of quality, he spent much of twenty years on 

 the Continent, where he neglected no opportun- 

 ity of collecting information about the countries 

 which he visited. The result appeared in fourteen 

 works of travel and history, careful but dull, the 

 best known being his History of the House of 

 Austria (1807). He died, a prebendary of Salis- 

 bury and Archdeacon of Wilts, at Bemerton 

 rectory, 16th June 1828. 



Coxswain, or COCKSWAIN (pronounced com, 

 and often abbreviated to cox), on board ship, is 

 the steersman of a boat, and commander of the 

 boat's crew. In boat-racing, the coxswain should 

 always by preference be a very light weight. See 

 ROWING. 



Coxwell, HENRY TRACEY, aeronaut, born in 

 1819, at Wouldham, near Rochester, was educated 

 for the army, but settled as a surgeon-dentist in 

 London. trom boyhood he had taken a keen 

 interest in ballooning ; in 1844 he became a pro- 

 fessional aeronaut, and in 1845 established the 

 Aerostatic Magazine. Since then he made some 700 

 ascents, the most remarkable being that of 1862, 

 when he reached, with Mr Glaisher, a height of 

 seven miles. He published My Life and Jiall<wning 

 Adventures (2 vols. 1887-88), and died in January 

 1900. See BALLOON. 



Coyote. See WOLF. 



Coypll (Myopotamus coifpn), a large rodent in 

 the porcupine section of the order. It is_the only 

 known species of its genus, is common in South 

 America on both sides of the Andes, lives (in 

 pairs) in burrows near water, and feeds on aquatic 

 plants. The animal measures from one to two feet 

 in length, not including the long scaly tail ; the 

 general colour is brown varying towards yellow ; 

 the hind-feet are webbed and enable the coy pus to 

 swim well. The mother-animal swims with her 

 young on her back, and this habit may have some- 

 thing to do, it is suggested, with the peculiar 

 position of the teats, which are high up on the 



