COCKER, EDWARD. This writer, whose name is so well hewn in England, was born about 1632, as appears from the inscription to one of the portraits cited by Gmuger in his Biographical History of England.' He was an engraver, and a teacher of writing and arith metic. Pepys has in his ' Diary' some curious notices of Cocker (Aug. 10 and 11, and October 5 and 7,1664). He employed Cocker to engrave his "new sliding rule with silver plates, it being so small that Brown that made it, could not get one to do it ; " Cocker however did it, and, though so small, without using a magnifying glass. Pepye speaks of finding Cocker "by his discourse very ingenious; and among other things a great admirer of, and well read iu the English poets, and undertakes to judge them all, cud that not impertinently." He is said to have published fourteen books of exercises in pomnan ship, some of them on silver plates. One of these is iu the British Museum, namely, 'Daniel's Copy Book, &c. &c. Ingraven by Edward Cocker, Philomath. London, 1664.' The matter of these exercises iu penmanship consists in great part of descriptions of hell-fire, with fiends (or something very like them) in flourishes. We have also 'Cockers Urania, or the Scholar's Delight,' without date ; and ' Cocker's Morals, or the Muses' Spring Garden,' London, 1694 (either a late edition, or a posthumous work). Soon after his death one of his undoubted works was reprinted by the Hawkins referred to below, under the title of ' The Young Clerk's Tutor Enlarged,' Ste., 8th edition, 1675, 8vo. Cocker died before 1675, and certainly later than 1671.
The celebrated work on arithmetic was not published by Cocker himself, but as described in the following title-page :—' Cocker's Arithmetic : being a plain and familiar method, suitable to the meanest capacity for the full understanding of that incomparable art, as it is now taught by the ablest schoolmasters in City and Country. Competed by Edward Cooker, late practitioner in the arts of Writing, Arithmetick, and Engraving. Being that so long since promised to the world. Perused and published by John Hawkins, Writing Master near St. George's Church in Southwark, by the Author's correct copy, and comtnended to the world by many eminent Mathematicians and Writing Maaters in and near London.' The first edition was in 1677; the fourth iu 1682; the thirty-seventh in 1720, from which we have copied the titlepago ; the fifty-fifth in 1758.
Cocker's Arithmetic was the first which entirely excluded all demonstration and reasoning, and confined itself to commercial • questions only. This was the secret of its extensive circulation. There is no need of describing it ; for so closely have nine out of ten of the subsequent school treatises been modelled upon it, that a large proportion of our readers would be able immediately to turn to any rule in Cocker, and to guess pretty nearly what they would find there. Every method since his time has been "according to Cocker." There are two other works which bear the name of Cocker, and both published by the same John Hawkins. (1). 'Decimal Arithmetic, accompanied by Artificial Arithmetic (logarithms) and Algebraical Arithmetic :' London, 1684 and 1695. (2). Cocker's English Dic tionary,' the second edition of which hears date London 1715. Now, since in 1677 Cocker had been dead some time, as appears by Hawkins's preface to the Arithmetic, and since Kersey's Algebra, ou which Cocker's is professedly founded, was published in 1673, it will appear only just possible that Cocker could have lived to have written this work. Again, the Arithmetic was written by a person who under stood Latin, as proved by apt quotations from Oughtred and (lemma Frisius : the Decimal Arithmetic is entirely without quotations, though abounding in subjects on which the author of the Arithmetic might be expected to quote. Lastly, to the preface of the Decimal Arithmetic is annexed a very clumsy attempt at a cipher, which seems utterly unmeaning, unless it be considered as wrapping up a confession of authorship. Deciphered, it is as follows : " Amico suo amantissimo Johanni Perkes, Ptochotrophii Fobliensis in Comitatu Wigorniensi ludimagistro. Sir, if you pleas to bestow some of your spare hours in perusing the following treatise, you will then be the better able to judg how I have spent mine, and if my paines therein may be profitable to the publick I have my wish, but if not, it is not a good thing now indeed I do say so. Sir, I am your humble servant John Hawkins." From all that precedes we are inclined to suspect that Hawkins, being in possession of Cocker's papers, and finding the Arithmetic a successful work, published others of his own in Cocker's name, perhaps with some assistance from the manuscripts of the latter.