Jump to content

Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cockayne, Thomas Oswald

From Wikisource
1319719Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 11 — Cockayne, Thomas Oswald1887Arthur Aikin Brodribb

COCKAYNE, THOMAS OSWALD (1807–1873), philologist, born in 1807, was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1828 as tenth wrangler. He took holy orders in due course, and devoted himself partly to literature and partly to educational work. He was for many years an assistant-master in King's College School, London, which post he resigned in 1869. He died in 1873. Throughout the greater part of his life he was an industrious student of the Anglo-Saxon language, on which subject he published several works, now out of print, which are characterised both by learning and originality. He was a member of the Philological and the Early English Text Societies. The following is a list of the more important of his published works: 1. 'A Civil History of the Jews, from Joshua to Hadrian,' 1841, a second edition in 1845. 2. 'A Greek Syntax,' 1846. 3. 'Outlines of the History of France,' 1846. 4. 'Outlines of the History of Ireland,' 1851. 5. 'Life of Marshal Turenne,' 1853. 6. 'Leechdoms, Wort-cunning, and Starcraft of Early England, being a collection of documents never before published, illustrating the History of Science before the Norman Conquest,' 1858. 7. 'Spoon and Sparrow, or English roots in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew,' 1861. 8. 'The Shrine, a collection of papers on dry subjects,' 1864.

[Private information.]