OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cockton, Henry

​COCKTON, HENRY (1807–1853), humorous novelist, born in London on 7 Dec. 1807, was the second of three brothers, the eldest of whom was William and the youngest Edward. Nothing is known of his parentage or education. His first and most successful work was 'Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist,' published in monthly numbers, and afterwards (1840) in book form, with sixty illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn. The 'Times' declared that it would keep the most melancholy reader in side-shaking fits of laughter. On 9 May 1841 he was married to Ann Howes at St. James's Church, Bury St. Edmunds. There he lost much money in a malting speculation, a business of which he was entirely ignorant. In 1841 he published 'George St. George Julian the Prince,' with twenty-five illustrations by Onwhyn. The hero is a 'prince' of ingenious knaves, and the book is meant to put the inexperienced on their guard against adventurers, and to expose the defective state of the laws upon bigamy. The frontispiece was an engraving from the portrait of Cockton, painted by James Warren Childe [q. v.] 'Stanley Thorne' appeared in 'Bentley's Miscellany' between January 1840 and August 1841, and was afterwards published in three volumes, with fifteen illustrations by George Cruikshank, John Leech, and Alfred Crowquill. Cockton's next work, entitled 'England and France,' was a description of the contrasts of modern life in the two countries. 'Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist' was issued in numbers in 1843 and 1844, and published in 1844, with forty-three illustrations by Onwhyn. 'The Love Match,' 'designed to illustrate the various conflicting influences which sprang from the union of Mr. and Mrs. Tom Todd,' appeared in 1845, with twenty-two embellishments by Onwhyn. Prefixed to the book was a laconic 'address,' in which Cockton announced that it would be his last work. He proceeded, however, to publish a romance in real life called 'The Steward' (first issued in six monthly numbers) in 1850, with twenty-two illustrations by Onwhyn. 'The Sisters, or the Fatal Marriages,' was completed in 1851, with eighty illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn, Kenny Meadows, and Alfred Crowquill; 'Lady Felicia' in 1852; and 'Percy Effingham, or the Germ of the World's Esteem,' in 1852, in two volumes. On 26 June 1853 Cockton died of consumption at his residence in Bury St. Edmunds. His elder brother, William, died on 19 Sept. 1853; his younger brother, Edward, went to Australia, and was never afterwards heard of. His widow married again, and died soon afterwards. His only son, who was a mere boy when his father died, has been unable to preserve or to obtain any record at all as to either the surroundings or antecedents of his father.
[Recollections derived personally from the novelist's only son, Mr. Edward Stanley Cockton, now musical director at Greenwich Hospital; Bury and Norwich Post, 28 June 1853; Gent. Mag. xl. (new ser.) 212, 539; Allibone, i. 401.]
C. K.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cocks, Roger

​COCKS, ROGER (fl. 1635), divine, was the author of 'Hebdomada Sacra, a Weeke's Devotion; or Seven Poeticall Meditations upon the Second Chapter of S. Matthew's Gospel,' London, 1630, small 8vo, a work which of itself plainly shows, apart from the information supplied in a rhyming preface, that 'no profest poet but a preacher wrote it.' He also published, in 1642, 'An Answer to a Book set forth by Sir Edward Peyton.' Peyton (who was a baronet, and who sat in parliament for Cambridgeshire from 1620 to 1627) had been refused the sacrament by Cocks, because he insisted on receiving it in a standing posture, and had published a vindication of his refusal to kneel, based chiefly on ​scriptural grounds. To this Cocks replied in the work under notice, a closely argued little pamphlet of twenty-two pages. From the introductory notice it appears that Cocks was still only a curate, seemingly in some parish in Suffolk. In 'Epicedium Cantabrigiense in obitum . . . Henrici, Principis Walliæ' (Cambridge, 1612) there is a set of Latin hexameter verses, signed Roger Cocks, Trinity College, who was probably the future writer of the 'Hebdomada.'
[Brydges's Restituta, ii. 505; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
A. V.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Halfpenny, Joseph

​HALFPENNY, JOSEPH (1748–1811), topographical draughtsman and engraver, was born on 9 Oct. 1748, at Bishopsthorpe ​in Yorkshire, where his father was gardener to the Archbishop of York. He was apprenticed to a house-painter, and practised house-painting in York for some years. He afterwards raised himself to the position of an artist and a teacher of drawing. He acted as clerk of the works to John Carr the architect (1723–1807) [q. v.] when he was restoring the cathedral at York, and skilfully repaired some of its old decoration. From the scaffolding then erected he made those drawings of Gothic ornaments for which he is principally remembered.
In 1795 he commenced to publish by subscription his ‘Gothic Ornaments in the Cathedral Church of York,’ which was completed in twenty numbers in 1800. It was reprinted in 1807 under the old date, and a second edition appeared in 1831. The work consists of 175 specimens of ornament and four views of the interior of the church and chapter-house. It is specially valuable as depicting portions of the building since injured by fire. His ‘Fragmenta Vetusta, or the Remains of Ancient Buildings in York,’ was published in 1807. In both these works he was his own engraver. He drew and engraved the monument of Archbishop Bowet in York Minster for the second volume of Gough's ‘Sepulchral Monuments,’ and an etching in the British Museum of a portrait (by L. Pickard) of Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, who died in 1614, is ascribed to him by Granger. The Grenville Library (British Museum) contains five views of churches in Yorkshire, published in 1816 and 1817 (after his death) by his daughters, Margaret and Charlotte Halfpenny. In the South Kensington Museum is a water-colour drawing by him of ‘The Bridge, Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire’ (1793); and in the British Museum a ‘Landscape with Mansion in the Distance’ (1793), purchased at the sale of the Percy collection in April 1890.
He was twice married, and was survived by two daughters. He died at his house in the Gillygate, York, on 11 July 1811, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Olave's, adjoining the ruins of the old abbey.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Gent. Mag. 1800 pt. ii. p. 760, 1811 pt. ii. p. 91; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers (Graves's edition); Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, ii. pt. i. p. 11, and pt. ii. plate xxvii. p. 75; Hargrove's Hist. of York, 1818, pp. 599, 600; Browne's Metropolitan Church of St. Peter, York, 1847, p. 318, in the index of which the name is erroneously given as William Halfpenny; Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual; Brit. Mus. Cat. of Printed Books; Brit. Mus. Print Room Cat.; Cat. of Gallery of British Art at South Kensington.]
B. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hales, John (d.1679)

​HALES, JOHN (d. 1679), painter. [See Hayls.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hales, Thomas (fl.1250)

​HALES, THOMAS (fl. 1250), poet and religious writer, was a Franciscan friar, and presumably a native of Hales (or Hailes) in Gloucestershire. Quétif and Echard, finding manuscripts of some of his works in the libraries of Dominican houses, without any further ascription than ‘frater Thomas,’ thought he might belong to that order, and other writers, as Bale and Pits, have given his date as 1340. But that he was a Franciscan is clear from the title of a poem ascribed to him in MS. Jesus Coll. Oxon., and from a prologue attached to a manuscript of his life of the Virgin, formerly in the library of the abbey of St. Victor. He is probably the ‘frater Thomas de Hales’ whom Adam de Marisco mentions as a friend (Mon. Franciscana, i. 395, in Rolls Series). The date thus arrived at is corroborated by allusions in his love song to ‘Henri our king,’ i.e. Henry III (l. 82; cf. l. 101), and by the dates of some of the manuscripts of his works which belong to the thirteenth century. Hales is said to have been a doctor of theology at the Sorbonne, and famous for his learning as well in France and Italy as in England; but nothing further is known as to his life. The following works are ascribed to him:
* ‘Vita beatæ Virginis Mariæ,’ manuscripts formerly in the libraries of the Dominicans of the Rue St. Honoré (sec. xiii.) and of the abbey of St. Victor.
* ‘Sermones Dominicales;’ in MS. St. John's College, Oxon. 190 (sec. xiii.), there are some ‘Sermones de Dominica proxima ante adventum,’ which may be by Hales, for the same volume contains
* ‘Sermones secundum fratrem Thomam de Hales’ in French.
* ‘Disputationes Scholasticæ.’
* ‘A Luve Ron’ (love song) in MS. Jesus College, Oxon., 29 (sec. xiii.); this early English poem, composed in stanzas of eight lines, is ‘a contemplative lyric of the simplest, noblest mould,’ and was written at the request of a nun on the merit of Christ as the true lover. It is printed in Morris's ‘Old English Miscellany’ (Early English Text Society). From the manuscript at St. Victor Hales seems to have also written
* ‘Lives of SS. Francis and Helena’ (mother of Constantine the Great). Petrus de Alva confuses him with the more famous Alexander of Hales [see Alexander, d. 1245].
[Bale, v. 49; Pits, p. 442; Quétif and Echard's Script. Ord. Præd. i. 490; Waddingus, Script. Ord. Min. p. 324; Sbaralea, Suppl. in Script. Ord. S. Francisc. p. 676; Fabricius, Bibl. Lat. Med. Æv. vi. 235, ed. 1754; Histoire Littéraire de la France, xxi. 307–8; Fuller's Worthies, i. 215; Ten Brink's Early English Literature, translated by H. M. Kennedy, pp. 208–11; Coxe's Cat. Cod. MSS. in Coll. Oxon.]
C. L. K.
# Delight (1926)/Chapter 11

Sundown, red, and blurred with golden haze, ended the day of Indian summer. It was a languid, whispering day, hazy with the smoke from northern forest fires. A sweet, yet acrid, scent hung in the quiet air. Slender leaves like little golden fish, fell from the bending willows into the lagoon, sinking slowly, mirrored for one lovely moment in the still water.
Mirrored, too, was the green boat, and Delight, fearfully dipping the oars. . . . There seemed to be two boats, two Delights, crossing the deep lagoon.
The sun, like a great red rose, lay at the water's edge, its rich light streaming like a banner from shore to shore. A little flock of gulls floating with folded wings, watched the passing of the boat, with turnings and archings of their downy necks.
The basket, in which lay the apple-green tea-set, gently rose and sank with the motion of the boat.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Davis, Joseph Barnard

​DAVIS, JOSEPH BARNARD (1801–1881), craniologist, was born in 1801. In the summer of 1820, while still a student, he went as a surgeon in a whaling ship to the Arctic seas. Obtaining the Apothecaries' ​Hall qualification in 1823, it was not till twenty years later that he became a member of the College of Surgeons. In 1862 he graduated M.D. at St. Andrew's. He early settled at Shelton, Hanley, in Staffordshire, and led a simple life as a medical practitioner till his death on 19 May 1881.
For many years Davis devoted himself to craniology, and gradually collected a museum of skulls and skeletons of various races, nearly all with carefully recorded histories, larger than all the collections in British public museums put together. He spared no time, labour, or money in achieving this object, and was unwearied in his correspondence with travellers, collectors, and residents in foreign lands. In 1856 he commenced, in conjunction with Dr. John Thurnam, the publication of ‘Crania Britannica,’ or delineations and descriptions of the skulls of the early inhabitants of the British Islands, the text in quarto, with many first-rate folio plates in an accompanying atlas. The work was completed in 1865. In 1867 he published a catalogue called ‘Thesaurus Craniorum,’ describing and figuring many specimens, and giving twenty-five thousand careful measurements, with copious bibliographical references. In 1875 his collection had increased so far that a supplement to the ‘Thesaurus’ was published. In 1880 the Royal College of Surgeons purchased the entire collection, which is now available for all students of anthropology.
Among Davis's numerous brief papers, of which a list will be found in the Royal Society's ‘Catalogue of Scientific Papers,’ the most important, perhaps, is his ‘ Contributions towards Determining the Weight of the Brain in Different Races of Man’ (Phil. Trans. 1868, clviii. 505–28). He was elected F.R.S. in 1868. For some years from 1870 he was one of the editors of the ‘Journal of Anthropology,’ and of ‘Anthropologia.’ In 1836 he published a useful ‘Popular Manual of the Art of Preserving Health.’
G. T. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Davis, John (d.1622)

Date of death 1621 in ODNB.
​DAVIS, JOHN (d. 1622), navigator, made several voyages to the East Indies as pilot and master. His name first appears in the company's court minutes, 1 April 1609, as having gone out pilot and come home master of the Ascension, and then going pilot of the Expedition, ‘notwithstanding some matter of misgovernment and misdemeanour objected against him.’ He had presented to the governor and company a journal ‘of all the courses, occurrences, and occasions of and in the last voyage.’ In 1614–15 he commanded the James, in which capacity his conduct gave rise to many charges of negligence, ill-government, and drunkenness. They were probably exaggerated, but not altogether without foundation, for he was not employed again as commander. In 1617 he was master of the Swan [see Courthope, Nathaniel], and was made prisoner by the Dutch at Pularoon, but was released and sent home. On his return in 1618, he wrote ‘A Ruter or Briefe Direction for Readie Sailings into the East India, digested into a plaine method by Master John Davis of Limehouse, upon experience of his five voyages thither and home againe.’ This ruttier is published in ‘Purchas his Pilgrimes,’ part i. p. 444. Davis was afterwards gunner of the Lesser James, and died at Batavia in March 1622.
[John Davis of Limehouse is mainly noticeable from an inveterate and persistent confusion between him and John Davys of Sandridge [q. v.], whose name is commonly but erroneously written Davis, but who died in 1605. The distinction has been clearly pointed out by Captain A. H. Markham in his Voyages and Works of John Davis (Hakluyt Society), Introd. p. lxxviii–lxxxiv. See also Calendar of State Papers (East Indies).]
J. K. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Davis, Richard Barrett

​DAVIS, RICHARD BARRETT (1782–1854), animal painter, was born at Watford, Hertfordshire, in 1782. His father was huntsman to the royal harriers. George III took notice of some of his drawings, and placed him under Sir William Beechey, R.A. [q. v.] At nineteen he became a student of the Royal Academy. He first exhibited in 1802, sending a landscape to the academy. For fifty years from that time he was a very constant exhibitor. To the academy he sent 70 pictures, to the British Institute 57, and to the Suffolk Street Exhibition 141. He last exhibited in 1853. He took early to animal painting. In 1806 he sent to the academy ‘Mares and Foals from the Royal Stud at Windsor,’ and ‘The Portrait of an Old Hunter;’ in 1814, ‘Going to Market;’ in 1821, a ‘Horse Fair;’ in 1831, ‘Travellers attacked by Wolves.’ In that year he was appointed animal painter to William IV, and painted the cavalcade which formed the coronation procession of that monarch. In 1829 he joined the Suffolk Street Society, and was one of its most constant exhibitors. He died on 13 March 1854.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists.]
E. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Davis, J. P.

John Philip Davis in later editions.
​DAVIS, J. P. (called ‘Pope’ Davis) (1784–1862), painter, was a friend of Haydon, and a persistent enemy of the Royal Academy. Like his unfortunate friend, he got the worst of the fight in his struggles with the Royal Academy. He first exhibited with that body in 1811. Then, and for ten years following, his contributions consisted of portraits in oil. In 1824 he went to Rome. There he painted a large picture of the ‘Talbot family receiving the Benediction of the Pope’ (hence his cognomen, ‘Pope’ Davis). The year following he was awarded a premium of 50l. by the directors of the British Institution. In 1826, after his return to London, he exhibited at the Academy ‘Canova crowned by the Genius of Sculpture.’ Thenceforward until 1843 he was an occasional exhibitor. Mr. Algernon Graves (Dict. of Artists) states that he continued exhibiting until 1875; but as he most certainly died in 1862, this seems to require explanation. He was a vigorous and not a bad writer. In 1843 he published ‘Facts of vital importance relative to the ​Embellishment of the Houses of Parliament;’ in 1858 ‘The Royal Academy and the National Gallery. What is the state of these Institutions?’ In 1866 appeared a posthumous volume of essays by this artist, entitled ‘Thoughts on Great Painters.’ A preface to this book states that the author died on 28 Sept. 1862.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists.]
E. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Davis, John Bunnell

​DAVIS, JOHN BUNNELL, M.D. (1780–1824), physician, son of a surgeon at Thetford, was born in 1780 at Clare, Suffolk. He was educated for his father's profession at Guy's and St. Thomas's hospitals, and became a member of the corporation of surgeons. Soon after receiving his diploma he went as medical attendant to a family travelling in France during the peace of Amiens, and had the misfortune to be treacherously detained by Bonaparte. He made the best of his circumstances, studied at Montpellier, and there graduated M.D. in 1803. At Verdun, to which he was soon after confined, he published ‘Observations on Precipitate Burial and the Diagnosis of Death.’ He sent the work to Corvisart, Bonaparte's first physician, with a petition for release. Corvisart, acting with a true professional fellow feeling, obtained Davis's release, and he returned to England in May 1806. He went to study at Edinburgh, and graduated M.D. there 24 June 1808, reading a dissertation on phthisis. He was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians, London, in 1810, and had shortly before (Walcheren Fever, p. 2) been appointed temporary physician to the forces, and was sent to attend, in a hospital at Ipswich, the troops invalided home from Walcheren. Of this service he published an account: ‘A Scientific and Popular View of the Fever at Walcheren and its consequences as they appeared in the British troops returned from the late expedition, with an account of the Morbid Anatomy of the Body and the Efficacy of Drastic Purges and Mercury in the treatment of this Disease,’ London, 1810. The prefatory remarks and the account of the symptoms are neither concise nor lucid, and the best part of the book is the collection of post-mortem records at the end. They show that what was called Walcheren fever included cases of several kinds, of dysentery, of enteric fever, and of enteric fever complicated with malarial fever. Davis settled in practice in London, where in 1816 he had a share in founding on St. Andrew's Hill in the City the Universal Dispensary for Sick Indigent Children, the first of the kind in London. He attended this institution as physician, and published an account of it in 1821. His other works are: ‘The Ancient and Modern History of Nice,’ London, 1807; ‘More subjects than one concerning France and the French People,’ London, 1807; ‘The Origin and Description of Bognor,’ London, 1807; ‘Cursory Inquiry into the Principal Causes of Mortality among Children,’ London, 1817. He died on 28 Sept. 1824.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, iii. 95.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Davis, John Ford

​DAVIS, JOHN FORD, M.D. (1773–1864), physician, was born at Bath in 1773, and, after education at the school of the Rev. Edward Spencer, studied medicine, first in London and afterwards in Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. on 24 June 1797 (Dissertation). He became a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London on 30 Sept. 1808, and soon after began practice at Bath. He was elected physician to the General Hospital there in 1817, and held the office for seventeen years. He died at Bath on 1 Jan. 1864. His published works are his graduation thesis, ‘Tentamen Chemico-Medicum inaugurale de Contagio,’ Edinburgh, 1797, and ‘An Inquiry into the Symptoms and Treatment of Carditis or the Inflammation of the Heart,’ Bath, 1808. The thesis is based upon Diemerbroeck's well-known treatise on the plague, on Smyth's ‘Jail Distemper,’ and on several of the chemical works of that time. It contains no original observation on fever, and, excepting two or three chemical conjectures, is a mere compilation. A copy in the library of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London has an inscription to Dr. Bostock in the fine pointed handwriting of the author. The book on carditis shows a good deal of reading, but contains only three cases, the last of which alone was observed by Davis himself. The book is, however, interesting as showing what, and how very little, was known of diseases of the heart ten years before the publication of the first edition of Laennec's treatise on auscultation. The anatomical appearances of pericarditis are exactly described, and, though the passages on diagnosis are of course imperfect, it is clear that a great advance in knowledge had been made since Mead, in 1748, had written all that he knew of heart disease upon a single page.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. iii. 68.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Davis, Lockyer

​DAVIS, LOCKYER (1719–1791), bookseller, was born in 1719, and succeeded to the business of his uncle, Charles Davis (d. 1755) [q. v.], in Holborn, opposite Gray's Inn Gate. He sold by auction like his uncle, and in partnership with Charles Reymers dispersed many libraries between 1757 and 1768; between 1770 and 1790 he sold by himself. Among the legacies of William Bowyer the younger, printer [q. v.], in 1777, was one of 100l. to Davis. He was a member of the ‘congeries,’ or club of booksellers dining monthly at the Shakespeare Tavern, who produced Johnson's ‘Lives of the Poets’ and other books. He was bookseller to the Royal Society, and nominally their printer, and was also a nominal printer of the votes of the House of Commons. Reymers was associated with him in holding the latter office. Davis was a master of the Stationers' Company and an honorary registrar of the Literary Fund, founded in 1790. Nichols speaks of his great knowledge of books and amiable manners. He carried on an extensive business as auctioneer, bookseller, and publisher, and had an excellent commercial reputation (Literary Anecdotes, vi. 436–7). He made some occasional contributions of a light description to the newspapers, particularly the ‘St. James's Chronicle,’ but the only book of which he acknowledged the authorship was ‘a new edition, revised and improved,’ of the ‘Maxims and Moral Reflections, by the Duke de la Rochefoucault,’ a translation first issued in 1749. It was published in 1775, and again in 1781, in 12mo, with a dedication to David Garrick, signed Lockyer Davis. He died suddenly at his house in Holborn 23 April 1791, in his seventy-third year. His wife, Mary, died 9 Nov. 1769, in her forty-eighth year. A tablet to the memory of husband and wife was placed under the organ loft of the church of St. Bartholomew the Great.
H. R. T.