ended. He was offered the enormous sum of £100 per annum, by a ladies’ college in Hereford, and thither he went. This sum he supplemented by teaching in the Hereford grammar school for many years, at six guineas a year, and in other schools at better pay, but still, and up to his fortieth year, we find his prices for pictures from eight to twenty-five shillings. Cox has no history apart from his productions, and these particulars as to his remuneration possess an interest almost dramatic when we contrast them with the enormous sums realized by his later works, and with the “honours and observance, troops of friends,” that accompanied old age with him, when settled down in his own home at Harborne, near his native town, where he died on the 7th of June 1859.
Cox’s second short residence in London, dating from 1835 to 1840, marks the period of his highest powers. During those years, and for twelve years after, his productiveness kept pace with his mastery, and it would be difficult to overrate the impressiveness of effect, and high feeling, within the narrow range of subject displayed by many of these works. He was now surrounded by dealers, and wealth flowed in upon him. Still he remained the same, a man with few wants and scarcely any enjoyments except those furnished by his brush and his colours. The home at Harborne was a pleasant one, but the approach to the front was useless as the door was kept fastened up, the only entrance being through the garden at the back, and the principal room appropriated as his studio he was content to reach by a narrow stair from the kitchen. Neither in it nor elsewhere was there any luxury or even taste visible:—no bric-à-brac, no objects of interest, few or no books, no pictures except landscapes by his friends. When in winter, after his wife’s death, the fire went out, and the cold at last surprised him, he lifted his easel into the little dining-room and began again. A union of his friends was formed in 1855 to procure a portrait of him, which was painted by Sir J. Watson Gordon; and an exhibition of his works was opened in London in 1858 and again another in 1859. This was actually open when the news of his death arrived.
The number of David Cox’s works, great and small, is enormous. He produced hundreds annually for perhaps forty-five years. Before his death and for ten years thereafter, their prices were remarkable, as witness the following obtained at auction—“Going to the Mill,” £1575; “Old Mill at Bettws-y-Coed,” £1575; “Outskirts of a Wood, with Gipsies,” £2305; “Peace and War,” £3430.
See Hall, Biography of David Cox (1881). (W. B. Sc.)
COX, SIR GEORGE WILLIAM (1827–1902), English divine and scholar, was born on the 10th of January 1827, at Benares, India, and was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Oxford.
In 1850 he was ordained, and in 1860 took a mastership at Cheltenham College, which he held for only a year. He had
already contributed to the Edinburgh Review, and had published
in 1850 Poems, Legendary and Historical (with E. A. Freeman),
and in 1853 a Life of St Boniface. From 1861 he devoted himself
entirely to literary work, chiefly in connexion with history and
comparative mythology. Many of his works were avowedly
popular in character, and the most important, the History of
Greece, has been superseded and is now of little value. His
studies in mythology were inspired by Max Müller, but his
treatment of the subjects was his own. He was an extreme
supporter of the solar and nebular theory as the explanation of
myths. He also edited (with W. T. Brande) A Dictionary of
Science, Literature and Art (1875). Sir George Cox (who succeeded
to the baronetcy in 1877) was a Broad Churchman, and a
prominent supporter of Bishop Colenso in 1863–1865; and five
years after Colenso’s death he published (1888) his Life of the
bishop. He was himself nominated to the see of Natal, but was
refused consecration. In 1881 he was made vicar of Scrayingham,
York, but resigned the living in 1897. In 1896 he was given a
civil list pension. He died at Walmer on the 9th of February
1902.
Works.—Tales from Greek Mythology (1861); A Manual of Mythology (1867); Latin and Teutonic Christendom (1870); The Mythology of the Aryan Nations (1870, new ed., 1882); History of Greece (1874); General History of Greece (1876); History of the Establishment of British Rule in India, and An Introduction to the Science of Comparative Mythology (1881); Lives of Greek Statesmen (1885); Concise History of England (1887).
COX, JACOB DOLSON (1828–1900), American general, political leader and educationalist, was born on the 27th of October 1828 in Montreal, Canada. His father, a shipbuilder of German descent (Koch), and his mother, a descendant of William Brewster, were natives of New York City, where the boy grew up, studying law in an office in 1842–1844, and working in a broker’s office in 1844–1846, and where, under the influence of Charles G. Finney (1792–1875), whose daughter he afterwards married, he prepared himself for the ministry. He graduated at Oberlin College in 1851, having in the meantime given up his theological studies in rebellion at Finney’s dogmatism. In 1851–1853 he was superintendent of schools at Warren, Ohio; in 1853 was admitted to the Ohio bar, being at that time an anti-slavery Whig; and in 1859 was elected to the state senate, in which with Garfield and James Monroe (1821–1898) he formed the “Radical Triumvirate,” Cox himself presenting a petition for a personal liberty law and urging woman’s rights, especially larger property rights to married women. Appointed by Governor Dennison one of three brigadiers-general of militia in 1860, he eagerly undertook the study of tactics, strategy and military history. He rendered great assistance in raising troops for the Union service in 1861, enlisted himself in spite of poor health and a family of six small children, and in April was commissioned a brigadier-general, U.S.V. He took part in the West Virginia campaign of 1861, served in the Kanawha region, in supreme command after Rosecrans’s relief in the spring, until August 1862, when his troops were ordered to join Burnside’s 9th Corps in Virginia. After the death at his side of General Reno in the battle of South Mountain, and during Antietam, Cox commanded the corps, and at the close of the campaign (6th Oct. 1862) he was appointed major-general, U.S.V., but the appointment was not confirmed. In April-December 1863 he was head of the department of Ohio. In 1864 he took part in the Atlanta campaign under Sherman, as a divisional and subsequently corps-commander: at the battle of Franklin he commanded the 23rd Corps, and he served at Nashville also. He led an expedition following Sherman into the Carolinas and fought two successful actions with Bragg at Kinston, N.C. He was governor of Ohio in 1866–1867, and as such advocated the colonization of the freedmen in a restricted area, and sympathized with President Johnson’s programme of Reconstruction and worked for a compromise between Johnson and his opponents, although he finally deserted Johnson. In 1868 he was chairman of the Republican national convention which nominated Grant. He was secretary of the interior in 1869–1870; opposed the confirmation of the treaty for the annexation of Santo Domingo, negotiated by O. E. Babcock and urged by President Grant; introduced the merit system in his department, and resigned in October 1870 because of pressure put on him by politicians piqued at his prohibition of campaign levies on his clerks, and because of the interference of Grant in favour of William McGarrahan’s attempt by legal proceedings to obtain from Cox a patent to certain California mining lands. He took up legal practice in Cincinnati, became president in 1873, and until 1877 was receiver, of the Toledo & Wabash & Western. In 1877–1879 he was a representative in Congress. From 1881 to 1897 he was dean of the Cincinnati law school, and from 1885 to 1889 president of the University of Cincinnati. He died at Magnolia, Massachusetts, on the 4th of August 1900. A successful lawyer, and in his later years a prominent microscopist, who won a gold medal of honour for microphotography at the Antwerp Exposition of 1891, he is best known as one of the greatest “civilian” generals of the Civil War, and, with the possible exception of J. C. Ropes, the highest American authority of his time on military history, particularly the history of the American Civil War. He wrote Atlanta (New York, 1882) and The March to the Sea, Franklin and Nashville (New York, 1882), both in the series Campaigns of the Civil War; The Second Battle of Bull Run, as Connected
