"Pretty well, sir, for one man."

But to return to the "Pen's Triumph."
The first copy in it is of a most ornate
description. It represents a chubby boy
(pen in hand), seated on what looks like
an idealised bicycle. A nondescript bird,
quite unknown to naturalists, is flying
over his head. The vehicle is drawn by a
pony, ridden by a winged postillion, who
bears in his outstretched hand a wreath of
laurel, inscribed with the mystic name of
"Cocker." The centre of the picture is
devoted to these lines:

Some sordid sotts, cry down rare knotts,
Whose envie makes them currish;
But art shall shine, and envie pine,
And still my pen shall flourish.

In these lines it may be seen that the
author boldly "rises upon the wings of
prophecy." There is a defiant lilt about
the metre, as though it would bear down
opposition, and carry everything before it.
And yet, curiously enough, it has something
in it like the ring of an epitaph. In
another copy, the sentiment and the
wording of the lines are really admirable, and
would not disgrace the pen of the "saintly"
George Herbert:

Braine-drowsie qualmes espell, be valiant, play the
man,
Hee oft' times gaines the field, who bravely thinks hee
can.

As a happy instance of combining the
utile cum dulci, it may be noticed that the
book concludes with this statement, in the
most florid type: "The author hereof is
making the largest copy-book in the world,
and he hopes that it will be the best."

In the latter part of this announcement
there is a touch of modesty quite unusual
in Mr. Cocker, when he is speaking of
himself and of his own productions. Another
of Cocker's works contains directions
how to make and hold a pen, and write
different hands. It opens with the following
Johnsonian exordium; "To the lovers
and practitioners in the art of writing. I
might for a preludium salute you with
an oratorical charming composure or
discourse, that might win you to an admiration
of fair writing, but such a circumlocution
and illustration were in vain, it
being in itself as far above the reach of
rhetoric, as are the most incomparable
professors thereof above that of envy." He
then proceeds to give most minute directions
for making a pen. "Being provided
of a penknife, razorr-metall, or a small
thin French blade, which you may best
sharpen on a hoane—you may trie whether
it be sharp or not on your fingers—but
you had better procure the first, second, or
third quill in the wing of a goose or raven.
For the fancy handwriting known as
'running secretary,' each letter is to exhibit
wanton meanderings and spreading
plumes.

A nimble sphere-like motion of the hand,
Coin capitals and curious strokes command."

Very curious strokes, indeed, one would
be tempted to imagine, with those at least
whom Mr. Cocker speaks of as his "young
tyroes." Before casting the book loose
upon the world, the author thinks it necessary
to anticipate and to disarm malevolent
opposition. He fears that what he means
as medicine for all may be converted into
poison by some, "for this will appear
before faces sour enough to turn nectarr
into vinegar, and those of our own faculty
too." The reason he assigns for this, is,
that "they'll even be angry with their eyes
for seeing more knowledge communicated to
every boy than every master was before
accomplished with," and then, in an amusing
tone of self-complacent superiority and
condescending patronage, he concludes: "but
when they shall know here's not a tenth
part of what I could have wrote, and that
all I am enriched with is at their service,
which (if they had it) will make them
capable of teaching anybody whomsoever,
then I hope they'll chear up again, and
look with as pleasant a countenance upon
me as I shall upon them."

"Cocker's Morals, or the Muses' Spring–
gardens, consisting of Distichs and Poems
for Scholars to turn into Latin, or
Transscribe into various Hands," is a book
worth noticing for the sake of one of the
distichs, which runs as follows:

Artists invested with rare skill and worth,
Scorn that their tongues the same should trumpet forth.

These are lines from which we think the
author might himself have gleaned a serviceable
lesson, but it is a good divine who follows
his own teaching. Cocker's Arithmetic
was not published until some years after
his death. It was edited from the author's
manuscripts by his friend John Hawkins,
who was, like himself, a writing-master.
The book is entitled, " A Plain and Familiar
Method, suitable to the meanest Capacity,
for the full Understanding of that
Incomparable Art." The author's own
preface is a composition of amusing verbosity.
Indeed, in its extreme grandiloquence
it well-nigh out-Cockers Cocker.
The style of the opening sentence in particular
reminds one of the well-known cry
of the Turkish costermongers, "In the