Author: Cockin, William
Biography:
COCKIN, William (1736-1801: ODNB)
He was baptised on 6 Sept. 1736 at Burton in Kendal, Westmoreland, the son of Marmaduke Cockin (1712-54), a schoolmaster, and his wife Elizabeth Crosfield (1716-70), who had married the previous year. In 1764 he was appointed writing-master and accountant at the Grammar School, Lancaster, and published A Rational and Practical Treatise of Arithmetic (1766) and one of the key works in the elocutionary movement, The Art of Delivering Written Language (1775). He assisted Thomas West (1720-1779) in his seminal Guide to the Lakes (1778) and later edited two enlarged editions of the work. His Ode to the Genius of the Lakes (1780) was one of the earliest treatments of Lakeland scenery. Continuing the earlier tradition of inscribing seats and viewpoints with poetic quotations, he suggested the erecting of inscribed pillars in prominent Lakeland spots to commemorate significant moments, visits and visitors. In 1784 he taught at Rev. John Blanchard’s Nottingham Academy, where one of his pupils was George Pryme (q.v.), economist and poet. He made two contributions to the Hume-Priestley-Beattie debate on scepticism: The Freedom of Human Action (1775) and The Fall of Scepticism and Infidelity Predicted (1788). In 1792 he retired to Burton in Kendal. He was a lifelong friend and sometime amanuensis of the painter George Romney (1734-1802), to whom he had addressed a poetical epistle in 1769 (printed in the 1776 collection listed here) and at whose house in Milnthorpe Road, Kendal, he died on 30 May 1801. He was buried at Burton in Kendal on 2 June. (ODNB 25 Oct. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 25 Oct. 2022; “Account of the Author,” The Rural Sabbath[1805], v-viii; GM 1801, 575; John Romney, Memoirs of George Romney [1830], 60-61; R. Bicknell, The Picturesque Scenery of the Lake District, 1752-1855 [1990]) AA