Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol II (1901).djvu/50

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Cockle
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Cockle

15 Feb. 1890. In 1844 he married Annabella Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew Drummond of Cadlands, Hampshire. He was succeeded in his honours and lands by his only son, Charles Wallace Alexander Napier, second baron Lamington, who was appointed governor of Queensland in 1895. There are portraits of Lord Lamington at Lamington by De Bœuf and Sir Francis Grant in oils, and by Swinton and Count d'Orsay in crayon.

Baillie-Cochrane was for many years an exceedingly well-known character in London society. He spent much time and money in the improvement of his estate of Lamington. He was much given to literary studies, and delighted in the society of men of letters, whom he used to welcome freely at his table. He was one of the joint editors of and chief writers in the lively satirical journal called 'The Owl,' which was published weekly from 1864 to 1868.

His other published works are as follows: 1. 'Poems,' privately printed, 1838. 2. 'Meditations of other Days,' 1841. 3. 'The Morea, a Poem, with Remarks on Greece,' 1842. 4. 'Lucille Belmont,' a novel, 2 vols. 1849. 5. 'Ernest Vane,' a novel, 2 vols. 1849. 6. 'Florence the Beautiful,' a novel, 2 vols. 1854. 7. 'Justice to Scotland,' 1854. 8. 'Historic Pictures,' 2 vols. 1860. 9. 'A Young Artist's Life' (under the pseudonym of Leonard Holme), 1864. 10. 'Francis the First, and other Historic Studies,' 1869. 11. 'The Théâtre Français in the Reign of Louis XV,' a novel, made out of materials collected for a history of the Théâtre Français, 1870. 12. 'Historic Chateaux—Blois, Fontainebleau, Vincennes,' 1876. Lord Lamington was also the author of numerous anonymous contributions to periodicals. A series of reminiscences called 'The Days of the Dandies' was running in 'Blackwood's Magazine' at the time of his death, and was subsequently published separately in pamphlet form (Edinburgh, 1890).

[Lamington, Past and Present, by Mrs. Ware Scott; Burke's Peerage; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage; Tablettes Biographiques des Hommes du Temps; Allibone's Dict. of English Lit.; Boase's Modern Brit. Biogr.; Times, 17 and 25 Feb. 1890; private information.]

H. E. M.

COCKLE, Sir JAMES (1819–1895), chief justice of Queensland and mathematician, born on 14 Jan. 1819, was the second son of James Cockle, a surgeon of Great Oakley in Essex. He was educated at Stormond House, Kensington, from 1825 to 1829, and at Charterhouse from 1829 to 1831, and afterwards under the tuition of Christian Lenny. He left England on 29 Nov. 1835, and, after a year's sojourn in the West Indies and the United States of America, entered into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 18 Oct. 1837, graduating B.A. in 1842 and M.A. in 1845. On 12 April 1838 he entered the Middle Temple as a student. He began to practise as a special pleader in 1845, and on 6 Nov. 1846 was called to the bar. In the spring of 1848 he joined the midland circuit. His ability attracted the attention of Sir William Erie [q. v.], then chief justice of the court of common pleas. At his instance he was appointed the first chief justice of Queensland in 1863. In this post his services were of a high order. His judgments were marked by laborious and conscientious preparation, and in only two instances were they reversed on appeal. He was knighted on 29 July 1869, and retired from office in 1879. When the consolidation of the state law of Queensland was effected in 1867 he was senior commissioner.

Cockle, however, was still more eminent as a mathematician than as a judge. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society on 10 March 1854, a fellow of the Royal Society on 1 June 1865, and a fellow of the London Mathematical Society on 9 June 1870. He wrote on the Indian astronomical literature, on the Indian cycles and lunar calendar, on the date of the Vedas and Jyotish Sastra, and on the ages of Garga and Parasara. He also published four elaborate memoirs on the motion of fluids, and some notes on light under the action of magnetism. His chief interest, however, was centred in problems in pure mathematics. His analytical researches were confined for the most part to common algebra and the theory of differential equations. For many years he laboured among the higher algebraic equations with the hope of being able to solve the general equation of the fifth degree. He failed to obtain a general solution, and indeed in 1862 reproduced Abel's attempt to demonstrate its impossibility with Sir William Rowan Hamilton's modifications, in the 'Quarterly Journal of Mathematics' (v. 130-43), but he determined the explicit form of a sextic equation, on the solution of which he showed that that of the general quintic depended. This result was independently confirmed by the Rev. Robert Harley in a paper published in the 'Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society' (1860, xv. 172-219), to which Cockle had also contributed his result. Mr. Harley pursued the subject, in two papers on the 'Theory of Quintics' in the 'Quarterly Journal of Mathematics' (1860-2, iii. 343-