the causes and prevention of scrofula. He was president of the Pathological Society, but did not obtain the respect of the practical morbid anatomists who attended its meetings, and who were often led to smile when the president claimed as his own numerous modern discoveries in pathology. Copland wrote more on medicine than any fellow of the college of his time, or of any past time, and was respected in the college, where he was Croonian lecturer 1844, 1845, 1846; Lumleian lecturer 1854, 1855, and Harveian orator 1857. He gave up practice about a year before his death, which took place at Kilburn 12 July 1870.
[Pettigrew's Medical Portrait Gallery, i. 109, where the materials for the memoir were supplied by Copland himself; Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, iii. 216; verbal accounts of surviving contemporary physicians.]
COPLAND, PATRICK, LL.D. (1749–1822), naturalist, was born in 1749 at the manse of Fintray, Aberdeenshire, where his father was minister, and elected professor of natural philosophy in Marischal College and University, Aberdeen, in 1775. In 1779 he was transferred to the chair of mathematics, but in 1817 was again appointed to his former chair, which he held till his death (10 Nov. 1822). He enjoyed considerable local reputation as a teacher; but his claim to notice lies in the pains he took to form a collection of models and other apparatus suitable for a museum of natural philosophy. Hardly anything of this kind was known in the north of Scotland; but by means of assistance from the Board of Trustees and Manufactures, he contrived to form a valuable collection, travelling on the continent for information, and doing not a little by his own mechanical skill, and by directing and superintending his workmen. This service looks but small in the light of our vast modern museums of science and art, our international exhibitions, and illustrated scientific journals; but to Copland belongs the credit of having discovered a want, and done what he could in his circumstances to supply it. Copland was also among the first to extend the knowledge of science beyond academic circles by means of a popular course of natural philosophy.
[Anderson's Scottish Nation; Kennedy's Annals of Aberdeen, vol. ii.]
COPLAND, ROBERT (fl. 1508–1547), author and printer, was, according to Bagford, in the service of Caxton. Copland himself, in the prologue to ‘Kynge Appolyn of Thyre’ (1510), mentions that he gladly follows ‘the trace of my mayster Caxton, begynninge with small storyes and pamfletes, and so to other,’ but a few lines lower down he requests the reader ‘to pardon myn ignorant youth,’ and this at a period eighteen or nineteen years after Caxton's death. He was undoubtedly in the office of Wynkyn de Worde, who left him ten marks, and who in the same and other works is referred to as ‘my mayster.’ The first volume bearing his imprint is ‘The Boke of Justices of Peas … emprynted at London in Flete-strete at the signe of the Rose Garland by Robert Copland,’ in 1515. W. de Worde issued the same book in 1510 and 1515. Copland was a bookseller and stationer as well as printer, as appears from the colophon to ‘The Questionary of Cyrurgyens’ (1541), ‘translated out of the Frensshe, at the instigacion and costes of the ryght honest parsone Henry Dabbe, stacyoner and biblyopolyst in Paules churche yarde, by Robert Coplande of the same faculte.’ His known typographical productions are only about twelve in number. They are all rare, but are not distinguished for mechanical excellency. Herbert says that in ‘The xij Fruytes of the Holy Goost,’ printed by him in 1535, the comma stop is first to be found in black-letter books, the virgil or dash being used previously. In Andrew Borde's ‘Pryncyples of Astronamye’ the author speaks of his ‘Introduction to knowledge’ being at that time printing ‘at old Robert Copland's, the eldist printer of Ingland.’ This date is believed to have been about 1547, which brings us to the time (1548) when Robert's successor, William Copland [q. v.], issued his first dated book. Stow records that a ‘William Copland, Taylor, the king's merchant,’ was churchwarden in 1515 and 1516 at St. Mary-le-Bow, and gave the great Bow bell, but what relation he was to the two printers of the name is not known (Survey, 1754, i. 542).
The most famous of Copland's literary productions are two pieces of verse, ‘The Hye way to the Spyttel Hous’ and ‘Jyl of Breyntford's Testament.’ The former is a dialogue, written with much force and humour, between Copland and the porter of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. ‘It is one of the most vivid and vigorous productions of the time’ (C. H. Herford, England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, 1886, p. 358), and is full of curious information about the cheats and beggars who resorted to the hospital at some period after Henry VIII's statute (1530–1) against vagabonds (see l. 375), and subsequent to the Reformation (1. 551). ‘Jyl of Breyntford’ is based upon a coarse popular tale. Both pieces were in Captain Cox's library. Copland translated three romances of chivalry as well as other works from the
