There is one mention of "Mr. Cocker,[564] our famous English graver and writer, now a schoolmaster at Northampton." This is the true Cocker: his genuine works are specimens of writing, such as engraved copy-books, including some on arithmetic, with copper-plate questions and space for the working; also a book of forms for law-stationers, with specimens of legal handwriting. It is recorded somewhere that Cocker and another, whose name we forget, competed with the Italians in the beauty of their flourishes. This was his real fame: and in these matters he was great. The eighth edition of his book of law forms (1675), published shortly after Cocker's death, has a preface signed "J. H." This was John Hawkins, who became possessed of Cocker's papers--at least he said so--and {308} subsequently forged the famous Arithmetic,[565] a second work on Decimal Arithmetic, and an English dictionary, all attributed to Cocker. The proofs of this are set out in De Morgan's _Arithmetical Books_. Among many other corroborative circumstances, the clumsy forger, after declaring that Cocker to his dying day resisted strong solicitation to publish his Arithmetic, makes him write in the preface _Ille ego qui quondam_[566] of this kind: "I have been instrumental to the benefit of many, by virtue of those useful arts, writing and engraving; and do _now_, with the same _wonted alacrity_, cast this my arithmetical mite into the public treasury." The book itself is not comparable in merit to at least half-a-dozen others. How then comes Cocker to be the impersonation of Arithmetic? Unless some one can show proof, which we have never found, that he was so before 1756, the matter is to be accounted for thus. Arthur Murphy,[567] the dramatist, was by taste a man of letters, and ended by being the translator of Tacitus; though many do not know that the two are one. His friends had tried to make him a man of business; and no doubt he had been well plied with commercial arithmetic. His first dramatic performance, the farce of "The Apprentice," produced in 1756, is about an idle young man who must needs turn actor. Two of the best known books of the day in arithmetic were those of Cocker and Wingate.[568] Murphy chooses _Wingate_ to be the name of an old merchant who {309} delights in vulgar fractions, and _Cocker_ to be his arithmetical catchword--"You read Shakespeare! get Cocker's Arithmetic! you may buy it for a shilling on any stall; best book that ever was wrote!" and so on. The farce became very popular, and, as we believe, was the means of elevating Cocker to his present pedestal, where Wingate would have been, if his name had had the droller sound of the two to English ears.