"Ingenious Cocker," as one would say "Most noble Shakespeare!" It is hard indeed to idealize or write poetical tributes to one by the name of Cocker. It gives us a sense of pleasant familiarity with any one to know that he is "well acquaint" with one of our intimate friends, so I feel much drawn to ingenious Cocker by knowing that he was well known of Sam Pepys. He was a writing master, and did some mighty fine engraving for Pepys, who calls him ingenuous, not ingenious. It is rather a facer to learn from the notes in the Diary that Cocker had nothing whatever to do with his Arithmetic, which was a forgery by John Hawkins. The age that would rhyme a grammar would rhyme an arithmetic, and Record's example was followed and enlarged upon. Thomas Hylles published one in 1620, _The Arte of Vulgar Arithmiteke_, written in dialogue, with the rules and theorems in verse. This is an example of his poesy:-- "THE PARTITION OF A SHILLING INTO HIS ALIQUOT PARTES. "A farthing first finds forty-eight A Halfpeny hopes for twentiefoure Three farthings seeks out 16 streight A peny puls a dozen lower Dicke dandiprat drewe 8 out deade Twopence took 6 and went his way Tom trip a goe with 4 is fled But Goodman grote on 3 doth stay A testerne only 2 doth take Moe parts a Shilling cannot make." [Illustration: Noah Webster's "American Selection"] In 1633 Nicholas Hunt added to his rules and tables an "Arithmetike-Rithmeticall or the Handmaid's Song of Numbers," which rhymes are simply unspeakable. These attempts did not end with the seventeenth century. In 1801 Richard Vyse had a _Tutor's Guide_ with problems in rhyme. "When first the Marriage Knot was tied Between my Wife and Me My age did hers as far exceed As three times three does three. But when Ten years and half ten Years We man and wife had been Her age came up as near to mine As eight is to sixteen. Now tell me I pray What were our Ages on our Wedding Day?" The earliest date of the old rhyme,-- "Thirtie daies hath September, Aprill, June and November, Februarie eight and twentie alone, all the rest thirtie and one." is given by Halliwell as 1633. I have found it in an old arithmetic printed in London in 1596. The lines beginning "Multiplication is vexation," are not an outburst of modern students. They are found in a manuscript dated 1570 circa. "Multiplication is mie vexation And Division quite as bad, The Golden rule is mie stumbling stule, And Practice makes me mad."