COBET, CAREL GABRIEL (1813-1889), Dutch classical scholar, was born at Paris on the 28th of November 1813, and educated at the Hague Gymnasium and the university of Leiden. In 1836 he won a gold medal for an essay entitled Prosopographia Xenophontea, a brilliant characterization of all the persons introduced into the Memorabilia, Symposium and Oeconomicus of Xenophon. His Observationes criticae in Platonis comici reliquias (1840) revealed his remarkable critical faculty. The university conferred on him an honorary degree, and recommended him to the government for a travelling pension. The ostensible purpose of his journey was to collate the texts of Simplicius, which, however, engaged but little of his time. He contrived, however, to make a careful study of almost every Greek manuscript in the Italian libraries, and returned after five years with an intimate knowledge of palaeography. In 1846 he married, and in the same year was appointed to an extraordinary professorship at Leiden. His inaugural address, De Arte interpretandi Grammatices et Critices Fundamentis innixa, has been called the most perfect piece of Latin prose written in the 19th century. The rest of his life was passed uneventfully at Leiden. In 1856 he became joint editor of Mnemosyne, a philological review, which he soon raised to a leading position among classical journals. He contributed to it many critical notes and emendations, which were afterwards collected in book form under the titles Novae Lectiones, Variae Lectiones and Miscellanea Critica. In 1875 he took a prominent part at the Leiden Tercentenary, and impressed all his hearers by his wonderful facility in Latin improvisation. In 1884, when his health was failing, he retired as emeritus professor. He died on the 26th of October 1889. Cobet’s special weapon as a critic was his consummate knowledge of palaeography, but he was no less distinguished for his rare acumen and wide knowledge of classical literature. He has been blamed for rashness in the emendation of difficult passages, and for neglecting the comments of other scholars. He had little sympathy for the German critics, and maintained that the best combination was English good sense with French taste. He always expressed his obligation to the English, saying that his masters were three Richards—Bentley, Porson and Dawes.
See an appreciative obituary notice by W.G. Rutherford in the Classical Review, Dec. 1889; Hartman in Bursian’s Biographisches Jahrbuch, 1890; Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. (1908), iii. 282.
COBHAM, a village in the Medway parliamentary division of Kent, England, 4 m. W. of Rochester. The church (Early English and later, and restored by Sir G.G. Scott) is famous for its collection of ancient brasses, of which thirteen belonging to the years 1320-1529 commemorate members of the Brooke and Cobham families. There are some fine oak stalls and some tilting armour of the 14th century in the chancel. Cobham college, containing 20 almshouses, took the place, after the dissolution, of a college for priests founded by Sir John de Cobham in the 14th century. The present mansion of Cobham Hall is mainly Elizabethan. The picture gallery contains a fine collection of works by the great masters, Italian, Dutch and English.
The Cobham family was established here before the reign of King John. In 1313 Henry de Cobham was created Baron Cobham, but on the execution of Sir John Oldcastle (who had been summoned to parliament, jure uxoris, as Baron Cobham) in 1417, the barony lay dormant till revived in 1445 by Edward, son of Sir Thomas Brooke and Joan, grand-daughter of the 3rd Baron Cobham. In 1603 Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, was arraigned for participation in the Raleigh conspiracy, and spent the remainder of his life in prison, where he died in 1618. With him the title expired, and Cobham Hall was granted to Lodowick Stewart, duke of Lennox, passing subsequently by descent and marriage to the earls of Darnley. The present Viscount Cobham (cr. 1718) belongs to the Lyttelton family (see [Lyttelton, 1st Baron]).
COBIJA, or Puerto La Mar (the official title given to it by the Bolivian government), a port and town of the Chilean province of Antofagasta, about 800 m. N. of Valparaiso. It is the oldest port on this part of the coast, and was for a time the principal outlet for a large mining district. It was formerly capital of the Bolivian department of Atacama and the only port possessed by Bolivia, but the seizure of that department in 1879 by Chile and the construction of the Antofagasta and Oruro railway deprived it of all importance, and its population, estimated at 6000 in 1858, has fallen to less than 500. Its harbour is comparatively safe but lacks landing facilities. Smelting for neighbouring mines is still carried on, and some of its former trade remains, but the greater part of it has gone to Tocopilla and Antofagasta. The town occupies a narrow beach between the sea and bluffs, and was greatly damaged by an earthquake and tidal wave in 1877.
COBLE (probably of Celtic origin, and connected with the root ceu or cau, hollow; cf. Welsh ceubol, a ferry-boat), a flat-bottomed fishing-boat, with deep-lying rudder and lug-sail, used off the north-east coast of England.