Cockney (Nicholas), a rich city grocer, brother of Barnacle.  Priscilla Tomboy, of the West Indies, is placed under his charge for her education.

Walter Cockney, son of the grocer, in the shop.  A conceited young prig, not yet out of the quarrelsome age.  He makes boy-love to Priscilla Tomboy and Miss La Blond; but says he will “tell papa” if they cross him.

Penelope Cockney, sister of Walter.—­The Romp (altered from Bickerstaff’s Love in the City).

Coelebs’ Wife, a bachelor’s ideal of a model wife.  Coelebs is the hero of a novel, by Mrs. Hannah Moore, entitled Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1809).

  In short, she was a walking calculation,
  Miss Edgworth’s novels stepping from their covers,
  Or Mrs. Trimmer’s books on education. 
  Or “Coelebs’ wife” set out in quest of lovers. 
  Byron, Don Juan, i. 16 (1819).

COEUR DE LION, Surname of Richard of England (1157-1199.) Also conferred upon Louis VIII. of France.

COFFIN (Long Tom), the best sailor character ever drawn.  He is introduced in The Pilot, a novel by J. Fenimore Cooper.  Cooper’s novel has been dramatized by E. Fitzball, under the same name, and Long Tom Coffin preserves in the burletta his reckless daring, his unswerving fidelity, his simple-minded affection, and his love for the sea.

COGIA HOUSSAIN, the captain of forty thieves, outwitted by Morgiana, the slave.  When, in the guise of a merchant, he was entertained by Ali Baba, and refused to eat any salt, the suspicions of Morgiana was aroused, and she soon detected him to be the captain of the forty thieves.  After supper she amused her master and his guest with dancing; then playing with Cogia’s dagger for a time, she plunged it suddenly into his heart and killed him.—­Arabian Nights ("Ali Baba or the Forty Thieves").

COL’AX.  Flattery personified in The Purple Island (1633), by Phineas Fletcher.  Colax “all his words with sugar spices ... lets his tongue to sin, and takes rent of shame ...  His art [was] to hide and not to heal a sore.”  Fully described in canto viii. (Greek, kolax, “a flatterer or fawner.”)

COLBRAND or COLEBROND (2 syl.), the Danish giant, slain in the presence of King Athelstan, by Sir Guy of Warwick, just returned from a pilgrimage, still “in homely russet clad,” and in his hand a “hermit’s staff.”  The combat is described at length by Drayton, in his Polyolbion, xii.

One could scarcely bear his axe ...  Whose squares were laid with plates, and riveted with steel, And armed down along with pikes, whose hardened points ... had power to tear the joints Of cuirass or of mail.

Drayton, Polyolbion, xii. (1613).

COLDSTREAM (Sir Charles), the chief character in Charles Mathew’s play called Used up.  He is wholly ennuye, sees nothing to admire in anything; but is a living personification of mental inanity and physical imbecility.