13-1889), 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 _B