Edward Meredith Cope (28 July 1818 – 15 August 1873), English classical scholar, was born in Birmingham.

He was educated at Ludlow and Shrewsbury schools and Trinity College, Cambridge, of which society he was elected fellow in 1842, having taken his degree in 1841 as senior classic. He was for many years lecturer at Trinity, his favorite subjects being the Greek tragedians, Plato and Aristotle.

When the professorship of Greek became vacant, the votes were equally divided between Cope and BH Kennedy, and the latter was appointed by the chancellor. It is said that the keenness of Cope's disappointment was partly responsible for the mental affliction by which he was attacked in 1869, and from which he never recovered.

As his published works show, Cope was a thoroughly sound scholar, with perhaps a tendency to over-minuteness. He was the author of An Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric (1867), a standard work; The Rhetoric of Aristotle, with a commentary, revised and edited by JE Sandys (1877); translations of Plato's Gorgias (2nd ed., 1884) and Phaedo (revised by H Jackson, 1875). Mention may also be made of his criticism of Grote's account of the Sophists, in the Cambridge Journal of Classical Philology, vols. i., ii., iii. (1854–1857).

Edward Meredith (b. in 1648) was an English Roman Catholic controversialist.

Life

He was a son of the rector of Landulph, Cornwall. He studied at Westminster School and in 1665 was elected to a scholarship at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1668 he went to Spain as secretary of the ambassador, Sir William Godolphin, and while residing there embraced the Catholic faith.

He returned to England after three years and engaged in a religious controversy with Edward Stillingfleet (8 August 1671). In this discussion, an account of which he published in 1684, he was aided by Edmund Coleman, who was executed seven years later for alleged complicity in the Popish Plot.

In 1682 Meredith wrote a reply to one Samuel Johnson, who had libelled the Duke of York in a work entitled "Julian the Apostle". On 7 September 1684, he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Watten, Flanders, under the name of Langford (or Langsford).

He evidently returned in a few years to England, where he published several controversial pamphlets. On the fall of James II, he withdrew to Saint-Germain. He was resident in Rome during the years 1700 and 1701: the year of his death is uncertain, but his will, dated 1715, is said to be preserved in the archives of the English College, Rome. He translated a devotional work from the Latin under the title "A Journal of Meditations for every day of the year" (London, 1687).