Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/277

 Catuvellauni is similarly compounded of vellauni with catu, Irish cath, Welsh cad, battle.

 CASTEELS, PETER (1684–1749), painter and engraver, was one of that host of second-rate foreigners who found happy hunting-grounds in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was born in Antwerp in 1684; came to England in 1703, and revisited Antwerp in 1716. He shortly returned, however, and settled in this country. He painted birds, fowls, fruit, and flowers ‘in an inferior manner.’ He worked more successfully with the graver. Lord Burlington patronised him, and published, at his own charges, Casteels's ‘Villas of the Ancients,’ giving the artist the profits. In 1726 Casteels published on his own account twelve etchings of birds and fowls, and also some engravings from his own pictures. In 1735 he obtained work as a designer in the calico works at Tooting, and removed thither; later he followed the factory to Richmond, and there died 16 May 1749.

 CASTELL, EDMUND, D.D. (1606–1685), Semitic scholar, was the second son of Robert Castell (probably of Christ's College, Cambridge), a man of property and education, and was born ‘iratis Musis,’ as he said, at East Hatley in Cambridgeshire in the year 1606, whence, after the usual grammatical training of the period, he proceeded in 1621, at the age of fifteen, to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and took the successive degrees of bachelor (1624–5) and master (1628) of arts, and bachelor (1635) and doctor (by mandate 1661) of divinity. After this last date he removed to St. John's College, on account of the advantages offered by its library, wherein he found much assistance in the compilation of the great work of his life, the ‘Lexicon Heptaglotton,’ upon which he had been at work since 1651. This vast undertaking was in some sort the outcome of Castell's previous labours in assisting Walton in the preparation of his ‘Biblia Polyglotta,’ in which the former was especially responsible for the Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, as Walton himself admits; though it appears that Castell was credited by Walton with a much smaller share in the work than he really accomplished, and that, so far from deriving any profit from the gratuity which Walton allowed each of his assistants, he actually disbursed a thousand pounds of his private fortune, over and above that gratuity, in incidental researches.

The Polyglott Bible was published in 1657, and Castell was already in the throes of its great sequel, the ‘Lexicon Heptaglotton, Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, Æthiopicum, Arabicum, conjunctim, et Persicum separatim.’ In the dedication to Charles II prefixed to the ‘Lexicon,’ when at length it was published in two volumes folio in 1669, the story of its composition is told with a sad simplicity that atones for a pedantic display of varied learning. The eighteenth year of composition, he writes, has been reached, and that long period has been filled with unremitting toil of seldom less than sixteen or eighteen hours a day, with constant vigils, with bodily suffering—‘membrorum confractiones, laxationes, contusiones’—with loss of fortune, and finally all but the loss of sight. Worthington (Diary, ii. 22) describes him at this time as ‘a modest and retired person, indefatigably studious: he hath sacrificed himself to this service, and is resolved to go on in this work though he die in it.’ He had scarcely any assistance. Now and again he induced, by the sacrifice of the remnant of his patrimony, some scholar to aid him, but it was rarely that he could retain such services for any length of time in so depressing a task. He mentions three scholars who rendered him more protracted service, but these deserted him at last, even his printer mutinied, and he was left alone in his old age to finish the gigantic work. One of his assistants suddenly died, and Castell had to pay for his burial, and took charge of his orphan child. He had not only spent his life and strength; he had reduced himself to poverty by expending over 12,000l. upon the work; and even so, he was 1,800l. in debt, and had become responsible for some debts of his brother, for which the unfortunate scholar was sent to prison in 1667. This condition of actual distress, aggravated by the loss of much of his library and effects in the great fire, and coupled perhaps with the notice attracted by a volume of congratulatory poems to the king, at length procured him a scanty measure of royal favour. In 1666 he was made chaplain in ordinary to the king; in 1667 he was appointed to the eighth prebendal stall in Canterbury Cathedral, from which, however, he was excused attendance, partly by reason of infirmities, and partly on account of the duties of the professorship of Arabic at Cambridge, to which he had been appointed in the year 1664. This was the only academic emolument he ever received, and that by royal, 