Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/176

150 course of study at a private academy in Marylebone, he was sent to Westminster School, which he left in due course for Christ Church, Oxford. Here he made the acquaintance of Bonnel Thornton, the parodist, and together they founded The Connoisseur (1754-1756), a periodical which reached its 140th number, and which, Johnson said, &quot; wanted weight.&quot; In 1758 he took the degree of Master of Arts, came to London soon afterwards, was entered at Lincoln s Inn, and was duly called to the bar ; and in 17CO he produced his first play, Polly Honeycomb, which met with great success.- In 176] he brought out The Jealous Wife, a comedy rich in borrowed excellences ; in 1764 the death of Lord Bath placed him in possession of an annuity; in 1765 appeared his brilliant metrical transla tion of the plays of Terence; and in 1766 he produced The Clandestine Marriage, jointly with Garrick, whose Lord Ogleby was one of his finest impersonations. In 1767 he succeeded to a second annuity, on the death of General Pulteney, purchased a fourth share in Covent Garden Theatre, and was appointed acting manager. In 1763 he was elected into the famous Literary Club, then nominally consisting of twelve members; in 1774, after seven years of managership, he sold his share in the great playhouse to Leake ; and in 1777 he purchased of Foote, then broken in health and spirits, and near his end, the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. In 1778 he published an edition of Beaumont and Fletcher ; and in 1783 appeared his translation of Horace s Epistle De Arte Poetica, with notes and a commentary. He was attacked with palsy in 1785 ; in 1789 his brain became affected, and he lapsed gradually into idiocy. Besides the works already cited, Colman was author of some 35 plays, of an excellent translation from the Mercator of Plautus for Bonnell Thornton s edition (1769-1772), and of many parodies and occasional pieces. An incomplete edition of his dramatic works was published in 1777, in four volumes. See also Prose on Several Occasions, with some Pieces in Verse, by George Colman, London, 1787, 3 vols. ; and /Some Particulars of the Life of the Late George Colman, Written by Himself, London, 1795.  COLMAN, (1762-1836), the Younger, son of the preceding, passed from Westminster School to Christ Church, Oxford, and King s College, Aberdeen, and was finally entered as a student of law at the Temple, London. Vhiie at Aberdeen he published a poem in honour of Charles James Fox, called The Man of the People ; and in 1782 he produced, at his father s playhouse in the Hay- markeb, his first play, The Female Dramatists, for which Roderick Random supplied the materials. It was unani mously condemned, but his next attempt, Twolo One, was entirely successful, and the young Templar s vocation was decided on. The failing health of the elder Colman oblig ing him to relinquish the management of the Haymarket theatre, the younger George succeeded him, at a yearly salary of 600. On the death of the father the patent was continued to the son; but difficulties arose in his way, lawsuits and pamphlets accumulated round him, and he was forced to take sanctuary within the Rules of the King s Bench. Here he resided for many years. Released at lust through the kindness of George IV., who had appointed him exon of the Yeomen of the Guard, a dignity disposed of by Colman to the highest bidder, he was made examiner of plays by the duke of Montrose, then lord chamberlain. This office, to the disgust of all contemporary dramatists, to whose MSS. he was as illiberal as severe, he held till his death. Colman s comedies, which havenever been collected, are a curious mixture of genuine comic force and platitudinous sentimentality. Several of them are yet acted; but their popularity is rather to be attributed to the humour of the actors who adopt them as vehicles for display than to any intrinsic vitality. The best of them are John Bull (1805), for which the author received the largest sum of money that had till then been paid for any single play, The Poor Gentleman, and The Heir-at-Law. Colman, whose conversational powers were remarkable, as Byron has recorded, was also the author of a great deal of so-called humorous poetry (mostly coarse, though much of it was popular) My Night Gown and Slippers (1797), Broad Grins (1802), and Poetical Vagaries (1812). Some of his writings were published under the assumed name of Arthur Griflinhood of Turnham Green. See Random Records, London, 1830, 2 vols. ; and R. B. Peake, Memoirs of the Colman Family, London, 1842, 2 vols.  COLMAR, or, till 1870 the chief town of the department of Haut Rhin in France, but now of the district of Upper Alsace, in the German empire, is situated on the Lauch and the Fecht, tributaries of the 111. It communicates by a canal with the Rhine, and has a station on the railway from Basel to Strasburg, being about 40 miles S.S.W. of the latter city. It is the seat of the administrative offices for Upper Alsace, an imperial court of appeal for Alsace-Lor raine, a commercial court, an imperial lyceum, a Protestant normal college, a literary, an agricultural, and a natural history society. The last, founded in 1861, maintains a valuable museum in the old convent of Unterlinden, and publishes valuable contributions to local science. There is another museum, named after the old painter Schongau, for the preservation of works of art; the town library con tains 50,000 volumes, and the archives of Upper Alsace reach back to the 7th century. The most remarkable edifices in the town are the so-called cathedral, or St Martin s church, a Gothic structure built in 1363, tlie prefecture or aclministrational buildings, and the town- house ; and there are also civil and military hospitals, barracks, a theatre, and a deaf-mute institution. The manufactures of the town comprise cotton goods of various sorts, packing-cloth, hosiery, starch, silk thread, iron and copper wares, engines, sewing-machines, bricks, matches, and leather; and there are eight breweries, a dye-work, and several printing and lithographic establishments. The domestic trade of the country is centred in the city, and large transactions are effected in wine and hops. Colmar grew up round a royal residence called Columbaria, which is first mentioned in the 8th century. It obtained a char ter of incorporation in 1226, and was afterwards made a free imperial city by the Emperor Frederick II. It was taken after a six weeks siege by Adolphns of Nassau in 1293, invested by Duke Otto of Austria in 1330, occu pied by Duke Rudolf in 1358, seized by the Swedes iu 1632, and finally dismantled by the French after the siege of 1673.  COLNE, a market town of England, in the county of Lancaster, 26 miles north of Manchester, on a small afflu ent of the Calder, near the Liverpool and Leeds Canal, with a station on a branch of the Midland Hue. It is a place of great antiquity, and many Roman coins have been found on the site. As early as the 14th century it was the seat of a woollen manufacture ; but its principal manufactures now are printed calicoes and mousselines-de-laine. The chief buildings are the parish church of St Bartholomew, an ancient edifice which has been frequently restored, and the cloth or piece-hall, in the Elizabethan style. The grammar school is interesting as the place where Archbishop Tillotson received his early education. In the neighbour hood are several limestone and slate quarries. Population in 1851, 6644; in 1871, 7335.  COLOCYNTH,, or , Cit- rullus or Cucumis Colocynthis, a plant of the natural order Cucurbitacece or Gourds. The flowers are unisexual ; the male blossoms have five stamens and sinuous anthers,

