Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/591

Rh of certain political references made in his novels, he was first imprisoned and afterwards forced to live in exile in England and elsewhere-. He married an English lady of noble family, Lady Stafford, who is said to have been captivated by hjs person and his books, and to have offered herself as his bride. Their life is said to have been passed in much affection and mutual fidelity ; and it would be unjust to judge Crebillon s private life from his novels, the immorality of which is not surpassed in literature. For some years Ore 1 billon held the incongruous office of censor.  CRÉBILLON, (1674-1762), a famous French tragic poet, was born at Dijon, where his father was notary-royal. Having been educated at the Jesuits school of the town, and at the College Mazarin, he became an advocate, and was placed in the office of a lawyer named Prieur at Paris. The encouragement of his master, an old friend of Scarron s, induced him to continue with more serious intention his youthful habit of rhyming, and he soon produced a Mort des En/ants de Brutus, which, how* ever, he failed to bring upon the stage. But in 1705 he succeeded with Idomenee, the representation of which gained him considerable fame ; in 1707 his Atree et Tliyeste was repeatedly acted at court ; and in 1711 he produced his finest play, the Rhadamiste et Zcnobie, which is one of the masterpieces of the French classical tragedy. But his Xerxes (1714) was only once played, and his Scmiramis Was an absolute failure. Meanwhile, in 1707, Crebillon had married a girl without fortune, who had since died, leaving him an infant son. His father also had died, in solvent. His three years attendance at court had been fruitless. Envy had circulated innumerable slanders against him. Oppressed with melancholy, he removed to a garret, where he surrounded himself with a number of dogs, cats, and ravens, which he had befriended ; he became utterly careless of cleanliness or food, and solaced himself with constant smoking. But in 1731 he was elected member of the French Academy, in 1735 he was appointed royal censor; and in 1745 Mine, de Pompadour, in her enmity to his rival Voltaire, presented him with a pension of 1000 francs and a post in the royal library. In 1746 his Catilina was played with great success before the court ; and in 1754, eight years before his death, appeared his last tragedy, Le Triumvirat. Such was the rivalry of Voltaire, that to prove his own superiority he took the subjects of no less than five of Crebillon s tragedies S/ mimmis, Electre, Catilina, Le Triumvirat, Atree as subjects for tragedies of his own. For vigour and passion Crebillon is unsur passed in the French classical drama ; his faults are want of culture and the consequent absence of classical correct ness, and a want of care which displays itself iu his styla and even in the mechanism of his verse.

1em  CRÉCY, or, a town of France, department of Somme, on the Maye, 12 miles N. by E. of Abbeville; though an anciant place it ha* now only about 1300 inhabitants. It is tamn-n in history for the great victory gained here on the iitilli of August 1346 by Edward III., with about 30,OuO men, over the French of Philip of Valois, paid to be 100,^00 strung, commanded by the Comte d zileiiQon. The flower cf French chivalry, and the king of Bohemia, lighting for France, were slain in the battle. Here it was that the Black Prince gained his spurs, and that he adopted the triple feather crest cf the fallen Bohemian king, with the motto L:h Lien, still v. orn by our princes of Wales. This battle was one of the earliest in which cannon were used by the English. This Cre cy must not be mistaken f jr another small town of t-ie same name in the department of Seine-et-Marne, on the Grand Morin, 25 miles east of Paris, also an ancient place formerly forti- fied with double ramparts and towers.  CREDI, (1459-1537), was the least gifted of three artists who began life as journeymen with Andrea del Verrocchio at Florence. Though he was the companion and friend of Leonardo da Vinci and Perugino, and closely allied in style to both, he had neither the genius of the one nor the facility of the other. We admire in Da Vinci s heads a heavenly contentment and smile, in his technical execution great gloss and smoothness of finish. Credi s faces disclose a smiling beatitude ; his pigments have the polish of enamel. But Da Vinci imparted life to his creations and modulation to hia colours, and theso are qualities which hardly existed in Credi. Perugino displayed a well-known form of tenderness in heads, moulded on the models of the old Umbrian school. Peculiarities of movement and attitude become stereotyped in his com positions ; but when put on his mettle, he could still ex hibit power, passion, pathos. Credi often repeated himself in Perugino s way ; but being of a pious and resigned spirit, he generally embodied in his pictures a feeling which is yielding and gentle to the veree of coldness. Credi had a respectable local practice at Florence. He was consulted on most occasions when the opinion of 1m profession was required on public grounds, e.g., in 1491 as to the fronting, and in 1498 as to tho lantern of the Florentine Cathedral, in 1504 as to the place due to Michelangelo s David. He never painted frescoes; at rare intervals only he produced large ecclesiastical pictures. The greater part of his time was spent on easel pieces, upon which he expended minute and patient labour. But he worked with such industry that numbers of his Madonnas exist in European galleries. The best of his altar-pieces is that which represents the Virgin and Child with Saints in the cathedral of Pistoia. A fine example of his easel rounds is in the gallery of Mayence. Credi rivalled Fra Bartolommeo in his attachment to Savonarola ; but he felt no inclination for the retirement of a monastery. Still, in his old age, and after he had outlived the perils of the siege of Florence (1527), he withdrew on an annuity into the hospital of Santa Maria Nnova, where he died.  CREDIT FONCIER CREDIT MOBILIER are finance institutions, which had their origin in the joint-stock speculation and sanguine promotion of public works which marked many years of the second empire in France, and to which the introduction of limited liability in England had given a great stimulus on the British side of the Channel. The parent institutions in Paris were followed by similar establishments in some other capitals. As the terms imply, the credit foncier contemplates loans and advances on real securities, and the credit mobilier on what is called with us personal or movable estate. Whether such limits and distinctions have been evet strictly observed in the practical working of these credit banks is doubtful. The credit mobilier of Franco has had a more unfortunate experience than the credit foncier, though the latter has by no means sustained the promise of its early years. While the mania of launching new projects continued, enormous profits were made, which could only be the result of heavy promotion charges, and the shares rose in value with tho extraordinary liberality of the dividends. But the system of business pursued had the result of mixing the credit banks very closely with the various companies and undertakings they were promoting, and of throwing back upon them a growing mass of depreciated or unsaleable securities ; while the abatement; or collapse of speculation restricted the business from which the main part of the former income had been derived. The rates of dividend and the value of the 