Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/1093

CHY CHYR-SCHAH or SHEER-KHAN, the surname of a celebrated prince named Feryd, of Affghan origin, who was born about the beginning of the sixteenth century. He entered the service of the prince of Behar, and distinguished himself by his valour. After the death of his master he seized upon his dominions, to the exclusion of the rightful heir. He afterwards took possession of Bengal, defeated the Sultan Humaioon, drove him from his throne, made himself master of Hindostan, and extended the limits of his empire from the Ganges to the Indus. He was a sagacious and vigorous sovereign; his death, which took place in 1545, was regarded as a public calamity, and was succeeded by a period of great disorder.—J. T.  CHYTRÆUS,, an eminent German theologian of the sixteenth century, was born 26th February, 1530, near Halle in Schwabia. His father was a disciple of John Breuz, the reformer of Wurtemburg, and died in 1559 as pastor of Menzingen, near Heidelberg. At the early age of nine years Chytræus was sent to Tübingen, where he enjoyed the instructions of Camerarius and Schnepf, and he was still a boy when he took his bachelor's and master's degrees. He then repaired to Wittemberg to study under Melancthon, who received him with paternal affection, after making trial of his attainments, exclaiming—"Tu merito es magister, et tu mihi filii loco eris." During the suspension of that university in the troubled years of 1546 and 1547, Chytræus pursued his studies at Heidelberg and Tübingen; but in 1548 he returned again to Wittemberg, where he delivered lectures with applause on rhetoric, astronomy, and Melancthon's Loci Communes. In 1551 he was appointed professor of theology in Rostock, and there he continued to labour till his death in 1600. In many respects his character and career bear a striking resemblance to those of Martin Chemnitz his contemporary. Brought up like him in the school of Melancthon, and inspired with the same veneration and affection for their illustrious master, Chytræus was often associated with Chemnitz in the same ecclesiastical transactions, and devoted his talents and life to the same great interests—the defence of divine truth, the consolidation of the Reformation, and the promotion of sound learning. They drew up in conjunction the statutes of the new university of Hehnstadt, and they were both coadjutors of Andrea in introducing into the Lutheran church the Formula Concordiæ. But in learning and ability Chytræus was inferior to Chemnitz, and neither his writings nor his practical activity were of the same public importance. The characteristic spirit of the Melancthonian school found in him a worthy representative, and still survives in the following selections from his works—"Historia Augustanæ Confessionis," 1578. "Oratio de studio theologiæ inchoando," 1608; "Oratio de studio Theologiæ exercitiis veræ pietatis et virtutis, potius quam contentionibus et rixis disputationum colendo," Viteb. 1581.—His brother , born in 1543; died in 1598. He was a man of some repute as a Latin poet.—P. L.  CIACONIUS. See.  CIAMBERLANO,, an artist, born at Urbino about the year 1580. He first pursued the study of the law, and took a doctor's degree; but ultimately abandoned the subtleties of j urisprudence for the mysteries of engraving. He acquired considerable fame, more especially by his etchings after the Italian masters. A hundred and fourteen plates are attributed to him. His hand was neat and dexterous. Ciamberlano died at Rome in 1641.—W. T.  CIAMPELLI,, a Florentine painter, was born in 1578, and educated under Santo di Titi. He did not reach the eminence of his master, but was an able artist, grand in conception, correct in drawing, and brilliant rather than truthful in colour. A "Visitation," with its two laterals in the church of St. Stephen of Pescia, is among his choicest works. He died in 1640.—W. T.  CIAMPI,, born at Pistoia in 1769, and died in the neighbourhood of Florence in 1847. Ciampi took priest's orders in 1793; afterwards studied civil and canon law at Pisa, where he found employment in teaching jurisprudence. He afterwards held a law professorship at Warsaw. He returned to Italy in 1822, and occupied himself with literature. His publications were very numerous between the years 1800 and 1843. Some of them are important to students of the earlier Italian literature.—J. A., D.  CIAMPINI,, born at Rome in 1633, and died in 1698; a learned archæologist, whose first studies were in jurisprudence, but who afterwards devoted himself to literature. He was member of several literary societies, and himself originated several of the class of academies of which Italy is so fond. His works were collected in three volumes, folio, by Gianini, in 1717.—J. A., D.  CIAMPOLI,, born at Florence in 1589; died in 1683. Ciampoli is said to have attended the lectures of Galileo at Padua. From this place he passed to Bologna, where Cardinal Maffeo Barberini gave him some valuable appointments and benefices. From Bologna he went to Rome, where he obtained farther preferments. Maffeo became pope, and had not Ciampoli been born under some unlucky star, which afflicted him with an unconquerable passion for rhyme, and what is less easily to be accounted for, with an irremoveable conviction that his poems were better than Tasso's, Petrarch's, or Virgil's, he might have prospered. All this the pope might have endured and smiled at, but the pope was himself a poet, and there was something on the part of Ciampoli like a claim of superiority for his own verses over those of his holiness. This could not be allowed, and the too ambitious poet was sent to a distance from court. His exile was effected by giving him the office of governor or resident magistrate of a country district of little importance. The poet died in his government—in what his biographers call his disgrace. He left his manuscripts to Ladislaus IV., king of Poland, who at no time discontinued his attentions to him. His poems were collected, and published at Rome in 1648.—J. A., D. <section end="1093H" /> <section begin="1093I" />CIASSI,, an Italian physician and botanist, was born at Treviso in 1654, and died about 1679. He published in 1677 a work entitled, "Meditations on the Nature of Plants," in which he enters into the phenomena of vegetation in a physiological, as well as in a physico-mathematical point of view.—J. H. B. <section end="1093I" /> <section begin="1093J" />CIBBER or CIBERT,, was the son of a cabinetmaker to the king of Denmark, and was born at Flensburg in the duchy of Holstein. Exhibiting a promising talent for sculpture, he was sent at the king's expense to Rome. He came to England during the Protectorate, and not long before the Restoration. His early history is not well known. His son, Colley, has recorded many particulars of his contemporaries, but few regarding his father. His most celebrated works are his figures of "Melancholy" and "Raving Madness," which formerly adorned the principal gate of old Bethlehem hospital, and have since been removed to the museum of South Kensington. Allan Cunningham says of these, "that they stand first in conception, and only second in execution, among all the productions of the island. Those who see them for the first time are fixed to the spot with terror and awe." Raving Madness is a naked muscular figure, heavily manacled, writhing in convulsions of passionate agony. It is said to have been modelled from Oliver Cromwell's porter, then an inmate of the hospital. The other figure is feebler in character, and represents rather idiocy than madness. Pope's lines on "the brazen brainless brothers" are well known. The bassi-relievi on two sides of the monument of London, the "tall bully that lifts its head and lies," are by the hand of Cibber. So was the fountain in Soho Square, and one of the vases at Hampton Court, said by Walpole "to be done in competition with a foreigner, who executed the other; but nobody has told us which is Cibber's." He carved some of the statues of kings, and that of Sir Thomas Gresham, in the Royal Exchange. The first duke of Devonshire employed him much at Chatsworth, where he executed two sphinxes on large bases, a fountain of Neptune, several door-cases of alabaster, and many ornaments in the chapel, including statues of Faith and Hope, one on each side of the altar. In 1688 he took up arms under the duke in favour of the prince of Orange, he was appointed carver to the king's closet, and died about 1700. He built the Danish church in London, and was buried there himself, as had been his second wife, to whom he erected a monument.—W. T. <section end="1093J" /> <section begin="1093Zcontin" />CIBBER,, son of the preceding, a celebrated dramatic author, poet-laureate to George II., was born in London, 1671; his mother, from whom he took his name, being the descendant of a good family in Rutlandshire. He was sent in 1682 to the free school at Grantham in Lincolnshire. In 1687 he was an applicant for a scholarship at Winchester school, the founder of which, William of Wykeham, according to Cibber, was among the ancestry of his mother. This application being rejected, probably because the genealogy on which it rested <section end="1093Zcontin" />