Chapter Caxtons to Cephalus of C by Brewer's Readers Handbook

The “Caracul” of Fingal, who is no other than Caracalla) son of Severus, emperor of Rome), and the battle fought against Caros or Carausius,…fix the epoch of Fingal to the third century, and Irish historians place his death in the year 283. Ossian was Fingal’s son.—Era of Ossian.

Celtic Languages. (See Keltic.)

Cenci. Francesco Cenci was a most profligate Roman noble, who had four sons and one daughter, all of whom he treated with abominable cruelty. It is said that he assassinated his two elder sons and debauched his daughter Beatrice. Beatrice and her two surviving brothers, with Lucretia (their mother), conspired against Francesco and accomplished his death; but all except the youngest brother perished on the scaffold, September II, 1599. (See Quarterly Review, February, 1879.)

It has been doubted whether the famous portrait in the Barberini palace of Rome is that of Beatrice Cenci, and even whether Guido was the painter thereof.

Percy B. Shelley wrote a tragedy called The Cenci (1819).

Cenimagni, the inhabitants of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge.—Cœsar: Commentaries.

Cennini, the jeweller in Romola, a novel by “George Eliot” (Mrs. Lewis or J. W. Crosse), (1863).

Centaur (The Blue), a human form from the waist upwards, and a goat covered with blue shag from the waist downwards. Like the ogri, he fed on human flesh.

“Shepherds,” said he, “I am the Blue Centaur. If you will give me every third year a young child, I promise to bring a hundred of my kinsmen and drive the Ogri away.”…He [the Blue Centaur] used to appear on the top of a rock, with his club in one hand…and with a terrible voice cry out to the shepherds, “Leave me my prey, and be off with you!”—Comtesse D’Aulnoy: Fairy Tales (“Princess Carpillona,” 1682).

Centaurs (The), of classic mythology, were half men and half horses. They fought with the Lapithæ at the marriage feast of Pirithôous, were expelled from their country, and took refuge on Mount Pindus. Chiron was the most famous of the Centaurs.

Century White, John White, the nonconformist lawyer. So called from his chief work, entitled The First Century of Scandalous, Malignant Priests, etc. (1590–1645).

Cephal (Greek, Kephalê), the Head personified, the “acropolis” of The Purple Island, fully described in canto v. of that poem, by Phineas Fletcher (1633).

Cephalus (in Greek, Kephalos). One day, overcome with heat, Cephalus threw himself on the grass, and cried aloud, “Come, gentle Aura, and this heat allay!” The words were told to his young wife Procris, who, supposing Aura to be some rival, became furiously jealous. Resolved to discover her rival, she stole next day to a covert, and soon saw her husband come and throw himself on the bank, crying aloud, “Come, gentle Zephy; come, Aura, come, this heat allay!” Her mistake was evident, and she was about to throw herself into the arms of her husband, when the young man, aroused by the rustling, shot an arrow into the covert, supposing some wild beast was about to spring on him. Procris was shot, told her tale, and died.—Ovid: Art of Love, iii.

Cephalus loves Procris, i.e. “the sun kisses the dew. Procris is killed by Cephalus, i.e. “the dew is destroyed by the rays of the sun.”