by R. W. Lowe, who printed with it other valuable theatrical books and pamphlets. It is also included in Hunt and Clarke’s Autobiographies (1826, &c.). Cibber’s Dramatic Works were published in 1760, with an account of the life and writings of the author, and again in 1777. Besides the plays already mentioned, he wrote Woman’s Wit, or the Lady in Fashion (1697), which was altered later (1707) into The Schoolboy, or the Comical Rivals; Xerxes (1699), a tragedy acted only once; The Provoked Husband (acted 1728), completed from Vanbrugh’s unfinished Journey to London; The Rival Queens, with the Humours of Alexander the Great (acted 1710), a comical tragedy; Damon and Phyllida (acted 1729), a ballad opera; and adaptations from Beaumont and Fletcher, Dryden, Molière and Corneille. A bibliography of the numerous skits on Cibber is to be found in Lowe’s Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature.
Colley Cibber’s son, Theophilus Cibber (1703–1758), also an actor and playwright, was born on the 26th of November 1703. In 1734 he was acting-manager at the Haymarket, and he subsequently played at Drury Lane, Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Covent Garden. His best impersonation was as Pistol, but he also distinguished himself in some of the fine-gentleman parts affected by his father. He was one of the ringleaders in the intrigues against John Highmore, who had bought a share in the patent of Drury Lane from Colley Cibber. Theophilus Cibber, with a number of other actors, seceded from Drury Lane, and in thus depreciating the value of the patent, for which his father had received a considerable sum, acted with doubtful honesty. He contemplated the publication of an autobiography, but was effectually dissuaded by the appearance (1740) of a scathing account of his career by an unknown author, entitled An Apology for the Life of Mr T. . . . C. . . . supposed to be written by himself. In 1753 he began The Lives and Characters of the most Eminent Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and Ireland, but he went no further than the life of Barton Booth. He wrote some plays of no great merit. In 1753 appeared An Account of the Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, with the name of “Mr Cibber” on the title page. The five volumes of Lives are chiefly based on the earlier works of Gerard Langbaine and Giles Jacob, and the MS. collections of Thomas Coxeter (1689–1747). The book is said to have been largely written by Robert Shiels, Dr Johnson’s amanuensis. Theophilus Cibber perished by shipwreck on his way to Dublin to play at the Theatre Royal.
Susannah Maria Cibber (1714–1766), wife of Theophilus, was an actress of distinction. She was the daughter of a Covent Garden upholsterer, and sister of Dr Arne (1710–1778) the composer. Mrs Cibber had a beautiful voice and began her career in opera. She was the original Galatea in Handel’s Acis and Galatea, and the contralto arias in the Messiah are said to have been written for her. She played Zarah in Aaron Hill’s version of Voltaire’s Zaïre in 1736, and it was as a tragic actress, not as a singer, that her greatest triumphs were won. From Colley Cibber she learned a sing-song method of declamation. Her mannerisms, however, did not obscure her real genius, and she freed herself from them entirely when she began to act with Garrick, with whom she was associated at Drury Lane from 1753. She died on the 30th of January 1766. She married Theopihilus Cibber in 1734, but lived with him but a short time. Appreciations of Mrs Cibber’s fine acting are to be found in many contemporary writers, one of the most discriminating being in the Rosciad of Charles Churchill.
Colley Cibber’s youngest daughter, Charlotte, married Richard Charke, a violinist, from whom she was soon separated. She began as an understudy to actresses in leading parts, but quarrelled with her manager, Charles Fleetwood, on whom she wrote a one-act skit, The Art of Management (1735). She also wrote two comedies and two novels of small merit, and an untrustworthy, but amusing Narrative of Life of . . . Charlotte Charke, . . . by herself (1755), reprinted in Hunt and Clarke’s Autobiographies (1822).
CIBORIUM, a name in classical Latin for a drinking-vessel. It is the latinized form of the Gr. κιβώριον, the cup-shaped seed-vessel of the Egyptian water-lily, the seeds or nuts of which were known as “Egyptian beans.” In the early Christian Church the ciborium was a canopy over the altar (q.v.), supported on columns, and from it hung the receptacle in which was reserved the consecrated wafer of the Eucharist. The use of the word has probably been much influenced by the early false connexion with cibus, food, cf. Agatio, bishop of Pisa (quoted in Du Cange, Gloss. s.v.), “Ciborium vas esse ad ferendos cibos.” In the Eastern Church the columns rested on the altar itself, in the Western they reached the ground. The name was early transferred from the canopy to the vessel containing the reserved sacrament, and in the Western Church the canopy was known as a “baldaquin,” Ital. baldacchino, from Baldacco, the Italian name of Bagdad, and hence applied to a rich kind of embroidered tapestry made there and much used for canopies, &c. At the present day it is usual in the Roman Church to use the term “pyx” (πύξις, properly a vessel made of boxwood) for the receptacle for the reserved sacrament used in administering the viaticum to the sick or dying. Medieval pyxes and ciboria are often beautiful examples of the goldsmith’s, enameller’s and metal-worker’s craft. They take most usually the shape of a covered chalice or of a cylindrical box with conical or cylindrical cover surmounted by a cross. An exquisite ciborium fetched £6000 at the sale of the Jerdone Braikenridge collection at Christie’s in 1908. It is supposed to have come from Malmesbury Abbey, and is probably of 13th-century English make. It is of copper-gilt and ornamented with champlevé enamels, apple and chrysoprase green, scarlet, mauve and white, turquoise and lapis lazuli, the flesh tints being of a pale jasper. Various subjects from the Old and New Testament, such as the sacrifice of Abel, the brazen serpent, the nativity, crucifixion and resurrection are represented on circular medallions on the outside. It is illustrated in colours in the catalogue of the exhibition of the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1897.
CIBRARIO, LUIGI, Count (1802–1870), Italian statesman and historian, descended from a noble but impoverished Piedmontese family, was born in Usseglia on the 23rd of February 1802. He won a scholarship at the age of sixteen, and was teaching literature at eighteen. His verses to King Charles Albert, then prince of Carignano, on the birth of his son Victor Emmanuel, attracted the prince’s attention and proved the beginning of a long intimacy. He entered the Sardinian civil service, and in 1824 was appointed lecturer on canon and civil law. His chief interest was the study of ancient documents, and he was sent to search the archives of Switzerland, France and Germany for charters relating to the history of Savoy. During the war of 1848, after the expulsion of the Austrians from Venice, Cibrario was sent to that city with Colli to negotiate its union with Piedmont. But the proposal fell through when the news of the armistice between King Charles Albert and Austria arrived, and the two delegates were made the objects of a hostile demonstration. In October 1848 Cibrario was made senator, and after the battle of Novara (March 1849), when Charles Albert abdicated and retired to a monastery near Oporto, Cibrario and Count Giacinto di Collegno were sent as representatives of the senate to express the sympathy of that body with the fallen king. He reached Oporto on the 28th of May, and after staying there for a month returned to Turin, which he reached just before the news of Charles Albert’s death. In May 1852 he became minister of finance in the reconstructed d’Azeglio cabinet, and later minister of education in that of Cavour. In the same year he was appointed secretary to the order of SS. Maurizio and Lazzaro. It was he who in 1853 dictated the vigorous memorandum of protest against the confiscation by Austria of the property of Lombard exiles who had been naturalized in Piedmont. He strongly supported Cavour’s Crimean policy (1855), and when General La Marmora departed in command of the expeditionary force and Cavour took the war office, Cibrario was made minister for foreign affairs. He conducted the business of the department with great skill, and ably seconded Cavour in bringing about the admission of Piedmont to the congress of Paris on an equal footing with the great powers. On retiring from the foreign office Cibrario was created count. In 1860 he acted as mediator between Victor Emmanuel’s
