had borrowed from a state bank the sum of £12,000 for secret service, repaying it with the monthly instalments granted in regular course by the treasury. The commission, considering this proceeding irregular, proposed, and the chamber adopted, a vote of censure, but refused to authorize a prosecution. Crispi resigned his seat in parliament, but was re-elected by an overwhelming majority in April 1898 by his Palermo constituents. For some time he took little part in active politics, chiefly on account of his growing blindness. A successful operation for cataract restored his eyesight in June 1900, and notwithstanding his 81 years he resumed to some extent his former political activity. Soon afterwards, however, his health began to give way permanently, and he died at Naples on the 12th of August 1901.
The importance of Crispi in Italian public life depended less upon the many reforms accomplished under his administrations than upon his intense patriotism, remarkable fibre, and capacity for administering to his fellow-countrymen the political tonic of which they stood in constant need. In regard to foreign politics he greatly contributed to raise Italian prestige and to dispel the reputation for untrustworthiness and vacillation acquired by many of his predecessors. If in regard to France his policy appeared to lack suavity and circumspection, it must be remembered that the French republic was then engaged in active anti-Italian schemes and was working, both at the Vatican and in the sphere of colonial politics, to create a situation that should compel Italy to bow to French exigencies and to abandon the Triple Alliance. Crispi was prepared to cultivate good relations with France, but refused to yield to pressure or to submit to dictation; and in this attitude he was firmly supported by the bulk of his fellow-countrymen. The criticism freely directed against him was based rather upon the circumstances of his unfortunate private life and the misdeeds of an unscrupulous entourage which traded upon his name than upon his personal or political shortcomings.
See Scritti e discorsi politici di F. Crispi, 1847–1890 (Rome, 1890); Francesco Crispi, by W. J. Stillman (London, 1899).
CRISPIN and CRISPINIAN, the patron saints of shoemakers,
whose festival is celebrated on the 25th of October. Their
history is largely legendary, and there exists no trace of it earlier
than the 8th century. It is said that they were brothers and
members of a noble family in Rome. They gave up their property
and travelled to Soissons (Noviodunum, Augusta Sucessionum),
where they supported themselves by shoemaking and made many
converts to Christianity. The emperor Maximianus (Herculius)
condemned them to death. His prefect Rictiovarus endeavoured
to carry out the sentence, but they emerged unharmed from all
the ordeals to which he subjected them, and the weapons he used
recoiled against the executioners. Rictiovarus in disgust cast
himself into the fire, or the caldron of boiling tar, from which
they had emerged refreshed. At last Maximian had their heads
cut off (c. 287–300). Their remains were buried at Soissons,
but were afterwards removed, partly by Charlemagne to Osnabrück
(where a festival is observed annually on the 20th of June)
and partly to the chapel of St Lawrence in Rome. The abbeys
of St Crépin-en-Chaye (the remains of which still form part of a
farmhouse on the river Aisne, N.N.W. of Soissons), of St Crépin-le-Petit,
and St Crépin-le-Grand (the site of which is occupied
by a house belonging to the Sisters of Mercy), in or near Soissons,
commemorated the places sanctified by their imprisonment and
burial. There are also relics at Fulda, and a Kentish tradition
claims that the bodies of the martyrs were cast into the sea and
cast on shore on Romney Marsh (see Acta SS. Bolland, xi. 495;
A. Butler, Lives of the Saints. October 25th).
Especially in France, but also in England and in other parts of Europe, the festival of St Crispin was for centuries the occasion of solemn processions and merry-making, in which gilds of shoemakers took the chief part. At Troyes, where the gild of St Crispin was reconstituted as late as 1820, an annual festival is celebrated in the church of St Urban. In England and Scotland the day acquired additional importance as the anniversary of the battle of Agincourt (cf. Shakespeare, Henry V. iv. 3); the symbolical processions in honour of “King Crispin” at Stirling and Edinburgh were particularly famous.
For other examples see Notes and Queries, 1st series, v. 30, vi. 243; W. S. Walsh, Curiosities of Popular Customs (London, 1898).
CRITIAS, Athenian orator and poet, and one of the Thirty Tyrants. In his youth he was a pupil of Gorgias and Socrates, but subsequently devoted himself to political intrigues. In 415 B.C. he was implicated in the mutilation of the Hermae and imprisoned. In 411 he helped to put down the Four Hundred, and was instrumental in procuring the recall of Alcibiades. He was banished (probably in the democratic reaction of 407) and fled to Thessaly, where he stirred up the Penestae (the helots of Thessaly) against their masters, and endeavoured to establish a democracy. Returning to Athens he was made ephor by the oligarchical party; and he was the most cruel and unscrupulous of the Thirty Tyrants who in 404 were appointed by the Lacedaemonians. He was slain in battle against Thrasybulus and the returning democrats. Critias was a man of varied talents—poet, orator, historian and philosopher. Some fragments of his elegies will be found in Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci. He was also the author of several tragedies and of biographies of distinguished poets (possibly in verse).
See Xenophon, Hellenica, ii. 3. 4. 19, Memorabilia, i. 2; Cornelius Nepos, Thrasybulus, 2; R. Lallier, De Critiae tyranni vita ac scriptis (1875); Nestle, Neue Jahrb. f. d. kl. Altert. (1903).
CRITICISM (from the Gr. κρίτης, a judge, κρίνειν, to decide,
to give an authoritative opinion), the art of judging the qualities
and values of an aesthetic object, whether in literature or the
fine arts.[1] It involves, in the first instance, the formation
and expression of a judgment on the qualities of anything, and
Matthew Arnold defined it in this general sense as “a disinterested
endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and
thought in the world.” It has come, however, to possess a
secondary and specialized meaning as a published analysis
of the qualities and characteristics of a work in literature or fine
art, itself taking the form of independent literature. The sense
in which criticism is taken as implying censure, the “picking
holes” in any statement or production, is frequent, but it is
entirely unjustifiable. There is nothing in the proper scope of
criticism which presupposes blame. On the contrary, a work
of perfect beauty and fitness, in which no fault could possibly
be found with justice, is as proper a subject for criticism to deal
with as a work of the greatest imperfection. It may be perfectly
just to state that a book or a picture is “beneath criticism,”
i.e. is so wanting in all qualities of originality and technical
excellence that time would merely be wasted in analysing it.
But it can never be properly said that a work is “above criticism,”
although it may be “above censure,” for the very complexity
of its merits and the fulness of its beauties tempt the
skill of the analyser and reward it.
It is necessary at the threshold of an examination of the history of criticism to expose this laxity of speech, since nothing is more confusing to a clear conception of this art than to suppose that it consists in an effort to detect what is blameworthy. Candid criticism should be neither benevolent nor adverse; its function is to give a just judgment, without partiality or bias. A critic (κριτικός) is one who exercises the art of criticism, who sets himself up, or is set up, as a judge of literary and artistic merit. The irritability of mankind, which easily forgets and neglects praise, but cannot forgive the rankling poison of blame, has set upon the word critic a seal which is even more unamiable than that of criticism. It takes its most savage form in Benjamin Disraeli’s celebrated and deplorable dictum, “the critics are the men who have failed in literature and art.” It is plain that such names as those of Aristotle, Dante, Dryden, Joshua Reynolds, Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold are not to be thus swept by a reckless fulmination. There have been
- ↑ It is in this general sense that the subject is considered in this article. The term is, however, used in more restricted senses, generally with some word of qualification, e.g. “textual criticism” or “higher criticism”; see the article Textual Criticism and the article Bible for an outstanding example of both “textual” and “higher.”
