next six years to literary work. In 1756 he became one of the founders and drew up the statues of the Arcadia Lusitana, a literary society whose aims were the instruction of its members, the cultivation of the art of poetry, and the restoration of good taste. The fault was not his if these ends were not attained, for, taking contemporary French authors as his models, he contributed much, both in prose and verse, to its proceedings, until he left in February 1760 to take up the position of juiz de fora at Castello de Vide. On returning to Lisbon for a short visit, he found the Arcadia a prey to the internal dissensions that caused its dissolution in 1774, but succeeded in composing them and in 1764 he went to Elvas to act as auditor of one of the regiments stationed there. During a ten years’ residence, his wide reading and witty conversation gained him the friendship of the governor of that fortress and the admiration of a circle comprising all that was cultivated in Elvas. As in most cathedral and garrison towns, the clerical and military elements dominated society, and here were mutually antagonistic, because of the enmity between their respective leaders, the bishop and the governor. Moreover, Elvas, being a remote provincial centre, abounded in curious and grotesque types. Diniz, who was a keen observer, noted these, and, treasuring them in his memory, reproduced them, with their vanities, intrigues and ignorance, in his masterpiece, Hyssope. In 1768 a quarrel arose between the bishop, a proud, pretentious prelate, and the dean, as to the right of the former to receive holy water from the latter at a private side door of the cathedral, instead of at the principal entrance. The matter being one of principle, neither party would yield what he considered his rights, and it led to a lawsuit, and divided the town into two sections, which eagerly debated the arguments on both sides and enjoyed the ridiculous incidents which accompanied the dispute. Ultimately the dean died, and was succeeded by his nephew, who appealed to the crown with success and the bishop lost his pretension. The Hyssope arose out of and deals with this affair. It was dictated in seventeen days, in the years 1770–1772, and, in its final redaction, consists of eight cantos of blank verse. The pressure of absolutism left open only one form of expression, satire, and in this poem Diniz produced an original work which ridicules the clergy and the prevailing Gallomania, and contains episodes full of humour. It has been compared with Boileau’s Lutrin, because both are founded on a petty ecclesiastical quarrel, but here the resemblance ends, and the poem of Diniz is the superior in everything except matrification.
Returning to Lisbon in 1774, Diniz endeavoured once more to resuscitate the Arcadia, but his long absence had withdrawn its chief support, its most talented members Garção (q.v.) and Quita were no more, and he only assisted at its demise. In April 1776 he was appointed disembargador of the court of Relação in Rio de Janeiro and given the habit of Aviz. He lived in Brazil, devouting his leisure to a study of its natural history and mineralogy, until 1789, when he went back to Lisbon to take up the post of disembargador of the Relação of Oporto; in July 1790 he was promoted, and became disembargador of the Casa da Supplicação. In this year he was sent again to Brazil to assist in trying the leaders of the Republican conspiracy in Minas, in which Gonzaga (q.v.) and the other men of letters were involved, and in December 1792 he became chancellor of the Relação in Rio. Six years later he was named councillor of the Conselho Ultramarino, but did not live to return home, dying in Rio on the 5th of October 1799.
Diniz possessed a poetic temperament, but his love of imitating the classics, whose spirit he failed to understand, fettered his muse, and he seems never to have perceived that mythological comparisons and pastoral allegories were poor substitutes for the expression of natural feeling. The conventionalism of his art prejudiced its sincerity, and, inwardly cherishing the belief that poetry was unworthy of the dignity of a judge, he never gave his real talents a chance to display themselves. His Anacreontic odes, dithyrambs and idylls earned the admiration of contemporaries, but his Pindaric odes lack fire, his sonnets are weak, and his idylls have neither the truth nor the simplicity of Quita’s work. As a rule Diniz’s versification is weak and his verses lack harmony, though the diction is beyond cavil.
His poems were published in 6 vols. (Lisbon, 1807–1817). The best edition of Hyssope, to which Diniz owes his lasting fame, is that of J. R. Coelho (Lisbon, 1879), with an exhaustive introductory study on his life and writings. A French prose version of the poem by Boissonade has gone through two editions (Paris, 1828 and 1867), and English translations of selections have been printed in the Foreign Quarterly Review, and in the Manchester Quarterly (April 1896).
See also Dr Theophilo Braga, A. Arcadia Lusitana (Oporto, 1899). (E. Pr.)
CRYOLITE, a mineral discovered in Greenland by the Danes
in 1794, and found to be a compound of fluorine, sodium and
aluminium. From its general appearance, and from the fact that
it melts readily, even in a candle-flame, it was regarded by the
Eskimos as a peculiar kind of ice; from this fact it acquired the
name of cryolite (from Gr. κρύος, frost, and λίθος, stone). Cryolite
occurs in colourless or snow-white cleavable masses, often tinted
brown or red with iron oxide, and occasionally passing into a
black variety. It is usually translucent, becoming nearly
transparent on immersion in water. The mineral cleaves in
three rectangular directions, and the crystals occasionally found
in the crevices have a cubic habit, but it has been proved, after
much discussion, that they belong to the anorthic system. The
hardness is 2.5, and the specific gravity 3. Cryolite has the
formula Na3AlF6, or 3NaF·AlF3, corresponding to fluorine 54.4,
sodium 32.8, and aluminium 12.8%. It colours a flame yellow,
through the presence of sodium, and when heated with sulphuric
acid it evolves hydrofluoric acid.
Cryolite occurs almost exclusively at Ivigtut (sometimes written Evigtok) on the Arksut Fjord in S.W. Greenland. There it forms a large deposit, in a granitic vein running through gneiss, and is accompanied by quartz, siderite, galena, blende, chalcopyrite, &c. It is also associated with a group of kindred minerals, some of which are evidently products of alteration of the cryolite, known as pachnolite, thomsenolite, ralstonite, gearksutite, arksutite, &c. Cryolite likewise occurs, though only to a limited extent, at Miyask, in the Ilmen Mountains; at Pike’s Peak, Colorado, and in the Yellowstone Park.
Cryolite is a mineral of much economic importance. It has been extensively used as a source of metallic aluminium, and as a flux in smelting the metal. It is largely employed in the manufacture of certain sodium salts, as suggested by Julius Thomsen, of Copenhagen, in 1849; and it has been used for the production of certain kinds of porcelain and glass, remarkable for its toughness, and for enamelled ware.
Although cryolite is known as “ice-stone” (Eisstein), it is not to be confused with “ice-spar” (Eisspath), which is a vitreous kind of felspar termed “glassy felspar” or rhyacolite. (F. W. R.*)
CRYPT (Lat. crypta, from the Gr. κρύπτειν, to hide), a vault or
subterranean chamber, especially under churches. In classical
phraseology “crypta” was employed for any vaulted building,
either partially or entirely below the level of the ground. It is
used for a sewer (crypta Suburae, Juvenal, Sat. v. 106); for the
“carceres,” or vaulted stalls for the horses and chariots in a
circus (Sidon. Apoll. Carm. xxiii. 319); for the close porticoes
or arcades, more fully known as “cryptoporticus,” attached by
the Romans to their suburban villas for the sake of coolness,
and to the theatres as places of exercise or rehearsal for the
performers (Plin. Epist. ii. 15, v. 6, vii. 21; Sueton. Calig. 58;
Sidon. Apoll. lib. ii. epist. 2); and for underground receptacles
for agricultural produce (Vitruv. vi. 8, Varro, De re rust. i. 57).
Tunnels, or galleries excavated in the living rock, were also
called cryptae. Thus the tunnel to the north of Naples, through
which the road passes to Puteoli, familiar to tourists as the
“Grotto of Posilipo,” was originally designated crypta Neapolitana
(Seneca, Epist. 57). In early Christian times crypta
was appropriately employed for the galleries of a catacomb, or
for the catacomb itself. Jerome calls them by this name when
describing his visits to them as a schoolboy, and the term is used
by Prudentius (see Catacombs).
