333 



COLONNA, VITTORIA. 



COLUMBUS, CHRISTOPHER. 



334 



Another edition of the ' Hypnerotomachia ' was published at Venice 

 by the younger of the Aldi in 1545. It has been twice translated into 

 French: first by Beroalde de Verville (folio, Paris, 1600); and again 

 by the architect Legrand, under the title of 'Songede Polyphile,' in 

 '2. vols. 12mo, printed by Didot, 1804, and reprinted by Bodoni in a 

 splendid quarto, 1811. Legrand intended to illustrate it by a separate 

 atlas of engravings to it, which had they appeared would doubtless 

 have been of very different character from the wood-cut figures of the 

 original and the copies from it. Those in Beroalde de Verville's trans- 

 lation are said to have been designed by no less an artist than the 

 celebrated sculptor Jean Goujon ; but as far as they are at all archi- 

 tectural in their subjects, which is the ease with but few of them, 

 they do not materially differ from the earlier ones, and like them are 

 exceedingly rude both as to drawing and design. Temanza [TEMANZA, 

 TOMMASO], who is among the warm admirers of the ' Hypnerotomachia,' 

 speaks of it at considerable length in his ' Life of Colonna.' 



After this bibliographical notice of the singular work which has 

 obtained for him so much repute of contradictory kinds, the history 

 of the writer himself may be briefly told. He was born at Venice, 

 about the year 1433, and in his youth fell in love with Ippolita, tho 

 me ce of Teodoro Lelio, bishop of Trevigi, in the Venetian territory ; 

 and she is the lady whom he has celebrated under the abridged name 

 Polia, in his allegorical romance, and who is supposed to have died 

 shortly after her uncle, in 1466. Colonna then took the Dominican 

 habit, and entered the monastery of Santi Giovanni e Paolo at Venice, 

 where he died in July 1527, at the age of ninety-four. 



COLO'XNA, VITTO'RIA, born' in 1490, was the daughter of 

 Fabrizio Colonna, Great Constable of the kingdom of Naples, and of 

 Anna, the daughter of Frederico di Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. At 

 the age of seventeen she married Francis Davalos, son of the Marquis 

 of Pescara, who soon after came to the title at the death of his father. 

 . . d with distinction in the armies of Charles V., and con- 

 tributed greatly to the gaining of the battle of Pavia, in which he was 

 wounded. On his recovery, appearing dissatisfied with Charles V., he 

 was sounded by Morone, the old minister of the Duke Sforza of Milan, 

 as to his willingness to enter into a plot concerted with the other 

 Italian princes, by -vhich the Spanish troops were to be driven out of 

 Milan and Lombardy, and ultimately from all Italy. Pescara was 

 (rr.mauder in-chief of Charles's arrnv in Italy. He was promised 

 the kingdom of Naples as a reward for his assistance in the execution 

 of this plot Pescara appeared to assent at first, but afterwards 

 secretly informed Charles V., who is said however to have had already 

 some previous information on the subject, and who ordered him to 

 take possession of the principal towns of Lombardy, and to arrest 

 Morone, who was soon after put to death. It is reported that Vittoria 

 Colonna contributed by her remonstrances on this occasion to retain 

 her husband within the bounds of his allegiance to the emperor. 

 Shortly after Pescara died, towards the end of 1525, aged thirty-six 

 years, and was succeeded by his cousin the Marquis del Vasto in the 

 command of the imperial army in Italy. Vittoria Colonna, who was 

 inconsolable for the death of her husband, determined on spending 

 the remainder of her life in religious seclusion. She wrote several 

 poetical effusions, lamenting the death of her husband, and also upon 

 religious subjects. ('Kime Spiritual! di Vittoria Colonna,' Venezia, 

 154S.) Her beauty, her talents, and her piety were extolled by her 

 contemporaries, and among others by Michel Aagelo, and by Ariosto, 

 in canto 37 of the 'Furioso.' She died in 1547, at Home, and was 

 styled " a mo-lei of Italian matrons." (Corniani ; Tirabojchi, &c.) 



COLQUHOUN, PATRICK, a statist and political economist, was 

 born at Dumbarton, on the 14th of March 1745. He appears to have 

 in his youth struggled with difficulties, which prevented his receiving 

 a liberal education. At an early period of life apparently when he 

 was little more than sixteen years old he endeavoured to push bis 

 fortune in the colony of Virginia. In 1768 he returned to Scotland 

 and settled in Glasgow, where he subsequently became instrumental 

 la the establishment of a coffee-house or news-room, the Exchange, 

 the f'hauiber of Commerce, and various other public institutions. He 

 afterwards visited the continent, with the view of tiiakin; his country- 

 men acquainted with the species of textile fabrics which would give 

 our manufactures the best chances of success in the continental mar- 

 kets ; and the subsequent rise and progress of our muslin trade are 

 said to have been produced by his exertions on that occasion. In 

 1789 he settled in London, where he soon afterwards directed his 

 attention to the important question, whether the various police sys- 

 of the metropolis were as efficient as they might be made 

 towards the accomplishment of their legitimate end the suppression 

 of crime. He was one of the three stipendiary justices of peace 

 'it'll in 1792. In 1796 he published his well-known work, 

 ' A Trea'.ise on the Police of the Metropolis, explaining the various 

 i and misdemeanours which at present are felt as a pressure on 

 the community, and suggesting remedies.' In a letter to Lord Col- 

 i-, in IT'.H, Benthara states that 7500 copies of this work had 

 then been sold. Although changes both in the police regulations and 

 the state of society have superseded the information contained in this 

 work, it is still frequently referred to, and its statistical data, and 

 views of the proper principle* of police regulations, had much 

 influence in thn furtherance of that reform of the metropolitan police 

 which took place so many years after the book was published. In 



1800 he drew, with the assistance of Beutham, of whom he waa a 

 valued friend, the Thames Police Act (40 Geo. III. c. 87), a measure 

 now understood to have been suggested by Mr. Harriot. In the same 

 year he published ' A Treatise on the Commerce aud Police of the 

 River Thames; containing an Historical View of the Trade of the 

 Port of London ; and suggesting means of preventing the depredations 

 thereon, by a legislative system of River Police.' Mr. Colquhoun was 

 a great promoter of the system of charity-schools, holding the opinion, 

 which is every day obtaining additional adherents, that the education 

 of the people is the main protection of society from those social evils 

 which penal legislation can but partially cure when they have broken 

 out. He died on the 25th of April 1820. 



COLSON, JOHN, born about the beginning of the 18th century, 

 studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and was master at the free- 

 school at Rochester till 1739, wheu he succeeded Sanderson as 

 Lucasian professor at Cambridge. He died in 1760. He is worthy to 

 be remembered for his English edition of Newton's Fluxions, London, 

 1736; and his translation of the Analytical Institutions of Maria 

 Agnesi, which lay in manuscript till 1801, when it was published by 

 the Rev. John Hellins at the expense of Baron Maseres. 



COLUMBA, commonly called the Apostle of the Highlanders, or 

 Scoto-Irish, is believed to have been one of the earliest teachers of 

 Christianity in Scotland, and is known in history as the founder 

 of the abbey aud college of lona in the Western Isles. He was a 

 native of Ireland : his biographers give his pedigree with great pre- 

 cision, but even if its precise accuracy could be trusted, its repetition 

 here would afford the reader nothing more valuable thau a series of 

 strange names. He is said to have been born in the year 521. According 

 to the best collations of recent investigators, he arrived iu Scotland in 

 the year 563. The island of Hi or lona, where ho established himself 

 with his disciples, may be presumed, from the vestiges of a worship 

 earlier than Christianity still extant there, and commonly called 

 Druidical remains, to have been a seat of the pagan worship of the 

 day, and it is probable that Columba desired to attack the lion in 

 his den. The greater part of the neighbouring west coast of Scot- 

 laud was peopled by the Scots, who had emigrated from Ireland ; the 

 districts south of loua, and the broad tracts of comparatively level 

 land stretching eastward, were inhabited by the people called Picts. 

 Columba is said to have established an equal influence with both 

 races. In the much debated question whether tlie Picts were of 

 Celtic or Teutonic origin, a passage in Adarnnan's ' Life of Columba ' 

 gives perhaps the most distinct, though very limited, evidence that 

 exists on the subject. It states that Columba, who as an Irishman 

 must have been of the same Celtic origin as the Scots or Irish Dalriads 

 who surrounded him on the west coast, required an interpreter wiieu 

 he communicated with the king of the Picts. A translation of this 

 work, with critical comments, was published in 1793, with the title 

 ' The Life of St. Columba, the Apostle and Patron Saint of the ancient 

 Scots and Picts,' by John Smith, D.D., a work full of very absurd 

 blunders. Adatnnau's * Life ' contains f--w biographical facts which can 

 be depended on, but it is a very curious memorial of the manners of 

 the day. Even the dreams and miracles with which it is crowded 

 are instructive wheu critically examined. Columba is believed to have 

 been the founder of the Culdees, and in connection not only with 

 them, but with the pagan rites which he superseded, bis memory is 

 traditionally preserved in the highlands of Scotland. There is a High- 

 land proverb, of which the translation is " Earth, eartli, on the 

 mouth of Oran, that he may blab no more." The tradition con- 

 nected with this is, that Oran was one of the followers of Columba, 

 who, as a sacrifice at the building of lona, waa buried, whether alive 

 or dead is not stat >d. This tradition, which is given as the version of 

 the pagau priests, says that Columba opened the grave three days 

 afterwards, and Oran told him that hell was not such a place as he 

 reported it to be. Whereupon Columba, to prevent his impious'/ 

 communicating the idea to others, called out to those who were with 

 him in the words of the proverb. Columba is said to have di~ d iu 

 the year 597. There is an account of his life in Chalmers' ' Caledonia," 

 i. :(il, and in Jamiesou's 'Account of the Culdees.' 



COLUMBUS, CHRISTOPHER (a name latinised from the Italian 

 Colombo, and the Spanish Colon), was born at Genoa, about the year 

 1445 or 1446. The date of his birth is however only inferred from 

 two of his letters to Ferdinand and Isabella, in one of which he states 

 that he went to sea at the age of fourteen, and in another dated 1501, 

 that he had been in maritime service nearly forty years : his place of 

 birth is twice stated iu his will. But the history of his early days is 

 involved in obscurity. His son, Fernando, unwillin?, from mistaken 

 pride, to reveal the indigence aud humble condition from which his 

 father emerged, has left the biography of Columbus very incomplete. 

 The father of Columbus, who was a wool-comber, sent him to Pavia, 

 then the great school of learning in Lombardy ; but Columbus having 

 shown a taste for geometry, geography, and astronomy, or as it was 

 then termed astrology, went to eea at fourteen years of agt\ In 

 addition to the hardy encounters and dangers attending the sea-faring 

 life of that age, he was often under the rigid discipline of au old 

 relation, Colombo, who carried on a predatory warfare against Moham- 

 medan* and Venetians, the great rivals of the Genoese. In February 

 1487, Columbus, in- order to ascertain whether Iceland was inhabited, 

 advanced 100 leagues beyond it, and was astonished at not finding tho 



