562 



CREWEL-WORK 



CRICHTON 



there were only two or three houses where Crewe 

 now stands ; but since then its population has 

 grown to 4491 in 1851, 8159 in 1861, 17,810 in 1871, 

 and 24,385 in 1881 chiefly employed in the railway 

 stations, and in the world-famous locomotive and 

 carriage works, which were commenced in 1843. 

 Naturally, Crewe is not an attractive place, though 

 the London and North- Western Company have 

 erected a good many handsome buildings, done 

 much in the way of sanitation, and in 1887-88 

 presented the town with a beautifully laid-out park 

 of 40 acres. Crewe was incorporated in 1877. Lord 

 Crewe's seat, Crewe Hall, by Inigo Jones, was 

 destroyed by fire in 1866, but has been since 

 rebuilt. Pop. of Crewe in 1891, 28,761. 



Crewel-work is a kind of embroidery in fine 

 worsted or silk. See EMBROIDERY. 



Crewkerne, a market-town of Somersetshire, 

 in the fertile valley of the Parret, 15 miles SE. of 

 Taunton. It has a cruciform Perpendicular church, 

 with a splendid west front ; a grammar-school 

 (1499), occupying commodious new buildings; a 

 railway station (I860); and manufactures of sail- 

 cloth, girth-web, hair-seating, &c. Pop. of parish 

 (1891) 4946; of town, 3500. See Pulman's Book 

 of the Axe (4th ed. 1875). 



Cribbage, a game at cards, probably of English 

 origin. It does not appear in foreign treatises on 

 games, and in the Academy of Play ( 1768), trans- 

 lated from the French, cribbage is called an English 

 game. Cribbage is played with a pack of fifty-two 

 cards ; the scores accrue in consequence of certain 

 combinations in play, hand, and crib (for an 

 account of which see any treatise on the game). 

 The scores are marked on a cribbage board pierced 

 with holes. Cribbage was formerly called noddy. 

 It is mentioned under that name in an epigram by 

 Sir John Harrington (1615). Nares (Glossary) 

 says noddy was not played with a board ; but Gay ton 

 ( Festivous Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654) speaks of 

 noddy-boards. The earliest description of the game 

 is in The Compleat Gamester ( 1674 ). Under cribbage 

 it is stated that the game was sixty -one, ' set up 

 with counters ; ' and that knave-nocldy is one in 

 hand and two to the dealer i. e. if turned up. In 

 1791 Anthony Pasquin (pseudonym) published a 

 treatise on the game of cribbage ; and in 1800 

 cribbage was added to revised editions of Hoyle's 

 Games. The most comprehensive work on the 

 game is Walker's Cribbage Player's Handbook, 

 long out of print, but republished in great part 

 in Bonn's Handbook of Games. 



Crib-biting is a bad habit and an unsoundness 

 met with especially in the lighter breeds of horses, 

 and those spending a considerable amount of leisure 

 in the stable. The act consists in the animal 

 seizing with his teeth the manger, rack, or any 

 other such object, and taking in at the same 

 time a deep inspiration, technically called wind- 

 sucking. Crib-biting springs often from idle 

 play, may be first indulged in during grooming, 

 especially if the operation is conducted in the 

 stall, and the animal be needlessly teased or 

 tickled ; is occasionally learned, apparently, by 

 imitation from a neighbour ; and in the first 

 instance is frequently a symptom of some form of 

 indigestion. Its indulgence may be suspected 

 where the outer margins of the front teeth are 

 worn and rugged, and will soon be proved by turn- 

 ing the animal loose where he can find suitable 

 objects to lay hold of. It usually interferes with 

 thriving and condition, and leads to attacks of 

 indigestion. It can be prevented only by the use 

 of a muzzle or throat-strap ; but in those newly- 

 acquired cases resulting from gastric derangement, 

 means must further be taken to remove the acidity 

 or other such disorder. 



Cridltoil, JAMES, surnamed the ' Admirable,' 

 son of Robert Crichton of Eliock, Dumfriesshire, 

 Lord Advocate of Scotland, was born on 19th August 

 1560. He was educated at St Salvator's College, 

 St Andrews, where George Buchanan was his 

 tutor, and where he graduated M.A. in 1575. In 

 1577 Crichton left Scotland. He was for two years 

 in France, where he seems to have served in the 

 French army. There is no trustworthy evidence 

 that he distinguished himself as a disputant at the 

 university of Paris. In July 1579 he was at 

 Genoa, and addressed the senate in a Latin oration, 

 which was printed. Next year he reached Venice, 

 and printed a Latin poem addressed to the scholar 

 Aldus Manutius, grandson of the founder of the 

 Aldine press. Aldus took the youth under his 

 patronage, and issued a printed handbill announc- 

 ing a great scholastic disputation in which Crichton; 

 was to take part. The young Scotchman was there 

 described as a skilled athlete, scholar, poet, linguist, 

 with unparalleled powers of memory. In 1581 

 (according to Aldus) Crichton went to Padua and 

 overcame all the scholars there in public disputa- 

 tions. At the end of 1583 Aldus issued an edition 

 of Cicero's De Universitate, dedicated to Crich ton's 

 memory, and asserted there that his versatile 

 protege died on 3d November 1583. No details 

 are given, and although Aldus's date has been 

 widely adopted, it is clearly an error. In 1584 

 Crichton visited Milan. There late in that year 

 he published an elegy on the death of the 

 archbishop, Cardinal Borromeo, and two gratula- 

 tory odes one addressed to the cardinal's suc- 

 cessor, Gasper Visconti, and the other to Charles 

 Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, on his marriage. Early 

 next year (March 1585) he issued a collection 

 of scattered Latin poems dedicated to the chief- 

 magistrate of Milan. This is the latest date at 

 which he is known to have been alive. In 1591 

 Crichton's younger brother Robert had become 

 owner of his father's property in Scotland. Hence 

 Crichton died between 1585 and 1591. In 1601 one 

 Thomas Wright, in Passions of the Mind, related 

 that when in Italy he heard that a young (un- 

 named) Scotchman, 'of most rare and singular 

 parts,' w r as attacked by an (unspecified) Italian 

 prince in disguise ; that the prince, running some 

 risk from the Scotchman's sword, announced his 

 name ; that the Scotchman, who was previously 

 acquainted with the prince, handed him his sword, 

 and the prince thereupon basely ran his opponent 

 through the body. John Johnston, in Heroes Scoti 

 ( 1603 ), states that Crichton was killed at Mantua 

 by a son of the duke in a nocturnal brawl, and 

 that he was buried at Mantua. Crichton's early 

 17th-century biographers combine Wright's and 

 Johnston's stories, adding such doubtful details as 

 that Crichton was tutor to his assailant, the Duke 

 of Mantua's son, on the recommendation of Pope 

 Clement VIII. Wright and Johnston were prac- 

 tically contemporaries of Crichton, and the outline 

 of their story is doubtless true. But the fatal 

 encounter at Mantua must be dated at least two 

 years later than the date of Crichton's death 

 supplied by Aldus. John Johnston in 1603 first 

 used the epithet ' admirable ' in describing Crichton 

 ( ' omnibus in studiis admirabilis'), and it was again 

 employed in David Leitch's Philosophia illacry- 

 mans (1637). But Crichton chiefly owes his popu- 

 lar reputation, as well as his designation of ' the 

 Admirable,' to Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, 

 who wrote an extravagantly fantastic account of 

 the scholastic and athletic prowess which he dis- 

 played at Paris arid Mantua in his Discovery of a 

 most exquisite Jewel ( 1652). There is little that is 

 historical in Urquhart's fables, although thev have 

 been largely accepted by later biographers, including 

 P. F. Tytler, the first edition of whose biography of 



