477 



the office of governor of Piedmont, and the baton of 

 marshal of France, in 1550. He afterwards returned 

 to France as governor of Picardy, and rendered that 

 province important services. Brissac was small, but 

 very well made. The ladies called him the hand- 

 some Brissac. It is said that the duchess of Valen- 

 tinois regarded him with particular favour, and that 

 Henry II. appointed him lieutenant-general in Italy 

 merely from jealousy. Brissac died at Paris, Dec. 

 31, 1563. 



COSTA FURTADO DE MENDOCA, HIP- 

 POLVTO JOSEPH DA ; a Portuguese gentlem;:n, dis- 

 tinguished for his talents, learning, and adventures. 

 He was tried and imprisoned at Lisbon, by the inqui- 

 sition, for the pretended crime of free-masonry. The 

 following are said to have been the circumstances of his 

 escape from captivity : The door of the cell in which 

 Da Costa was confined opening into a hall, which 

 was the centre of the prison, he had opportunities for 

 remarking that the daily labours of his jailors termi- 

 nated with throwing a bunch of keys on a table 

 where a lamp was left burning. By patience and 

 perseverance, though conscious of liability to espial 

 through apertures in the walls and ceiling of his cell, 

 he succeeded in forming, out of an old pewter plate, 

 a key which would unlock his door. Upon making 

 his final attempt, the bunch of keys proved to be a 

 proper collection for threading the entire labyrinth 

 of the prison, not excepting the ouier gate. Besides 

 the keys and lamp, there was a book, containing, 

 among other records, the minutes of his own examina- 

 tions. This he took with him, and, carefully closing 

 and locking every door after him, he made his way, 

 without interruption, to the outside of the prison 

 walls ; and, after remaining six weeks, secluded and 

 diso-uised in the neighbourhood, he took his depar- 

 ture from Portugal, and readied England in safety, 

 carrying with him the book and keys of the inquisi- 

 tors, as trophies of his success. M. da Costa was the 

 proprietor of the Correio Braziliense, a monthly maga- 

 zine in the Portuguese language, printed in London, 

 and discontinued a short time before his death, which 

 took place in the beginning of 1824. 



COSTA RICA ; the most eastern and most 

 southern province of Guatimala; between lat. 8" 20' 

 and 11" 27' N., and long. 80 27' and 85 49' W. ; 

 bounded N. by Nicaragua, E. by the Spanish Main, 

 S. E. by Veragua, ana W. and S. W. by the Paci- 

 fic ocean ; 150 miles in length and nearly as much in 

 breadth. It is full of deserts and forests, thinly peo- 

 pled, and ill cultivated. A great part oftheinhabi- 

 tiints live independent of the Spaniards. The princi- 

 pal 1 commerce consists in cattle, hides, honey, and wax. 

 It has ports in each sea. Carthage is the capital. 



COSTA RICA ; a river of Guatimala, which runs 

 into the Escondida, five miles from St Carlos, in 

 Nicaragua. 



COSTER, LA ?RENS (called Jansoens, that is, son 

 of John), a wealthy citizen of Haerlem, was born in 

 that city in 1370 or 1371. He was a member of the 

 chief council in 1418, and by turns performed the 

 dutips of a judge and a treasurer. In 1421, or ac- 

 cording to some, i: : 9i>, he was appointed to the 

 oflicc of sacristan (Koster) of the parochial church at 

 Haerlpm, Mid continued in this station ; and from this 

 office, which, at that time, was very honourable, he 

 derived his surname. He died, probably of the con- 

 tagious disease which raged, in the latter part of 

 14 >9, in Haerlem. This is all that the con temporary 

 city records have preserved of his history. More 

 than a hundred years after his death, in the middle 

 ofth<> 1 6th century, traces of a tradition appeared, 

 which assigned to the city of Haerlem the inven- 

 tion of tile iirL of printing. At this time, Hadri:;n 

 Juiiius produced (in a work entitled hafavia, writ- 



ten between 1562 and 1571, but not published till 

 1588, af.er his death), from the verbal information 

 of some aged people, who, again, derived their 

 knowledge from others, a complete history of the 

 invention of the art of printing, in which Coster 

 acted the chief part. During his walks in a wood 

 near Haerlem (as Junius relates), he carved letters, 

 at first for his amusement, in the bark of beech- 

 trees. He persevered in these experiments, till he 

 had finished entire lines, and finally proceeded so 

 far as to cut out whole pages on the sides of boards. 

 With blocks of this sort, lie effected the impression 

 of the Spegel onzer Behoudenisse. After this, he 

 improved his mode of printing by casting lead or 

 pewter types. But a person of the name of John, 

 whom lie had employed as an assistant, stole his print- 

 ing apparatus one Christmas night, and fled with it 

 first to Amsterdam, and then to Cologne and Mentz, 

 at which last place this theft occasioned the general 

 diffusion of the art invented by Coster. In Hol- 

 land, the people are so firmly convinced of the 

 truth of this story, that a statue in honour of Cos- 

 ter was erected in 1622. His house, which fell down 

 in 1818 through age, was shown with the greatest 

 respect; and, in 1740, the jubilee of his invention 

 of the art of- printing was celebrated. This cele- 

 bration was repented in 1823, the justice of the 

 claim of the Dutch being considered to be estab- 

 lished by Meerman's Origines Typographic^ (1765), 

 and Rolling's f'erhandeling over het Oorsprong der 

 Boekdrukkunst (1810). The examination of the 

 subject, in the last essay in the Hermes, by Ebert 

 (No. xx), leads us to this result ; that Coster, at a 

 time at least as early as that of the invention of 

 the art by the Germans, employed himself in ex- 

 periments, the design and result of which was 

 the invention of the art of printing. (See Ebert's 

 article Buchdruckerlcunst in tiie Encyclopaedia by 

 Ersch and Gruber. 



COSTUME, in the fine arts; the observance of 

 propriety in regard to the person or thing repre- 

 sented, so that the scene of action, the habits, arms, 

 proportions, &c., are properly imitated. The pe- 

 culiarities of form, physiognomy, complexion ; the 

 dress, ornaments, habitations, furniture, arms, &c., 

 should all be conformable to the period and country 

 in which the scene is laid. The rules of costume 

 would be violated by the introduction of a palm- 

 grove and a tiger in a scene in Russia, by the repre- 

 sentation of American Indians in turbans, or of Ro- 

 mans with cannons at the siege of Carthage, or an 

 inhabitant of the East seated at table with a knite 

 and fork. That the ancient painters, and even 

 celebrated masters of the modern European schools, 

 are often chargeable with deviations from propriety 

 in regard to costume, is not to be denied ; but no- 

 where have they been so glaring as on the stage, 

 where Greek, Turkish, and Peruvian princes used to 

 make their appearance in long velvet mantles, em- 

 broidered with gold; Merope and Cleopatra were 

 equipped in hoop-petticoats, Medea and Phaedra in 

 French head-dresses ; peasant-girls were dressed out 

 in whale-bone, and heroes emerged from the battle 

 in stiff coats, not a fold of which was disordered. Le 

 Kain and mademoiselle Clairon, it is said, were the 

 first who introduced propriety of costume on the 

 stage under the patronage of the count de Lauraguais ; 

 but they excluded only the grosser absurdities : 

 Scythians and Sarni".tians were clothed in tiger-skins, 

 Asiatics in the Turkish dress ; but the old costume 

 was retained in other respects. The scenery of the 

 stage was as incongruous as the dresses. It is not 

 long since Semiramis issued from a palace adorned 

 with Corinthian columns, and entered a garden in 

 which a whole American Flora was blooming; or 



\ 



