sense of the dignity of language. The custom of his age permitted the use of images and phrases which we now justly condemn as incongruous and unseemly, and the fervent fancy of Crashaw carried this licence to excess. At the same time his verse is studded with fiery beauties and sudden felicities of language, unsurpassed by any lyrist between his own time and Shelley’s. There is no religious poetry in English so full at once of gross and awkward images and imaginative touches of the most ethereal beauty. The temper of his intellect seems to have been delicate and weak, fiery and uncertain; he has a morbid, almost hysterical, passion about him, even when his ardour is most exquisitely expressed, and his adoring addresses to the saints have an effeminate falsetto that makes their ecstasy almost repulsive. The faults and beauties of his very peculiar style can be studied nowhere to more advantage than in the Hymn to Saint Teresa. Among the secular poems of Crashaw the best are Music’s Duel, which deals with that strife between the musician and the nightingale which has inspired so many poets, and Wishes to his supposed Mistress. In his latest sacred poems, included in the Carmen Deo nostro, sudden and eminent beauties are not wanting, but the mysticism has become more pronounced, and the ecclesiastical mannerism more harsh and repellent. The themes of Crashaw’s verses are as distinct as possible from those of Shelley’s, but it may, on the whole, be said that at his best moments he reminds the reader more closely of the author of Epipsychidion than of any earlier or later poet.
Crashaw’s works were first collected, in one volume, in 1858 by W. B. Turnbull. In 1872 an edition, in 2 volumes, was printed for private subscription by the Rev. A. B. Grosart. A complete edition was edited (1904) for the Cambridge University Press by Mr A. R. Waller. (E. G.)
CRASSULACEAE, in botany, a natural order of dicotyledons, containing 13 genera and nearly 500 species; of cosmopolitan distribution, but most strongly developed in South Africa. The plants are herbs or small shrubs, generally with thick fleshy stems
and leaves, adapted for life in dry, especially rocky places. The
fleshy leaves are often reduced to a more or less cylindrical
structure, as in the stonecrops (Sedum), or form closely crowded
rosettes as in the house-leek (Sempervivum). Correlated with
their life in dry situations, the bulk of the tissue is succulent,
forming a water-store, which is protected from loss by evaporation
by a thickly cuticularized epidermis covered with a waxy
secretion which gives a glaucous appearance to the plant. The
flowers are generally arranged in terminal or axillary clusters, and
are markedly regular with the same number of parts in each
series. This number is, however, very variable, and often not
constant in one and the same species. The sepals and petals are
free or more or less united, the stamens as many or twice as many
as the petals; the carpels, usually free, are equal to the petals in
number, and form in the fruit follicles with two or more seeds.
Opposite each carpel is a small scale which functions as a nectary.
Means of vegetative propagation are general. Many species
spread by means of a creeping much-branched rootstock, or as in
house-leek, by runners which perish after producing a terminal
leaf-rosette. In other cases small portions of the stem or leaves
give rise to new plants by budding, as in Bryophyllum, where
buds develop at the edges of the leaf and form new plants.
.jpg) |
| Stonecrop (Sedum acre) slightly reduced. 1, Horizontal plan of arrangement of flower of stonecrop; 2, flower of Sedum rubens. |
The order is almost absent from Australia and Polynesia, and has but few representatives in South America; it is otherwise very generally distributed. The largest genus, Sedum, contains about 140 species in the temperate and colder parts of the northern hemisphere; eight occur wild in Britain, including S. Telephium (orpine) and S. acre (common stonecrop) (see fig.). The species are easily cultivated and will thrive in almost any soil. They are readily propagated by seeds, cuttings or divisions. Crassula has about 100 species, chiefly at the Cape. Cotyledon, a widely distributed genus with about 90 species, is represented in the British Isles by C. Umbilicus, pennywort, or navelwort, which takes its name from the succulent peltate leaves. It grows profusely on dry rocks and walls, especially on the western coasts, and bears a spike of drooping greenish cup-shaped flowers. The Echeveria of gardens is now included in this genus. Sempervivum has about 50 species in the mountains of central and southern Europe, in the Himalayas, Abyssinia, and the Canaries and Madeira; S. tectorum, common house-leek, is seen often growing on tops of walls and house-roofs. The hardy species will grow well in dry sandy soil, and are suitable for rockeries, old walls or edgings. They are readily propagated by offsets or by seed.
The order is closely allied to Saxifragaceae, from which it is distinguished by its fleshy habit and the larger number of carpels.
CRASSUS (literally “dense,” “thick,” “fat”), a family name
in the Roman gens Licinia (plebeian). The most important of
the name are the following:
1. Publius Licinius Crassus, surnamed Dives Mucianus, Roman statesman, orator and jurist, consul, 131 B.C. He was the son of P. Mucius Scaevola (consul 175) and was adopted by a P. Licinius Crassus Dives. An intimate friend of Tiberius Gracchus, he was chosen after his death to take his place on the agrarian commission (see Gracchus). In 131 when Crassus was consul with L. Valerius Flaccus, Aristonicus, an illegitimate son of Eumenes II. of Pergamum, laid claim to the kingdom, which had been bequeathed by Attalus III. to Rome. Both consuls were anxious to obtain the command against him; Crassus was pontifex maximus, and Flaccus a flamen of Mars. Crassus declared that Flaccus could not neglect his sacred office, and imposed a conditional fine on him in the event of his leaving Rome. The popular assembly remitted the fine, but Flaccus was ordered to obey the pontifex maximus. Crassus accordingly proceeded to Asia, although in doing so he violated the rule which forbade the pontifex maximus to leave Italy. Nothing is known of his military operations. But in the following year, when he was making preparations to return, he was surprised near Leucae. He was himself taken prisoner by a Thracian band, and provoked his captors, who were ignorant of his identity, to put him to death. Crassus does not seem to have possessed much military ability, but he was greatly distinguished for his knowledge of law and his accomplished oratory. He had acquired such a mastery of the Greek language that, when he presided over the courts in Asia, he was able to answer each suitor in ordinary Greek or any of the dialects in use.
Cicero, De oratore, i. 50; Philippics, xi. 8; Plutarch, Tib. Gracchus, 21; Livy, Epit. 59; Val. Max. iii. 2. 12, viii. 7. 6; Vell. Pat. ii. 4; Justin xxxvi. 4; Orosius v. 10.
2. Lucius Licinius Crassus (140–91 B.C.), the orator, of unknown parentage. At the age of nineteen (or twenty-one) he made his reputation by a speech against C. Papirius Carbo, the friend of the Gracchi. The law passed by him and his colleague Q. Mucius Scaevola during their consulship (95), to prevent those passing as Roman citizens who had no right to the title, was one of the prime causes of the Social War (Cicero, Pro Balbo, xxi., De officiis, iii. 11). During his censorship Crassus suppressed the newly founded schools of Latin rhetoricians (Aulus Gellius
