Caravaggio. He made money by his pictures; but was rendered unhappy, and almost insane, by the fear of losing it. He was in the habit of burying it, and hiding it in various parts of the house, until by the advice of his friends he was induced to invest it; and he finally conquered his strange mania, though retaining all his parsimonious habits. He died at Rome in his own house in April, 1660, and was honoured by his fellow-artists with a public funeral. He left a nephew the considerable income of three hundred scudi per annum, entirely acquired by his industry. Cerquozzi's masterpiece is considered "Masaniello in the market-place at Naples," now in the Palazzo Spada at Rome.—(Passeri, Vite dei Pittori, &c.: Rome, 1772.)—R. N. W.
CERRINI, Giovanni Domenico, called il Cavaliere Perugino, was born at Perugia in 1606. He was a pupil of Guido and Domenichino. His best work is his fresco of St. Paul's vision in the cupola of la Madonna della Vittoria. His style fluctuates a good deal, but he more generally aims at the manner of Guido, who frequently worked on his pictures, and so leavened them with value that they often pass current as the legitimate offspring of the great master. He died in 1681.—W. T.
CERUTTI, Joseph Antoine Joachim, born at Turin in 1738; died in 1792. He was educated at Turin by the jesuits, and became a member of the order. An essay of his on "Republics, Ancient and Modern," was crowned, as is the phrase, at Toulouse, and, before the author was known, was for a while attributed to Rousseau. In the year 1762 Cerutti published his "Apologie de l'institut des Jesuites." The order of jesuits was, in spite of his advocacy, suppressed; but his book, written with considerable talent and in an honest spirit, led to the ex-jesuits receiving protection and support from Stanislaus the Polish king, and his grandson the dauphin. In 1788 Cerutti was among the thousands engaged in preparing all manner of possible and impossible constitutions for France and for the world. He was one of the many men of talent who worked up subjects for Mirabeau. He published a political journal entitled Feuille Villageoise, creditable to his talents, and useful in communicating the results of science to classes imperfectly educated. His newspaper led to his being elected to the legislative assembly. He pronounced a funeral oration on Mirabeau, and himself died soon after.—J. A. D.
CERVANTES, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. There can scarcely be mentioned a writer of ancient or modern times who at all approaches the illustrious subject of this memoir in the wide extent of his popularity, and the universal reception which his great work has had in every portion of the civilized world. With the exception of Homer, or rather of the Homeric poems, and in particular of the Odyssey, the great works and the great authors of the classical world have been, since the revival of letters, familiar but to the scholar and to the student alone; while in modern times the brightest luminaries that have risen above the horizon move in a much narrower orbit, and shed their light within more limited space. To take the highest instance, that of Shakspeare, though his name is now probably a familiar one in every quarter of the globe, and his works, bound up as they are with the language of the British isles, must, in the course of time, be as widely diffused as is the race whose most glorious product they are, still, at present, no one would venture to assert that any characters of his are pictured to the eye with the same clearness, and are so impressed upon the memories and affections of such myriads of beings, as those immortal photographs of the pen—the knight, the squire, and the steed—which have not only been transferred to every literature, but have given their names as types of things to almost every language in which their adventures have been read. This cannot be said of Dante, of Milton, or of Goethe. The first and greatest of these has no doubt the highest and most intellectual audience in the world. That of the second is, as he himself predicted, "fit," but, alas! still "few;" while Goethe, like Shakspeare, may claim a naturalization in two nations at least. But the only household work which is "as familiar as a household word" throughout the world, is "Don Quixote."
Cervantes was born in the small, but once flourishing city of Alcala de Henares, about twenty miles from Madrid, and was baptized in the parish church of Saint Mary Major's, on the 9th of October, 1547. His family had been a distinguished one for many generations, both in the mother country and in the colonies, but had declined in consequence and wealth long before the birth of the great writer, whose genius was destined to confer upon it a new glory which can never fade. He was the youngest of four children—a brother who immediately preceded him, and two sisters. Alcala being at the time the seat of a university, it is probable that Cervantes received his education there, although it is asserted that he spent two years at the still more celebrated university of Salamanca, whither his parents, notwithstanding their poverty, contrived to send him. The knowledge of student life at Salamanca, as evinced by him in his "Exemplary Novels," next to "Don Quixote" the most charming of his works, renders this extremely probable, and the street in which he is said to have resided is still pointed out. There is, however, no evidence of his having matriculated at Salamanca, which probably the necessity of embracing some means of living prevented. His boyish years were characterized by that insatiable thirst for knowledge that usually distinguishes the youth of eminent men, and his love of reading was evinced by his collecting even the scattered pieces of torn paper which he found in the streets, so as to draw from them some food for the ever-craving necessities of his growing intellect. An early love for poetry and the drama was stimulated if not created by the rude exhibitions of Lope de Rueda, the founder of the Spanish theatre, whose performances he witnessed both at Segovia and Madrid before his eleventh year. His first appearance as an author is supposed to have been in a little volume which his schoolmaster, Juan Lopez de Hoyos, published in 1569, commemorative of the magnificent funeral ceremonies connected with the interment of Elizabeth de Valois, the first wife of Philip II., which took place on the 24th of October, 1568. To this volume Cervantes contributed six short poems, which are only remarkable for the terms of affection and respect in which they are introduced to the reader by Lopez de Hoyos, as being written by his "dear and well-beloved disciple."
In 1570 we find him acting in the capacity of chamberlain at Rome to the prelate and nuncio, Monsignor Aquaviva, who subsequently became a cardinal. Whatever may have been the cause of his dissatisfaction with this employment, it is certain that Cervantes abandoned it after a short trial. In the following year (1571) we find him volunteering as a private soldier in the holy league against the common foe of Christendom—the Turk; and losing his hand in the memorable sea fight of Lepanto, on the 7th of October of that year. With the rest of the wounded in that famous action he was carried to Messina, in the hospital of which place he continued till April, 1572. On being able to resume active service, he immediately joined the expedition of Mark Antonio Colonna to the Levant, the most memorable result of which otherwise unsuccessful expedition was the story of the captive in "Don Quixote," which the poor maimed soldier founded upon it. In the next year he was again under the command of the hero of Lepanto, Don John of Austria, at Tunis, and in the subsequent three or four years saw much of Sicily and Italy, particularly of Naples, where he resided more than a year. On his being discharged in 1575, he determined to return to Spain, to endeavour to obtain some recognition of his long services in three campaigns, and some reward for his many wounds. He accordingly procured letters of recommendation from the duke of Sesa and Don John, and with his brother Rodrigo, also a private soldier, embarked at Naples for Spain, from which he had been so long absent. On the 26th September his ship. El Sol, was captured by pirates, and he and all on board were carried prisoners to Algiers. He was sold as a slave, and continued for five years in this condition, going through adventures and trials more romantic and dangerous than any he had previously experienced. At length, however, his day of liberation arrived, and, by the sacrifices of his poor widowed mother, the exertions of his brother, who had been previously ransomed, and the charitable efforts of a poor friar, whose name, Fray Juan Gil, he has gratefully recorded in his "Trato de Argel," the trifling sum required for his liberty was made up, and Cervantes was once again a free man. Being without any resources, it is not very surprising, notwithstanding all his previous sufferings, that on his return to Spain he should once more resume the military life, and rejoin his brother, who was serving under the duke of Alva in the newly-acquired kingdom of Portugal, and subsequently at the Azores. The residence of Cervantes at Lisbon is memorable for some interesting circumstances connected with his private life, as well as for the opportunities it afforded him of studying the pastoral romances of Portugal, with which, and with the country itself.
