Celia.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. (1) Mother of Faith, Hope and Charity. She was herself known as Heavenliness and lived in the hospices Holiness. (2) Celia, cousin to Rosalind in Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It. Celia is a common poetical name for a lady or a lady-love.
Chadband (chad´band), The Rev.—A clerical character in Dickens’ Bleak House. He will always stand as a type of hypocritical piety.
Chanticleer (chan´ti-klēr).—The cock in the tale of Reynard the Fox, and in Chaucer’s Nonne Prestes Tale.
Charlemagne (chär´le-män).—The romance of Charlemagne and his paladins is of French origin, as the romances of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is of Celtic or Welsh origin. According to one tradition Charlemagne is not dead, but waits, crowned and armed, in Odenberg, near Saltzburg, till the time of the antichrist, when he will wake up and deliver Christendom. According to another tradition, Charlemagne appears in seasons of plenty. He crosses the Rhine on a golden bridge, and blesses both cornfields and vineyards.
Charmian (chär´mi-an).—A kind-hearted but simple-minded female attendant on Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s play of Antony and Cleopatra.
Cheeryble (chēr´i-bl) Brothers, The.—A firm of benevolent London merchants in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby.
Chery and Fair-Star.—Countess d’Aulnoy’s Fairy Tales. Two children of royal birth, whom their father’s brothers and their mother’s sisters cast out to sea; they are found and brought up by a corsair and his wife. Ultimately they are told of their birth by a green bird and marry each other. A similar tale is found in The Arabian Nights.
Chibiabos.—The musician in Longfellow’s Hiawatha, personifying harmony in nature.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.—A poem, in the Spenserian stanza, by Lord Byron. It consists of four cantos, of which the first and second were published in 1812, the third in 1816, and the fourth in 1818; and the preface to the first two cantos contained the following explanation of the origin and purpose of the poem.
“It was written,” says Lord Byron, “for the most part, amid the scenes which it attempts to describe. It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to Spain and Portugal were composed from the author’s observations in those countries.... the scenes attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania, and Greece (the third canto describes scenes in Belgium, Switzerland, and the Valley of the Rhine; and canto four is chiefly occupied with Rome).... A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some connection to the piece, which, however, makes no pretensions to regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinion I set a high value, that in this fictitious character, Childe Harold, I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage; this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim. Harold is the creation of imagination, for the purpose I have stated. In some trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion; but in the main points, I should hope, none whatever. It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation ‘Childe’ is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification which I have adopted.”