CORSICANA, a city and the county-seat of Navarro county, Texas, U.S.A., situated in the N.E. part of the state, about 55 m. S. of Dallas. Pop. (1890) 6285; (1900) 9313, of whom 2399 were of negro descent; (1910 census) 9749. It is served by the Houston & Texas Central, the St Louis South Western, and the Trinity & Brazos Valley railways. It is the centre of a large and productive wheat- and cotton-growing region, which has also numerous oil wells (with a total production in 1907 of 226,311 barrels). The city has two oil refineries, a large cotton gin and a cotton compress, and among its manufactures are cotton-seed oil, cotton-cloth, flour and ice. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,796,805, being an increase of 50.3% since 1900. Natural gas is extensively used for fuel and for lighting. Corsicana is the seat of the Texas state orphan home and of an Odd Fellows widows’ and orphans’ home, and has a Carnegie library. Corsicana was named in honour of the wife of a Mexican, Navarro, who owned a large tract of land in the county and from whom the county was named. The first permanent settlement here was made in 1848, and Corsicana was incorporated as a village in 1850 and chartered as a city in 1871.
CORSINI, the name of a Florentine princely family, of which the founder is said to be Neri Corsini, who flourished about the year 1170. Like other Florentine nobles the Corsini had at first no titles, but in more recent times they received many from foreign potentates and from the later grand dukes of Tuscany. The emperor Charles IV. created the head of the house a count palatine in 1371; the marquisate of Sismano was conferred on them in 1620, those of Casigliano and Civitella in 1629, of Lajatico and Orciatico in 1644, of Giovagallo and Tresana in 1652; in 1730 Lorenzo Corsini was elected pope as Clement XII., and conferred the rank of Roman princes and the duchy of Casigliano on his family, and in 1732 they were created grandees of Spain. They own two palaces in Florence, one of which on the Lung’ Arno Corsini contains the finest private picture gallery in the city, and many villas and estates in various parts of Italy.
See L. Passerini, Genealogia e storia della famiglia Corsini (Florence, 1858); A. von Reumont, Geschichte der Stadt Rom (Berlin, 1868); Almanach de Gotha.
(L. V.*)
CORSON, HIRAM (1828- ), American scholar, was born on the 6th of November 1828, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He held a position in the library of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (1849-1856), was a lecturer on English literature in Philadelphia (1859-1865), and was professor of English at Girard College, Philadelphia (1865-1866), and in St John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland (1866-1870). In 1870-1871 he was professor of rhetoric and oratory at Cornell University, where he was professor of Anglo-Saxon and English literature (1872-1886), of English literature and rhetoric (1886-1890), and from 1890 to 1903 (when he became professor emeritus) of English literature, a chair formed for him. He edited Chaucer’s Legende of Goode Women (1863) and Selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1896), and wrote a Hand-Book of Anglo-Saxon and Early English (1871), and, among other text-books, An Elocutionary Manual (1864), A Primer of English Verse (1892), and Introductions to the study of Browning (1886, 1889), of Shakespeare (1889) and of Milton (1899). The volume on Shakespeare and the Jottings on the Text of Macbeth (1874) contain some excellent Shakespearian criticism. He also published The University of the Future (1875), The Aims of Literary Study (1895), and The Voice and Spiritual Education (1896). He translated the Satires of Juvenal (1868) and edited a translation by his wife, Caroline Rollin (d. 1901), of Pierre Janet’s Mental State of Hystericals (1901).
CORSSEN, WILHELM PAUL (1820-1875), German philologist, was born at Bremen on the 20th of January 1820, and received his school education in the Prussian town of Schwedt, to which his father, a merchant, had removed. After spending some time at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin, where his interest in philological pursuits was awakened by the rector, Meinike, he proceeded to the university, and there came especially under the influence of Böckh and Lachmann. His first important appearance in literature was as the author of Origines poesis romanae, by which he had obtained the prize offered by the “philosophical” or “arts” faculty of the university. In 1846 he was called from Stettin, where he had for nearly two years held a post in the gymnasium, to occupy the position of lecturer in the royal academy at Pforta (commonly called Schulpforta), and there he continued to labour for the next twenty years. In 1854 he won a prize offered by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences for the best work on the pronunciation and accent of Latin, a treatise which at once took rank, on its publication under the title of Über Aussprache, Vocalismus, und Betonung der lateinischen Sprache (1858-1859), as one of the most erudite and masterly works in its department. This was followed in 1863 by his Kritische Beiträge zur lat. Formenlehre, which were supplemented in 1866 by Kritische Nachträge zur lat. Formenlehre. In the discussion of the pronunciation of Latin he was naturally led to consider the various old Italian dialects, and the results of his investigations appeared in miscellaneous communications to Kuhn’s Zeitschrift für vergleichende Schriftforschung. Ill-health obliged him to give up his professorship at Pforta, and return to Berlin, in 1866; but it produced almost no diminution of his literary activity. In 1867 he published an elaborate archaeological study entitled the Alterthümer und Kunstdenkmale des Cistercienserklosters St Marien und der Landesschule Pforta, in which he gathers together all that can be discovered about the history of the Pforta academy, the German “Eton,” and in 1868-1869 he brought out a new edition of his work on Latin pronunciation. From a very early period he had been attracted to the special study of Etruscan remains, and had at various times given occasional expression to his opinions on individual points; but it was not till 1870 that he had the opportunity of visiting Italy and completing his equipment for a formal treatment of the whole subject by personal inspection of the monuments. In 1874 appeared the first volume of Über die Sprache der Etrusker, in which with great ingenuity and erudition he endeavoured to prove that the Etruscan language was cognate with that of the Romans. Before the second volume (published posthumously under the editorship of Kuhn) had received the last touches of his hand, he was cut off in 1875 by a comparatively early death.