the series España, by J. M. Quadrado and V. de la Fuente (Barcelona, 1885–1886), and the Guia del antiguo reino de Castilla, by E. Valverde y Alvarez (Madrid, 1886), which deals with the provinces of Burgos, Santander, Logroño, Soria, Ávila and Segovia. For the history, see in addition to the works cited under Spain (section History), Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla, by C. Rosell (Madrid, 1875–1877, 2 vols.); Coleccion de las cronicas y memorias de los reyes de Castilla (Madrid, 1779–1787, 7 vols.); and Historia de las communidades de Castilla (Madrid, 1897).
CASTILHO, ANTONIO FELICIANO DE (1800–1875), Portuguese man of letters, was born at Lisbon. He lost his sight at the age of six, but the devotion of his brother Augusto, aided by a retentive memory, enabled him to go through his school and university course with success; and he acquired an almost complete mastery of the Latin language and literature. His first work of importance, the Cartas de Echo e Narciso (1821), belongs to the pseudo-classical school in which he had been brought up, but his romantic leanings became apparent in the Primavera (1822) and in Amor e Melancholia (1823), two volumes of honeyed and prolix bucolic poetry. In the poetic legends A noite de Castello (1836) and Cuimes do bardo (1838) Castilho appeared as a full-blown Romanticist. These books exhibit the defects and qualities of all his work, in which lack of ideas and of creative imagination and an atmosphere of artificiality are ill compensated for by a certain emotional charm, great purity of diction and melodious versification. Belonging to the didactic and descriptive school, Castilho saw nature as all sweetness, pleasure and beauty, and he lived in a dreamland of his imagination. A fulsome epic on the succession of King John VI. brought him an office of profit at Coimbra. On his return from a stay in Madeira, he founded the Revista Universal Lisbonense, in imitation of Herculano’s Panorama, and his profound knowledge of the Portuguese classics served him well in the introduction and notes to a very useful publication, the Livraria Classica Portugueza (1845–1847, 25 vols.), while two years later he established the “Society of the Friends of Letters and the Arts.” A study on Camoens and treatises on metrification and mnemonics followed from his pen. His praiseworthy zeal for popular instruction led him to take up the study of pedagogy, and in 1850 he brought out his Leitura Repentina, a method of reading which was named after him, and he became government commissary of the schools which were destined to put it into practice. Going to Brazil in 1854, he there wrote his famous “Letter to the Empress.” Though Castilho’s lack of strong individuality and his over-great respect for authority prevented him from achieving original work of real merit, yet his translations of Anacreon, Ovid and Virgil and the Chave do Enigma, explaining the romantic incidents that led to his first marriage with D. Maria de Baena, a niece of the satirical poet Tolentino, and a descendant of Antonio Ferreira, reveal him as a master of form and a purist in language. His versions of Goethe’s Faust and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, made without a knowledge of German and English, scarcely added to his reputation. When the Coimbra question arose in 1865, Garrett was dead and Herculano had ceased to write, leaving Castilho supreme, for the moment, in the realm of letters. But the youthful Anthero de Quental withstood his claim to direct the rising generation and attacked his superannuated leadership, and after a fierce war of pamphlets Castilho was dethroned. The rise of João de Deus reduced him to a secondary position in the Portuguese Parnassus, and when he died ten years later much of his former fame had preceded him to the tomb.
See also “Memorias de Castilho” in the Instituto of Coimbra; Innocencio da Silva in Diccionario bibliographico Portuguez, i. 130 and viii. 132; Latino Coelho’s study in the Revista contemporanea de Portugal e Brazil, vols. i. and ii.; Dr Theophilo Braga, Historia do Romantismo (Lisbon, 1880). (E. Pr.)
CASTILLEJO, CRISTÓBAL DE (1490–1556), Spanish poet, was born at Ciudad Rodrigo in 1490. In 1518 he left Spain with Ferdinand of Austria, afterwards emperor, whose private secretary he eventually became. While residing at Vienna in 1528–1530 he wrote the Historia de Píramo y Tisbe, and dedicated it to Anna von Schaumberg, with whom he had a platonic love-affair. He seems to have visited Venice, to have been neglected by his patron, to have fallen ill in 1540, and to have passed his last years in poverty. He died on the 12th of June 1556, and was buried at Vienna. Castillejo’s poems are interesting, not merely because of their intrinsic excellence, but also as being the most powerful protest against the metrical innovations imported from Italy by Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega. He adheres to the native quintillas or to the coplas de pie quebrado, and only abandons these traditional forms when he indulges in caustic parody of the new school—as in the lines Contra los que dejan los metros castellanos. He excels by virtue of his charming simplicity and his ingenious wit, always keen, sometimes licentious, never brutal. The urbane gaiety of his occasional poems is delightfully spontaneous, and the cynical humour which informs the Diálogo de las condiciones de las mujeres and the Diálogo de la vida de la corte is impregnated with the Renaissance spirit. Castillejo is the Clément Marot of Spain. His plays are lost; the best text of his verses is that
printed at Madrid in 1792.
CASTILLO SOLÓRZANO, ALONSO DE (1584?–1647?), Spanish novelist and playwright, is stated to have been baptized at Tordesillas near Valladolid on 1st October 1584. Nothing is known of his youth, and he is next heard of at Madrid in 1619 as a man of literary tastes. While in the service of the marquis de Villar, he issued his first work, Donaires del Parnaso (1624–1625), two volumes of humorous poems; his Tardes entretenidas (1625) and Jornadas alegres (1626) proved that he was a novelist by vocation. Shortly afterwards he joined the household of the marquis de los Vélez, viceroy of Valencia, and published in quick succession three clever picaresque novels: La Niña de los embustes, Teresa de Manzanares (1634), Las Aventuras del Bachiller Trapaza (1637), and a continuation entitled La Garduña de Sevilla y Anzuelo de las bolsas (1642). To these shrewd cynical stories he owes his reputation. He followed the marquis de los Vélez in his disastrous campaign in Catalonia, and accompanied him to Rome, where the defeated general was sent as ambassador. Castillo Solórzano’s death occurred (probably at Palermo) before 1648, but the exact date is uncertain. His prolonged absence from Madrid prevented him from writing as copiously for the stage as he would otherwise have done; but he was popular as a playwright both at home and abroad. His Marqués del Cigarral and El Mayorazgo figurón are the sources respectively of Scarron’s Don Jophet d’Arménie and L’Héritier ridicule. Among his numerous remaining works may be mentioned Las Harpías en Madrid (1633), Fiestas del Jardín (1634), Los Alivios de Casandra (1640) and the posthumous Quinta de Laurel (1649); the witty observation of these books forms a singular contrast to the prim devotion of his Sagrario de Valencia (1635). His versatility and graceful style deserve the highest praise. (J. F.-K.)
CASTLE (Lat. castellum, a fort, diminutive of castra, a camp; Fr. château and châtel), a small self-contained fortress, usually of the middle ages, though the term is sometimes used of prehistoric earthworks (e.g. Hollingbury Castle, Maiden Castle), and sometimes of citadels (e.g. the castles of Badajoz and Burgos) and small detached forts d’arrêt in modern times. It is also often applied to the principal mansion of a prince or nobleman, and in France (as château) to any country seat, this use being a relic of the feudal age. Under its twofold aspect of a fortress and a residence, the medieval castle is inseparably connected with the subjects of fortification (see Fortification and Siegecraft) and architecture (q.v.). An account of Roman and pre-Roman castella in Britain will be found under Britain.
The word “castle” (castel) was introduced into English shortly before the Norman Conquest to denote a type of fortress, then new to the country, brought in by the Norman knights whom Edward the Confessor had sent for to defend Herefordshire against the inroads of the Welsh. Richard’s castle, of which the earthworks remain and which has given its name to a parish, was erected at this period on the border of Herefordshire and Shropshire by Richard Fitz Scrob. The essential feature of this type was a circular mound of earth surrounded by a dry ditch and flattened at the top. Around the crest of
