Julian, archbishop of St David’s (d. 1009), with “the college,” an almshouse endowed by William Eyton of Plâs Warren, Shropshire. The old British fort, Caer Drewyn, one of a chain of forts from Dyserth to Canwyd, is the supposed scene of Glendower’s retreat under Henry IV., and here Owen Cwynedd is said to have prepared to repulse Henry II. To the N.E. are the Clwyd hills; to the S. the Berwyn range, to the S.W. Arran Mawddy and Cadair (Cader) Idris; to the W. the two Arenigs; to the N.W. Snowdon. Corwen is a favourite station for artists and anglers. Besides the Dee, there are several streamlets, such as the Trystion, which forms the Rhaiadr Cynwyd (waterfall), the Ceudiog, and the Alwen.
CORWIN, THOMAS (1794–1865), American statesman and orator, was born in Bourbon county, Kentucky, on the 29th of July 1794. In 1798 his father, Matthias Corwin (1761–1829), removed to what later became Lebanon, Ohio, where the son worked on a farm, read much, and in 1817 was admitted to the bar. As an advocate he was at once successful, but after 1831 he devoted his attention chiefly to politics, identifying himself first with the Whig and after 1858 with the Republican party. He was a member of the lower house of the Ohio legislature in 1821, 1822 and 1829, and of the national House of Representatives from 1831 to 1840; was governor of Ohio in 1840–1842; served in the United States Senate from 1845 to 1850; was secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of President Fillmore in 1850–1853; was again a member of the national House of Representatives from 1859 to 1861; and from 1861 to 1864 was minister of the United States to Mexico—a position of peculiar difficulty at that time. As a legislator he spoke seldom, but always with great ability, his most famous speech being that of the 11th of February 1847 opposing the Mexican War. In 1860 he was chairman of the House “Committee of Thirty-three,” consisting of one member from each state, and appointed to consider the condition of the nation and, if possible, to devise some scheme for reconciling the North and the South. He is remembered chiefly as an orator. Many anecdotes have been told to illustrate his kindliness, his inimitable humour, and his remarkable eloquence. He died at Washington, D.C., on the 18th of December 1865.
See the Life and Speeches of Thomas Corwin (Cincinnati, 1896), edited by Josiah Morrow; and an excellent character sketch, Thomas Corwin (Cincinnati, 1881), by A. P. Russell.
CORY, WILLIAM JOHNSON (1823–1892), English schoolmaster and author, son of Charles Johnson of Torrington, Devonshire, was born on the 9th of January 1823. He was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he gained the chancellor’s medal for an English poem on Plato in 1843, and the Craven Scholarship in 1844. In 1845, after graduating at the university, he was made an assistant master at Eton, where he remained for some twenty-six years. He has been called “the most brilliant Eton tutor of his day.” He had a great influence on his pupils, and he defended the Etonian system against the criticism of Matthew James Higgins. In 1872, having inherited an estate at Halsdon and assumed the name of Cory, he left Eton. He married late in life, and after four years spent in Madeira he settled in 1882 at Hampstead. He died on the 11th of June 1892. He proved his genuine lyrical power in Ionica (1858), which was republished with some additional poems in 1891. He also produced Lucretilis (1871), a work on the writing of Latin verses; Iophon (1873), on Greek Iambics; and Guide to Modern History from 1815 to 1835 (1882). Extracts from the Letters and Journals of William Cory, which contains much paradoxical and suggestive criticism, were edited by F. W. Cornish and published by private subscription in 1897.
His elder brother, Charles Wellington Johnson Furse (1821–1900), who, on the death of his father in 1854, took the name of Furse, was canon and archdeacon of Westminster from 1894 till his death. The artist Charles Wellington Furse, A.R.A. (1868–1904), was a son of Archdeacon Furse.
CORYATE, THOMAS (1577?–1617), English traveller and writer, was born at Odcombe, Somersetshire, where his father, the Rev. George Coryate, prebendary of York Cathedral, was rector. Educated at Westminster school and at Oxford, he became a kind of court fool, eventually entering the household of Prince Henry, the eldest son of James I. In 1611 he published a curious account of a prolonged walking tour undertaken in 1608, under the title of Coryate’s Crudities hastily gobbled up in Five Months Travels in France, Italy, &c. At the command of Prince Henry, verses in mock praise of the author, and intended originally to persuade some bookseller to undertake the publication of the Crudities, were added to the volume. These commendatory verses, written in a number of languages, and some in a mixture of languages, by Ben Jonson, Donne, Chapman, Drayton and others, were afterwards published (1611) by themselves as the Odcombian Banquet. The book contains a clear and interesting account of Coryate’s travels, and, being the first of its kind, was extremely popular. It is now very rare, and the copy in the Chetham library is said to be the only perfect one. In the same year was published a second volume of a similar kind, Coryats Crambe, or his Coleworte twice Sodden. In 1612 he set out on another journey, which also was mostly performed on foot. He visited Greece, the Holy Land, Persia and India; from Agra and Ajmere he sent home an account of his adventures. Some of his letters were published in 1616 under the title of Letters from Asmere, the Court of the Great Mogul, to several Persons of Quality in England, and some fragments of his writings were included in Purchas his Pilgrimes in 1625. Coryate was a curious and observant traveller; he gives accounts of inscriptions he had copied, of the antiquities of the towns he passed through, and of manners and customs, from the Italian pronunciation of Latin to the new-fangled use of forks. He acquired a knowledge of Turkish, Persian and Hindustani in the course of his travels, and on being presented by the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, to the Great Mogul, he delivered a speech in Persian. His journeys were performed at small expense, for he says that he spent only three pounds between Aleppo and Agra, and often lived “competently” for a penny a day. Coryate died at Surat in 1617.
Coryate’s Crudities, with his letters from India, was reprinted from the edition of 1611 in 1776, and at the Glasgow University Press (2 vols., 1905). The Odcombian Banquet was ridiculed by John Taylor, the Water Poet, in his Laugh and be Fat, or a Commentary on the Odcombian Banket (1613) and two other satires.
CORYBANTES (Gr. Κορύβαντες), in Greek mythology, half divine, half demonic beings, bearing the same relation to the Asiatic Great Mother of the Gods that the Curetes bear to Rhea. From their first appearance in literature, they are already often identified or confused with them, and are distinguished only by their Asiatic origin and by the more pronouncedly orgiastic nature of their rites. Various accounts of their origin are given: they were earth-born, sons of Cronus, sons of Zeus and Calliope, sons of Rhea, of Ops, of the Great Mother and a mystic father, of Apollo and Thalia, of Athena and Helios. Their names and number were as indistinct even to the ancients as those of the Curetes and Idaean Dactyli. Like the Curetes, Dactyli, Telchines and Cabeiri (q.v.), however, they represent primitive gods of procreative significance, who survived in the historic period as subordinate deities associated with a form of the Great Mother goddess, their relation to the Great Mother of the Gods, Cybele, being comparable with that of Attis (q.v.). They may have been represented or impersonated by priests in her rites as Attis was, but they were also, like him, not actual priests in the first instance, but objects of worship in which a frenzied dance, with accompaniment of flute music, the beating of tambourines, the clashing of cymbals and castanets, wild cries and self-infliction of wounds—the whole culminating in a state of ecstasy and exhaustion—were the most prominent features. The dance of the Corybantic priests, like that of the priests who represented the Curetes, may have originated in a primitive faith in the power of noise to avert evil. Its psychic effect, both upon the dancer and upon the mystic about whom he danced during the initiation of the Cybele-Attis mysteries, made it a widely known and popular feature of the cult.
In art the Corybantes appear, usually not more than two or three in number, fully armed and executing their orgiastic
