CAN’TRIPS (Mrs.), a quondam friend of Nanty Ewart, the smuggler-captain.

Jessie Cantrips, her daughter.—­Sir W. Scott, Redgauntlet (time, George III.).

CANT’WELL (Dr.), the hypocrite, the English representative of Moliere’s Tartuffe.  He makes religious cant the instrument of gain, luxurious living, and sensual indulgence.  His overreaching and dishonorable conduct towards lady Lambert and her daughter gets thoroughly exposed, and at last he is arrested as a swindler.—­I.  Bicker staff, The Hypocrite (1768).

Dr. Cantwell ... the meek and saintly hypocrite.

L. Hunt.

CANUTE’ or CNUT and EDMUND IRONSIDE.  William of Malmesbury says:  When Canute and Edmund were ready for their sixth battle in Gloucestershire, it was arranged between them to decide their respective claims by single combat.  Cnut was a small man, and Edmund both tall and strong; so Cnut said to his adversary, “We both lay claim to the kingdom in right of our fathers; let us therefore divide it and make peace;” and they did so.

Canutus of the two that furthest was from hope ...  Cries, “Noble Edmund hold!  Let us the land divide.” ... and all aloud do cry, “Courageous kings, divide!  ’Twere pity such should die.”  Drayton, Polyolbion, xii. (1613).

CANUTE’S BIRD, the knot, a corruption of “Knut,” the Cinclus bellonii, of which king Canute was extremely fond.

  The knot, that called was Canutus’ bird of old,
  Of that great king of Danes, his name that still doth hold,
  His appetite to please ... from Denmark hither brought. 
  Drayton, Polyolbion, xxv. (1622).

CANYNGE (Sir William) is represented in the Rowley Romance as a rich, God-fearing merchant, devoting much money to the Church, and much to literature.  He was, in fact, a Maecenas of princely hospitality, living in the Red House.  The priest Rowley was his “Horace.”—­Chatterton (1752-1770).

CAP (Charles), uncle of Mabel Dunham in Cooper’s Pathfinder (1849).  He is a sea-captain who insists in sailing a vessel upon the great northern lakes as he would upon the Atlantic, but, despite his pragmatic self-conceit, is nonplussed by the Thousand Islands.

“And you expect me, a stranger on your lake, to find this place without chart, course, distance, latitude, longitude, or soundings?  Allow me to ask if you think a mariner runs by his nose, like one of Pathfinder’s hounds?”

Having by a series of blunders consequent upon this course, brought schooners and crew to the edge of destruction, he shows heart by regretting that his niece is on board, and philosophy with professional pride by the conclusion:—­

“We must take the bad with the good in every v’y’ge, and the only serious objection that an old sea-captain can with propriety make to such an event, is that it should happen on this bit of d—­d fresh water.”