CAPABILITY BROWN, Launcelot Brown, the English landscape gardener (1715-1783).

CAP’ANEUS (3 syl.) a man of gigantic stature, enormous strength, and headlong valor.  He was impious to the gods, but faithful to his friends.  Capaneus was one of the seven heroes who marched against Thebes (1 syl.), and was struck dead by a thunderbolt for declaring that not Jupiter himself should prevent his scaling the city walls.

CAPITAN, a boastful, swaggering coward, in several French farces and comedies prior to the time of Moliere.

CAPONSAC’CHI (Guiseppe), the young priest under whose protection Pompilia fled from her husband to Rome.  The husband and his friends said the elopement was criminal; but Pompilia, Caponsacchi, and their friends maintained that the young canon simply acted the part of a chivalrous protector of a young woman who was married at fifteen, and who fled from a brutal husband who ill-treated her.—­R.  Browning, The Ring and the Book.

CAPSTERN (Captain), captain of an East

Indiaman, at Madras.—­Sir W. Scott, The Surgeon’s Daughter (time,
George II.).

CAPTAIN, Manuel Comnenus of Trebizond (1120, 1143-1180).

Captain of Kent.  So Jack Cade called himself (died 1450).

The Great Captain (el Gran Capitano), Gonzalvo di Cordova (1453-1515).

The People’s Captain (el Capitano del Popolo), Guiseppe Garibaldi (1807-).

Captain (A Copper), a poor captain, whose swans are all geese, his jewellry paste, his guineas counters, his achievements tongue-doughtiness, and his whole man Brummagem.  See Copper Captain.

Captain (The Black), lieutenant-colonel Dennis Davidoff of the Russian army.  In the French invasion he was called by the French Le Capitaine Noir.

CAPTAIN LOYS [Lo.is].  Louise Labe was so called, because in early life she embraced the profession of arms, and gave repeated proofs of great valor.  She was also called La Belle Cordiere.  Louise Labe was a poetess, and has left several sonnets full of passion, and some good elegies (1526-1566).

CAPTAIN!  MY CAPTAIN! fallen leader apostrophized by Walt Whitman in his lines upon the death of President Lincoln (1865).

  O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells! 
  Rise up! for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills;
  For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores a-crowding;
  For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.

  Here, Captain! dear father! 
  This arm beneath your head! 
  It is some dream that on the deck
  You’ve fallen cold and dead.

CAPTAIN RIGHT, a fictitious commander, the ideal of the rights due to Ireland.  In the last century the peasants of Ireland were sworn to captain Right, as chartists were sworn to their articles of demand called their charter.  Shakespeare would have furnished them with a good motto, “Use every man after his desert, and who shall ’scape whipping?” (Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2).