COS’MIEL (3 syl.), the genius of the world.  He gave to Theodidactus a boat of asbestos, in which he sailed to the sun and planets.—­Kircher, Ecstatic Journey to Heaven.

COSMOS, the personification of “the world” as the enemy of man.  Phineas Fletcher calls him “the first son to the Dragon red” (the devil).  “Mistake,” he says, “points all his darts;” or, as the Preacher says, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”  Fully described in The Purple Island, viii (1633). (Greek, kosmos, “the world.”)

COS’TARD, a clown who apes the court wits of Queen Elizabeth’s time.  He uses the word “honorificabilitudinitatibus,” and some of his blunders are very ridiculous, as “ad dunghill, at the fingers’ ends, as they say” (act v.  I).—­Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost (1594).

COSTIGAN, Irish Captain in Pendennis, W. M. Thackeray.

COSTIN (Lord), disguised as a beggar, in The Beggar’s Bush, a drama by Beaumont and Fletcher (1622).

COTE MALE-TAILE (Sir), meaning the “knight with the villainous coat,” the nickname given by Sir Key (the seneschal of King Arthur) to Sir Brewnor le Noyre, a young knight who wore his father’s, coat with all its sword-cuts, to keep him in remembrance of the vengeance due to his father.  His first achievement was to kill a lion that “had broken loose from a tower, and came hurling after the queen.”  He married a damsel called Maledisaunt (3 syl.), who loved him, but always chided him.  After her marriage she was called Beauvinant.—­Sir T. Malory, History of Prince Arthur, ii. 42-50 (1470).

COTTER’S SATURDAY NIGHT; Poem in which Burns depicts the household of a Scottish peasant gathering about the hearth on the last evening of the week for supper, social converse and family worship.  The picture of the “Saint, the Father and the Husband” is drawn the poet’s own father.  COTYTTO, Groddess of the Edoni of Thrace.  Her orgies resembled those of the Thracian Cybele (3 syl).

  Hail goddess of nocturnal sport,
  Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
  Of midnight torches burns. 
  Milton, Comus, 136, etc. (1634.)

COULIN, a British giant pursued by Debon till he came to a chasm 132 feet across which he leaped; but slipping on the opposite side, he fell backwards into the pit and was killed.

  And eke that ample pit yet far renowned
  For the great leap which Debon did compell
  Coulin to make, being eight lugs of grownd,
  Into which the returning back he fell. 
  Spencer, Faery Queen, ii. 10 (1590.)

COUNT OF NARBONNE, a tragedy by Robert Jephson (1782).  His father, Count Raymond, having poisoned Alphonso, forged a will barring Godfrey’s right, and naming Raymond as successor.  Theodore fell in love with Adelaide, the count’s daughter, but was reduced to this dilemma:  if he married Adelaide he could not challenge the count and obtain the possessions he had a right to as grandson of Alphonso; if, on the other hand, he obtained his rights and killed the count in combat, he could not expect that Adelaide would marry him.  At the end the count killed Adelaide, and then himself.  This drama is copied from Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.