Mrs. Bute Crawley, the rector’s wife, was a smart little lady, domestic, politic, but apt to overdo her “policy.”  She gave her husband full liberty to do as he liked; was prudent and thrifty.—­Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848).

CRAYDOCKE (Miss). Quaint friend of the Ripwinkleys and of everybody else who figures in A.D.T.  Whitney’s Real Folks, and other of her books.  “Around her there is always springing up a busy and a spreading crystallizing of shining and blessed elements.  The world is none too big for her, or for any such, of course.”

CRAY’ON (Le Sieur de), one of the officers of Charles “the Bold,” Duke of Burgundy.—­Sir W. Scott, Anne of Geierstein (time, Edward IV.).

Crayon (Geoffrey), Esq., Washington Irving, author of The Sketch-Book (1820).

CREA’KLE, a hard, vulgar school-master, to whose charge David Copperfield was entrusted, and where he first made the acquaintance of Steerforth.

The circumstance abont him which impressed me most was that he had no voice, but spoke in a whisper.—­C.  Dickens, David Copperfield, vi. (1849).

CREAM CHEESE (Rev.), an aesthetic divine whose disciple Mrs. Potiphar is in The Potiphar Papers.—­George William Curtis (1853).

CREBILLON OF ROMANCE (The), A. Francois Prevost d’Exiles (1697-1763).

CREDAT JUDAEUS APELLA, NONEGO (Horace, Sat.  I. v. 100).  Of “Apella” nothing whatever is known.  In general the name is omitted, and the word “Judaeus” stands for any Jew.  “A disbelieving Jew would give credit to the statement sooner than I should.”

CRES’SIDA, in Chaucer CRESSEIDE (2 syl.), a beautiful, sparkling, and accomplished woman, who has become a by-word for infidelity.  She was the daughter of Calchas, a Trojan priest, who took part with the Greeks.  Cressida is not a character of classic story, but a mediaeval creation.  Pope says her story was the invention of Lollius the Lombard, historiographer of Urbino, in Italy.  Cressida betroths herself to Troilus, a son of Priam, and vows eternal fidelity.  Troilus gives the maiden a sleeve, and she gives her Adonis a glove, as a love-knot.  Soon after this betrothal an exchange of prisoners is made, when Cressida falls to the lot of Diomed, to whom she very soon yields her love, and even gives him the very sleeve which Troilus had given her as a love-token.

  As false
  As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth. 
  Yea, let [men] say to stick the heart of falsehood,
  “As false as Cressid.”

  (Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act iii. sc. 2)
  (1602).

CRESSWELL (Madame), a woman of infamous character, who bequeathed L10 for a funeral sermon, in which nothing ill should be said of her.  The Duke of Buckinham wrote the sermon, which was as follows:—­“All I shall say of her is this:  she was born well, she married well, lived well, and died well; for she was born at Shad-well, married Cress-well, lived at Clerken-well, and died in Bride-well.”