Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 edition. Excerpt: ...The baa-relicfe on the sides exhibit a charnelhouse.--D. CAIUS GABRIEL CIBBER, Or CIBERT, (1030--1700, ) son of a cabinet-maker to the King of Denmark, was born at Flensburg, in the duchy of Holstcin, and discovering a talent for sculpture, was sent at the king's expense to Rome. More of his early history is not known. He came to England not long before the Restoration, and worked for John Stone, son of Nicholas, who, going to Holland, and being seized with a palsy, Cibber, his foreman, was sent to conduct him home. We are as much in the dark as to the rest of his life; that singularly pleasing biographer, his son, who has dignified so many trifling anecdotes of players, by the expressive energy of his style, has recorded nothing of a father's life who had such merit in his profession. I can only find that he was twice married, and that by his second wife, descended from the ancient family of Colley,1 in Rutlandshire, he had 6,000/. and several children, among whom was the well-known laureate, born in 1671, at his father's, in Southampton-street, facing Southampton-house. Gabriel Cibber, the statuary, was carver to the king's closet, and died ahout 1700, at the age of seventy. His son had a portrait of him, by old Laroon, with a medal in his hand. I have 'By this alliance his children were kinsmen to William of Wickham, and on that foundation one of them (afterwards a fellow of New-college, Oxford, and remarkable for his wit) was admitted of Winchester-college; in consideration of which the father carved and gave to that society a statue of their founder. one in water-colours, with a pair of compasses, by Christian Richter; probably a copy from the former, with a slight variation. What is wanting in cireumstances is more than compensated..
