CHAPEL-HILL, a village of the United States, in Orange County, North Carolina, 27 miles north-west of Raleigh. It is the seat of the North Carolina university, founded in 1789, and has about 2800 permanent inhabitants.

CHAPELAIN, Jean (1595-1674), a French poet and man of letters, was the son of a notary, and was born in Paris. His father destined him for his own profession; but his mother, who had known Ronsard (she was the daughter of a certain Michel Corbière, an intimate friend of the great poet), had determined otherwise. At an early age Chapelain began to qualify himself for literature, acquiring by his own unaided efforts, not only Greek and Latin, but also Italian and Spanish, and even applying himself to medicine. Having finished his studies, he was engaged for a while in teaching Spanish to a young nobleman. He was then appointed tutor to the two sons of a Μ. de la Trousse, grand provost of France. Attached for the next seventeen years to the family of this gentleman, the administration of whose fortune was wholly in his hands, he seems to have published nothing during this period, yet to have acquired a great reputation as a probability. His first work given to the public was a preface for the Adons of Marini, who printed and published that notorious poem at Paris. This was followed by an excellent translation of Mateo Aleman’s novel, Guzman de Alfarache, and by four extremely indifferent odes, one of them addressed to the great Richelieu, whom Chapelain had the honour of grounding in the dramatic unities. Rewarded with a pension of a thousand crowns, and appointed from the first a member of the newly-constituted Academy, Chapelain drew up the plan of the grammar and dictionary, the compilation of which was to be a principal function of the young institution, and at Richelieu’s command prepared a criticism of the Cid. In 1756 he published, in a magnificent form, the first twelve cantos of his celebrated epic La Fuselle, on which he had been engaged during twenty ...