The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 212

GARNETT, RICHARD, an acute critic, born in Lichfield, son of preceding; long a.s.sociated with the book department of the British Museum; an admirer of Sh.e.l.ley, and biographer of Carlyle and Emerson; _b_. 1835.

GARONNE, an important river of SW. France, which rises in the Val d'Aran in the Spanish Pyrenees; 26 m. from its source it enters France near Pont du Roi, and after it pa.s.ses Toulouse flows in a north-westerly direction; joined by the Dordogne, 20 m. below Toulouse, it gradually widens into the Gironde estuary, which opens on the Bay of Biscay; it has a length of 346 m., and is freely navigable as far as Toulouse.

GARRICK, DAVID, a famous English actor and dramatist, born at Hereford; was educated at Lichfield, the home of his mother, and was for some months in his nineteenth year a pupil of Samuel Johnson; in 1737 he accompanied Johnson to London, with the intention of entering the legal profession, but soon abandoned the purpose, and started in the wine business with his brother; in 1741 he commenced his career as an actor, making his first appearance at Ipswich; in the autumn of the same year he returned to London, and as Richard III. achieved instant success; with the exception of a sojourn upon the Continent for two years, his life was spent mainly in the metropolis in the active pursuit of his profession; in 1747 he became patentee, along with James Lacy, of Drury Lane Theatre, which he continued to direct until his retirement from the stage in 1776; three years later he died, and was buried in Westminster Abbey; he was the author of many comedies and farces, which, however, are of no great merit, but his abiding fame rests upon his powers as an actor, his remarkable versatility enabling him to act with equal ease and success in farce, comedy, and tragedy; his admirable naturalness did much to redeem the stage from the stiff conventionalism under which it then laboured; his wife, Eva Maria Violette, a celebrated dancer of Viennese birth, whom he married in 1740, survived him till 1822, dying at the advanced age of 98 (1717-1779).

GARRISON, WILLIAM LLOYD, American journalist and abolitionist, born at Newburyport, Ma.s.s.; in his native town he rose to be editor of the _Herald_ at 19, and five years later became joint-editor of the _Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation_; his vigorous denunciation of slavery involved him in a charge of libel and brought about his imprisonment, from which he was liberated by a friend paying his fine; at Boston, in 1831, he founded his celebrated _Liberator_, a paper in which he unweariedly, and in the face of violent threats, advocated his anti-slavery opinions till 1865, when the cause was won; he visited England on several occasions in support of emanc.i.p.ation, and in 1868 his great labours in the cause were recognised by a gift of 30,000 dollars from his friends (1804-1879).

GARTER, THE MOST n.o.bLE ORDER OF THE, a celebrated order of knighthood inst.i.tuted in 1344 by King Edward III.; the original number of the knights was 26, of whom the sovereign was head; but this number has been increased by extending the honour to descendants of George I., II., and III., and also to distinguished foreigners; it is the highest order of knighthood, and is designated K.G.; the insignia of the order includes surcoat, mantle, star, &c., but the knights are chiefly distinguished by a garter of blue velvet worn on the left leg below the knee, and bearing the inscription in gold letters _Honi soit qui mal y pense_, "Evil be to him that evil thinks"; election to the order lies with the sovereign.

GARTH, SIR SAMUEL, a distinguished physician, born in co. Durham; had an extensive practice; author of a mock-heroic poem ent.i.tled "The Dispensary" (1661-1718).

GASCOIGNE, SIR WILLIAM, English judge, born at Gawthorpe, Yorkshire; during Richard II.'s reign he practised in the law courts, and in 1397 became king's serjeant; three years later he was raised to the Lord Chief-Justiceship; his single-eyed devotion to justice was strikingly exemplified in his refusal to pa.s.s sentence of death on Archbishop Scrope; the story of his committing Prince Henry to prison, immortalised by Shakespeare, is unauthenticated (1350-1419).

GASCONY, an ancient province of SW. France, lying between the Atlantic, the Pyrenees, and the Garonne; it included several of the present departments; the province was of Basque origin, but ultimately became united with Aquitaine, and was added to the territory of the French crown in 1453; the Gascons still retain their traditional characteristics; they are of dark complexion and small in stature, vivacious and boastful, but have a high reputation for integrity.

GASKELL, MRS., _nee_ STEVENSON, novelist and biographer, born at Cheyne Row, Chelsea; auth.o.r.ess of "Mary Barton," "Ruth," "Silvia's Lovers," &c., and the "Life of Charlotte Bronte," her friend (1810-1865).

Ga.s.sENDI, PIERRE, a French mathematician and philosopher, born in Provence; declared against scholastic methods out of deference to the empirical; controverted the metaphysics of Descartes; became the head of a school opposed to him; adopted the philosophy of Epicurus and contributed to the science of astronomy, and was the friend of Kepler, Galileo, and Hobbes; was a great admirer of Bayle, the head of his school, a school of Pyrrhonists, tending to materialism (1592-1655).

Ga.s.sNER, JOHANN JOSEPH, a noted "exorcist," born at Bludenz, in the Tyrol; while a Catholic priest at Klosterle he gained a wide celebrity by professing to "cast out devils" and to work cures on the sick by means simply of prayer; he was deposed as an impostor, but the bishop of Ratisbon, who believed in his honesty, bestowed upon him the cure of Bendorf (1727-1779).

GATAKER, THOMAS, an English divine, member of the Westminster a.s.sembly; disapproved of the introduction of the Covenant, declared for Episcopacy, and opposed the trial of Charles I. (1574-1654).

GATE OF TEARS, the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, so called from the shipwrecks frequent in it.

GATES, HORATIO, an American general, born at Maldon, Ess.e.x, in England; served as an English officer in America till the peace of 1763, and then retired to Virginia; in the War of Independence he fought on the side of America, and, as commander of the northern army, defeated the English at Saratoga in 1777; so great was his popularity in consequence of this victory that ill-advised efforts were made to place him over Washington, but in 1780 he suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the British at Camden, and was court-martialled; acquitted in 1782, he again retired to Virginia, and subsequently in 1800 removed to New York, having first emanc.i.p.ated and provided for his slaves (1728-1806).

GATESHEAD (86), an English town, situated on the Tyne, on N. border of Durham; it is united to Newcastle by three bridges spanning the river; it contains some handsome and interesting buildings, besides extensive iron-works, foundries, soap, gla.s.s, and chemical manufactories; it was here Defoe lived when he wrote "Robinson Crusoe."

GATH, Goliath's town, a city of the Philistines, on a cliff 12 m.

NE. of Ashdod.

GATLING, RICHARD JORDAN, the inventor of the Gatling gun, born in Hertford County, N. Carolina, U.S.; he was bred to and graduated in medicine, but in 1849 settled in Indianapolis and engaged in land and railway speculation; his famous machine-gun, capable of firing 1200 shots a minute, was brought out in 1861; another invention of his is a steam-plough; _b_. 1818.

GATTY, MRS., writer of tales for young people, "Parables from Nature," and editor of _Aunt Judy's Magazine_; daughter of the chaplain of the _Victory_, Nelson's ship at Trafalgar, in whose arms Nelson breathed his last (1809-1873).

GAUCHOS, a name bestowed upon the natives of the pampas of S.

America; they are of Indo-Spanish descent, and are chiefly engaged in pastoral pursuits, herding cattle, &c.; they are dexterous hors.e.m.e.n, and are courteous and hospitable; the wide-brimmed sombrero and loose poncho are characteristic articles of their dress.

GAUDEN, JOHN, bishop of Worcester; protested against the trial of Charles I., and after his execution published "EIKON BASILIKe"

(q. v.), or the "Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings," which he declared was written by him (1605-1669).

GAUL, the name the ancients gave to two distinct regions, the one CISALPINE GAUL, on the Roman side of the Alps, embracing the N. of Italy, as long inhabited by Gallic tribes; and the other TRANSALPINE GAUL, beyond the Alps from Rome, and extending from the Alps to the Pyrenees, from the ocean to the Rhine, inhabited by different races; subdued by Julius Caesar 58-50 B.C., and divided by Augustus into four provinces.

GAUNT, JOHN OF, Duke of Lancaster, third son of Edward III., born at Ghent, who in 1362 succeeded to the estates of his father-in-law, the Duke of Lancaster; having in 1372 married, as his second wife, the daughter of the king of Castile, he made an unsuccessful attempt to seize the Castilian throne; in the later years of Edward III.'s reign he took an active part in public affairs, and by his opposition to the national party and overbearing conduct towards the Commons made himself obnoxious to the people; for selfish motives he for a time supported Wycliffe, but in 1381 the Peasant Revolt drove him into Scotland; in 1386 he made another ineffectual attempt to gain the crown of Castile; in his later years he was engaged in various emba.s.sies in France (1339-1399).

GAUR or LAKHNAUTI, the ancient capital of Bengal, now in ruins, but with Hindu remains of exceptional interest, is situated 4 m. S. of Malda, between the rivers Ganges and Mahananda; the city is believed to have been founded in the 11th century; it fell into decay after the Mogul conquest in 1575, but pestilence and the deflection of the Ganges into a new channel accelerated its fate.

GAUSS, KARL FRIEDRICH, a celebrated German mathematician and astronomer, born at Brunswick; was director of the observatory at Gottingen for 40 years; was equally great on theory of numbers and practice of calculation; he made important discoveries in magnetism, and was p.r.o.nounced by Laplace the greatest mathematician in Europe (1775-1855).

GAUTAMA, the name of the family Buddha belonged to, a Rajput clan which at the time of his birth was settled on the banks on the Rohini, a small affluent of the Gogra, about 137 m. N. of Benares.

GAUTIER, THeOPHILE, a distinguished French poet, novelist, and critic, born at Tarbes; began life as a painter, but turning to literature soon attracted the attention of Sainte-Beuve by some studies in the old French authors; by-and-by he came under the influence of Victor Hugo, and in 1830 started his career as a poet by the publication of "Albertus," five years after which appeared his famous novel "Mademoiselle de Maupin"; for many years he was engaged in the work of art criticism for the Paris newspapers, and those of his critiques dealing with the drama have been republished, and fill six vols.; both as poet and novelist his works have been numerous, and several delightful books of travel in Spain, Turkey, Algeria, &c., have come from his pen; as a literary artist Gautier has few equals to-day in France, but his work is marred by a lax and paradoxical philosophy of life, which has, by his more enthusiastic admirers, been elevated into a "cult" (1811-1872).

GAUTIER AND GARGUILLE, all the world and his wife.

GAVARNI, PAUL, the _nom de plume_ of Sulpice Guillaume Chevalier, caricaturist, born in Paris; began life as an engineer's draughtsman, but soon turned his attention to his proper vocation as a cartoonist; most of his best work appeared in _Le Charivari_, but some of his bitterest and most earnest pictures, the fruit of a visit to London, appeared in _L'Ill.u.s.tration_; he also ill.u.s.trated Balzac's novels, and Sue's "Wandering Jew" (1801-1866).

GAVAZZI, ALESSANDRO, an Italian anti-papal agitator, born at Bologna; admitted into the order of Barnabite monks; he became professor of Rhetoric at Naples; one of the most energetic supporters of Pius IX.

in his liberal policy, he afterwards withdrew his allegiance; joined the Revolution of 1848, and ultimately fled to England on the occupation of Rome by the French; as an anti-papal lecturer he showed considerable oratorical powers; delivered addresses in Italian in England and Scotland against the papacy, which were received with enthusiasm, although in Canada they led to riots; he was taken by some for an Italian Knox; "G.o.d help them," exclaimed Carlyle, who regarded him as a mere wind-bag (1809-1889).

GAVELKIND, descent of property to all the sons alike, the oldest to have the horse and arms and the youngest the homestead.

GAWAIN, SIR, one of the Knights of the Round Table, King Arthur's nephew; celebrated for his courtesy and physical strength.

GAY, JOHN, an English poet, born at Barnstaple the same year as Pope, a friend of his, to whom he dedicated his "Rural Sports"; was the author of a series of "Fables" and the "Beggar's Opera," a piece which was received with great enthusiasm, and had a run of 63 nights, but which gave offence at Court, though it brought him the patronage of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry, with whom he went to reside, and tinder whose roof he died; was buried in Westminster (1688-1732).