Gutter Lyrist (The), Robert Williams Buchanan; so called from his poems on the loves of costermongers and their wenches (1841- ).
Guy Carleton. Wealthy young Englishman who is converted from skepticism by the gentle leadings of the child Fleda, and never forgets her. He meets her eight or nine years afterward and marries her.—Susan Warner, Queechy (1852).
Guy Morville. High-spirited, generous youth, whose religious faith helps him to overcome a fiery temper. He dies, while on his bridal tour of fever contracted in nursing his cousin Philip, his rival and enemy.—C. M. Yonge, The Heir of Redclyffe.
Guy (Thomas), the miser and philanthropist. He amassed an immense fortune in 1720 by speculations in South Sea stock, and gave £238,292 to found and endow Guy’s hospital (1644-1724).
Guy, earl of Warwick, an English knight. He proposed marriage to Phelis or Phillis, who refused to listen to his suit till he had distinguished himself by knightly deeds. He first rescued Blanch, daughter of the emperor of Germany, then fought against the Saracens, and slew the doughty Coldran, Elmage, king of Tyre, and the Soldan himself. Then, returning to England, he was accepted by Phelis and married her. In forty days he returned to the Holy Land, when he redeemed Earl Jonas out of prison, slew the giant Am´erant, and performed many other noble exploits. Again he returned to England, just in time to encounter the Danish giant Colebrond (2 syl.) or Colbrand, which combat is minutely described by Drayton, in his Polyolbion, xii. At Windsor he slew a boar “of passing might.” On Dunsmore Heath he slew the dun cow of Dunsmore, a wild and cruel monster. In Northumberland he slew a winged dragon, “black as any cole,” with the paws of a lion, and a hide which no sword could pierce (Polyolbion, xiii.). After this he turned hermit, and went daily to crave bread of his wife Phelis, who knew him not. On his death-bed he sent her a ring, and she closed his dying eyes (890-958).
Guy Fawkes, the conspirator, went under the name of John Johnstone, and pretended to be the servant of Mr. Percy (1577-1606).
Guy Mannering, the second of Scott’s historical novels, published in 1815, just seven months after Waverley. The interest of the tale is well sustained; but the love scenes, female characters, and Guy Mannering himself, are quite worthless. Not so the character of Dandy Dinmont, the shrewd and witty counsellor Pleydell, the desperate sea-beaten villainy of Hatteraick, the uncouth devotion of that gentlest of all pedants, poor Domine Sampson, and half-crazed, but noble-hearted, Meg Merrilies, the true heroine of the novel.
Guy Mannering was the work of six weeks about Christmas time, and marks of haste are visible both in the plot and in its development.—Chambers, English Literature, ii. 586.
Guyon Guerndale. Sensitive, imaginative young man, “forever looking for this year’s birds in the nests of the last.” He carries in a locket with him an heirloom diamond said to have been wrested from the rightful owner by a wicked ancestor. Guerndale loves a woman who marries his friend; he seeks glory and is wounded at Plevna. He “had started by believing in three things, truth, love, and friendship,” and he never recants. While in the hospital, news comes of “Annie’s” death. He determines to cast away the diamond he had once meant for her. It is an evil stone. He wrenches open the locket, reopens his wound, and bleeds to death. His friend, finding him dead, picks up the historic stone.
“The diamond was only a crystal after all.” Frederic Jesup Stimson, Guerndale (1881).