| “But wad ye see him in his glee, For meikle glee and fun has he, Then set him down, and twa or three Gude fellows wi’ him; And port, O port! shine thou a wee, And then ye’ll see him!” |
Grose’s works include The Antiquities of England and Wales (6 vols., 1773-1787); Advice to the Officers of the British Army (1782), a satire in the manner of Swift’s Directions to Servants; A Guide to Health, Beauty, Riches and Honour (1783), a collection of advertisements of the period, with characteristic satiric preface; A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785); A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons (1785-1789); Darrell’s History of Dover (1786); Military Antiquities (2 vols., 1786-1788); A Provincial Glossary (1787); Rules for Drawing Caricatures (1788); The Antiquities of Scotland (2 vols., 1789-1791); Antiquities of Ireland (2 vols., 1791), edited and partly written by Ledwich. The Grumbler, sixteen humerous essays, appeared in 1791 after his death; and in 1793 The Olio, a collection of essays, jests and small pieces of poetry, highly characteristic of Grose, though certainly not all by him, was put together from his papers by his publisher, who was also his executor.
A capital full-length portrait of Grose by N. Dance is in the first volume of the Antiquities of England and Wales, and another is among Kay’s Portraits. A versified sketch of him appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine, lxi. 660. See Gentleman’s Magazine, lxi. 498, 582; Noble’s Hist. of the College of Arms, p. 434; Notes and Queries, 1st ser., ix. 350; 3rd ser., i. 64, x. 280-281; 5th ser., xii. 148; 6th ser., ii. 47, 257, 291; Hone, Every-day Book, i. 655.
GROSS, properly thick, bulky, the meaning of the Late Lat. grossus. The Latin word has usually been taken as cognate with crassus, thick, but this is now doubted. It also appears not to be connected with the Ger. gross, a Teutonic word represented in English by “great.” Apart from its direct meaning, and such figurative senses as coarse, vulgar or flagrant, the chief uses are whole, entire, without deduction, as opposed to “net,” or as applied to that which is sold in bulk as opposed to “retail” (cf. “grocer” and “engrossing”). As a unit of tale, “gross” equals 12 dozen, 144, sometimes known as “small gross,” in contrast with “great gross,” i.e. 12 gross, 144 dozen. As a technical expression in English common law, “in gross” is applied to an incorporeal hereditament attached to the person of an owner, in contradistinction to one which is appendant or appurtenant, that is, attached to the ownership of land (see [Commons]).
GROSSE, JULIUS WALDEMAR (1828-1902), German poet, the son of a military chaplain, was born at Erfurt on the 25th of April 1828. He received his early education at the gymnasium in Magdeburg, and on leaving school and showing disinclination for the ministry, entered an architect’s office. But his mind was bent upon literature, and in 1849 he entered the university of Halle, where, although inscribed as a student of law, he devoted himself almost exclusively to letters. His first poetical essay was with the tragedy Cola di Rienzi (1851), followed in the same year by a comedy, Eine Nachtpartie Shakespeares, which was at once produced on the stage. The success of these first two pieces encouraged him to follow literature as a profession, and proceeding in 1852 to Munich, he joined the circle of young poets of whom Paul Heyse (q.v.) and Hermann Lingg (1820-1905) were the chief. For six years (1855-1861) he was dramatic critic of the Neue Münchener Zeitung, and was then for a while on the staff of the Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung, but in 1862 he returned to Munich as editor of the Bayrische Zeitung, a post he retained until the paper ceased to exist in 1867. In 1869 Grosse was appointed secretary of the Schiller-Stiftung, and lived for the next few years alternately in Weimar, Dresden and Munich, until, in 1890, he took up his permanent residence in Weimar. He was made grand-ducal Hofrat and had the title of “professor.” He died at Torbole on the Lago di Garda on the 9th of May 1902.
Grosse was a most prolific writer of novels, dramas and poems. As a lyric poet, especially in Gedichte (1857) and Aus bewegten Tagen, a volume of poems (1869), he showed himself more to advantage than in his novels, of which latter, however, Untreu aus Mitleid (2 vols., 1868); Vox populi, vox dei (1869); Maria Mancini (1871); Neue Erzählungen (1875); Sophie Monnier (1876), and Ein Frauenlos (1888) are remarkable for a certain elegance of style. His tragedies, Die Ynglinger (1858); Tiberius (1876); Johann von Schwaben; and the comedy Die steinerne Braut, had considerable success on the stage.
Grosse’s Gesammelte dramatische Werke appeared in 7 vols. in Leipzig (1870), while his Erzählende Dichtungen were published at Berlin (6 vols., 1871-1873). An edition of his selected works by A. Bartels is in preparation. See also his autobiography, Literarische Ursachen und Wirkungen (1896); R. Prutz, Die Literatur der Gegenwart (1859); J. Ethé, J. Grosse als epischer Dichter (1872).