GRIFFIN, Griffon or Gryphon (from Fr. griffon, Lat. gryphus, Gr. γρύψ), in the natural history of the ancients, the name of an imaginary rapacious creature of the eagle species, represented with four legs, wings and a beak,—the fore part resembling an eagle and the hinder a lion. In addition, some writers describe the tail as a serpent. This animal, which was supposed to watch over gold mines and hidden treasures, and to be the enemy of the horse, was consecrated to the Sun; and the ancient painters represented the chariot of the Sun as drawn by griffins. According to Spanheim, those of Jupiter and Nemesis were similarly provided. The griffin of Scripture is probably the osprey, and the name is now given to a species of vulture. The griffin was said to inhabit Asiatic Scythia, where gold and precious stones were abundant; and when strangers approached to gather these the creatures leapt upon them and tore them in pieces, thus chastising human avarice and greed. The one-eyed Arimaspi waged constant war with them, according to Herodotus (iii. 16). Sir John de Mandeville, in his Travels, described a griffin as eight times larger than a lion.
The griffin is frequently seen as a charge in heraldry (see [Heraldry], fig. 163); and in architectural decoration is usually represented as a four-footed beast with wings and the head of a leopard or tiger with horns, or with the head and beak of an eagle; in the latter case, but very rarely, with two legs. To what extent it owes its origin to Persian sculpture is not known, the capitals at Persepolis have sometimes leopard or lion heads with horns, and four-footed beasts with the beaks of eagles are represented in bas-reliefs. In the temple of Apollo Branchidae near Miletus in Asia Minor, the winged griffin of the capitals has leopards’ heads with horns. In the capitals of the so-called lesser propylaea at Eleusis conventional eagles with two feet support the angles of the abacus. The greater number of those in Rome have eagles’ beaks, as in the frieze of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, and their tails develop into conventional foliage. A similar device was found in the Forum of Trajan. The best decorative employment of the griffin is found in the vertical supports of tables, of which there are two or three examples in Pompeii and others in the Vatican and the museums in Rome. In some of these cases the head is that of a lion at one end of the support and an eagle at the other end, and there is only one strongly developed paw; the wings circling round at the top form conspicuous features on the sides of these supports, the surfaces below being filled with conventional Greek foliage.
GRIFFITH, SIR RICHARD JOHN (1784-1878), Irish geologist, was born in Dublin on the 20th of September 1784. He obtained in 1799 a commission in the Royal Irish Artillery, but a year later, when the corps was incorporated with that of England, he retired, and devoted his attention to civil engineering and mining. He studied chemistry, mineralogy and mining for two years in London under William Nicholson (editor of the Journal of Nat. Phil.), and afterwards examined the mining districts in various parts of England, Wales and Scotland. While in Cornwall he discovered ores of nickel and cobalt in material that had been rejected as worthless. He completed his studies under Robert Jameson and others at Edinburgh, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1807, a member of the newly established Geological Society of London in 1808, and in the same year he returned to Ireland. In 1809 he was appointed by the commissioners to inquire into the nature and extent of the bogs in Ireland, and the means of improving them. In 1812 he was elected professor of geology and mining engineer to the Royal Dublin Society. During subsequent years he made many surveys and issued many reports on mineral districts in Ireland, and these formed the foundation of his first geological map of the country (1815). In 1822 Griffith became engineer of public works in Cork, Kerry and Limerick, and was occupied until 1830 in repairing old roads and in laying out many miles of new roads. Meanwhile in 1825 he was appointed to carry out the perambulation or boundary survey of Ireland, the object of which was to ascertain and mark the boundaries of every county, barony, parish and townland in preparation for the ordnance survey. This work was finished in 1844. He was also called upon to assist in preparing a bill for the general valuation of Ireland; the act was passed in 1826, and he was appointed commissioner of valuation, in which capacity he continued to act until 1868. On “Griffith’s valuation” the various local and public assessments were made. His extensive investigations furnished him with ample material for improving his geological map, and the second edition was published in 1835. A third edition on a larger scale (1 in. to 4 m.) was issued under the Board of Ordnance in 1839, and it was further revised in 1855. For this great work and his other services to science he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society in 1854. In 1850 he was made chairman of the Irish Board of Works, and in 1858 he was created a baronet. He died in Dublin on the 22nd of September 1878.
Among his many geological works the following may be mentioned: Outline of the Geology of Ireland (1838); Notice respecting the Fossils of the Mountain Limestone of Ireland, as compared with those of Great Britain, and also with the Devonian System (1842); A Synopsis of the Characters of the Carboniferous Limestone Fossils of Ireland (1844) (with F. McCoy); A Synopsis of the Silurian Fossils of Ireland (1846) (with F. McCoy). See memoirs in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxv. 39; and Geol. Mag., 1878, p. 524, with bibliography.
GRILLE, a French term for an enclosure in either iron or bronze; there is no equivalent in English, “grating” applying more to a horizontal frame of bars over a sunk area, and “grate” to the iron bars of an open fireplace. The finest examples of the grille are those known as the rejas, which in Spanish churches form the enclosures of the chapels, such as the reja in the Capilla Real at Granada in wrought iron partly gilt (1522). Similar grilles are employed to protect the ground-floor windows of mansions not only in Spain but in Italy and Germany. In England the most beautiful example is that in front of Queen Eleanor’s tomb in Westminster Abbey, in wrought iron. The finest grilles in Italy are the enclosures of the tombs of the Della Scalas at Verona (end of 13th century), in Germany the grille of the cenotaph of Maximilian at Innsbruck (early 16th century) and in France those which enclose the Place Stanislaus, the Place de la Carrière and the churches of Nancy, which were wrought by Jean Lamour in the middle of the 18th century. Generally, however, throughout Germany the wrought iron grilles are fine examples of forging, and they are employed for the enclosures of the numerous fountains, in the tympana of gateways, and for the protection of windows. At Danzig in the Marienkirche are some fine examples in brass.
GRILLPARZER, FRANZ (1791-1872), the greatest dramatic poet of Austria, was born in Vienna, on the 15th of January 1791. His father, severe, pedantic, a staunch upholder of the liberal traditions of the reign of Joseph II., was an advocate of some standing; his mother, a nervous, finely-strung woman, belonged to the well-known musical family of Sonnleithner. After a desultory education, Grillparzer entered in 1807 the university of Vienna as a student of jurisprudence; but two years later his father died, leaving the family in straitened circumstances, and Franz, the eldest son, was obliged to turn to private tutoring. In 1813 he received an appointment in the court library, but as this was unpaid, he accepted after some months a clerkship that offered more solid prospects, in the Lower Austrian revenue administration. Through the influence of Graf Stadion, the minister of finance, he was in 1818 appointed poet to the Hofburgtheater, and promoted to the Hofkammer (exchequer); in 1832 he became director of the archives of that department, and in 1856 retired from the civil service with the title of Hofrat. Grillparzer had little capacity for an official career and regarded his office merely as a means of independence.
In 1817 the first representation of his tragedy Die Ahnfrau made him famous, but before this he had written a long tragedy in iambics, Bianca von Castilien (1807-1809), which was obviously modelled on Schiller’s Don Carlos; and even more promising were the dramatic fragments Spartacus and Alfred der Grosse (1809). Die Ahnfrau is a gruesome “fate-tragedy” in the trochaic measure of the Spanish drama, already made popular by Adolf Müllner in his Schuld; but Grillparzer’s work is a play of real poetic beauties, and reveals an instinct for dramatic as opposed to merely theatrical effect, which distinguishes it from other “fate-dramas” of the day. Unfortunately its success led to the poet’s being classed for the best part of his life with playwrights like Müllner and Houwald. Die Ahnfrau was followed by Sappho (1818), a drama of a very different type; in the classic spirit of Goethe’s Tasso, Grillparzer unrolled the tragedy of poetic genius, the renunciation of earthly happiness imposed upon the poet by his higher mission. In 1821 appeared Das goldene Vliess, a trilogy which had been interrupted in 1819 by the death of the poet’s mother—in a fit of depression she had taken her own life—and a subsequent visit to Italy. Opening with a powerful dramatic prelude in one act, Der Gastfreund, Grillparzer depicts in Die Argonauten Jason’s adventures in his quest for the Fleece; while Medea, a tragedy of noble classic proportions, contains the culminating events of the story which had been so often dramatized before. The theme is similar to that of Sappho, but the scale on which it is represented is larger; it is again the tragedy of the heart’s desire, the conflict of the simple happy life with that sinister power—be it genius, or ambition—which upsets the equilibrium of life. The end is bitter disillusionment, the only consolation renunciation. Medea, her revenge stilled, her children dead, bears the fatal Fleece back to Delphi, while Jason is left to realize the nothingness of human striving and earthly happiness.