GUEVARA, ANTONIO DE (c. 1490-1544), Spanish chronicler and moralist, was a native of the province of Alava, and passed some of his earlier years at the court of Isabella, queen of Castile. In 1528 he entered the Franciscan order, and afterwards accompanied the emperor Charles V. during his journeys to Italy and other parts of Europe. After having held successively the offices of court preacher, court historiographer, bishop of Guadix and bishop of Mondoñedo, he died in 1544. His earliest work, entitled Reloj de principes, published at Valladolid in 1529, and, according to its author, the fruit of eleven years’ labour, is a didactic novel, designed, after the manner of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, to delineate, in a somewhat ideal way for the benefit of modern sovereigns, the life and character of an ancient prince, Marcus Aurelius, distinguished for wisdom and virtue. It was often reprinted in Spanish; and before the close of the century had also been translated into Latin, Italian, French and English, an English translation being by J. Bourchier (London, 1546) and another being by T. North. It is difficult now to account for its extraordinary popularity, its thought being neither just nor profound, while its style is stiff and affected. It gave rise to a literary controversy, however, of great bitterness and violence, the author having ventured without warrant to claim for it an historical character, appealing to an imaginary “manuscript in Florence.” Other works of Guevara are the Decada de los Césares (Valladolid, 1539), or “Lives of the Ten Roman Emperors,” in imitation of the manner of Plutarch and Suetonius; and the Epistolas familiares (Valladolid, 1539-1545), sometimes called “The Golden Letters,” often printed in Spain, and translated into all the principal languages of Europe. They are in reality a collection of stiff and formal essays which have long ago fallen into merited oblivion. Guevara, whose influence upon the Spanish prose of the 16th century was considerable, also wrote Libro de los inventores del arte de marear (Valladolid, 1539, and Madrid, 1895).
GUEVARA, LUIS VELEZ DE (1579-1644), Spanish dramatist and novelist, was born at Écija on the 1st of August 1579. After graduating as a sizar at the university of Osuna in 1596, he joined the household of Rodrigo de Castro, cardinal-archbishop of Seville, and celebrated the marriage of Philip II. in a poem signed “Velez de Santander,” a name which he continued to use till some years later. He appears to have served as a soldier in Italy and Algiers, returning to Spain in 1602 when he entered the service of the count de Saldaña, and dedicated himself to writing for the stage. He died at Madrid on the 10th of November 1644. He was the author of over four hundred plays, of which the best are Reinar despues de morir, Más pesa el rey que la sangre, La Luna de la Sierra and El Diablo está en Cantillana; but he is most widely known as the author of El Diablo cojuelo (1641), a fantastic novel which suggested to Le Sage the idea of his Diable boiteux.
GUGLIELMI, PIETRO (1727-1804), Italian composer, was born at Massa Carrara in May 1727, and died in Rome on the 19th of November 1804. He received his first musical education from his father, and afterwards studied under Durante at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto at Naples. His first operatic work, produced at Turin in 1755, established his reputation, and soon his fame spread beyond the limits of his own country, so that in 1762 he was called to Dresden to conduct the opera there. He remained for some years in Germany, where his works met with much success, but the greatest triumphs were reserved for him in England. He went to London, according to Burney, in 1768, but according to Florimo in 1772, returning to Naples in 1777. He still continued to produce operas at an astounding rate, but was unable to compete successfully with the younger masters of the day. In 1793 he became maestro di cappella at St Peter’s, Rome. He was a very prolific composer of Italian comic opera, and there is in most of his scores a vein of humour and natural gaiety not surpassed by Cimarosa himself. In serious opera he was less successful. But here also he shows at least the qualities of a competent musician. Considering the enormous number of his works, his unequal workmanship and the frequent instances of mechanical and slip-shod writing in his music need not surprise us. The following are among the most celebrated of his operas: I Due Gemelli, La Serva inamorata, La Pastorella nobile, La Bella Peccatrice, Rinaldo, Artaserse, Didone and Enea e Lavinia. He also wrote oratorios and miscellaneous pieces of orchestral and chamber music. Of his eight sons two at least acquired fame as musicians—Pietro Carlo (1763-1827), a successful imitator of his father’s operatic style, and Giacomo, an excellent singer.
GUIANA (Guyana, Guayana[1]), the general name given in its widest acceptation to the part of South America lying to the north-east from 8° 40′ N. to 3° 30′ S. and from 50° W. to 68° 30′ W. Its greatest length, from Cabo do Norte to the confluence of the Rio Xie and Rio Negro, is about 1250 m., its greatest breadth, from Barima Point in the mouth of the Orinoco to the confluence of the Rio Negro and Amazon, 800 m. Its area is roughly 690,000 sq. m. Comprised in this vast territory are Venezuelan (formerly Spanish) Guiana, lying on both sides of the Orinoco and extending S. and S.W. to the Rio Negro and Brazilian settlements; British Guiana, extending from Venezuela to the left bank of the Corentyn river; Dutch Guiana (or Surinam), from the Corentyn to the Maroni river; French Guiana (or Cayenne), from the Maroni to the Oyapock river;[2] Brazilian (formerly Portuguese) Guiana, extending from the southern boundaries of French, Dutch, British and part of Venezuelan Guiana, to the Amazon and the Negro. Of these divisions the first and last are now included in Venezuela and Brazil respectively; British, Dutch and French Guiana are described in order below, and are alone considered here.
In their physical geography the three Guianas present certain common characteristics. In each the principal features are the rivers and their branch streams. In each colony the northern portion consists of a fluviomarine deposit extending inland and gradually rising to a height of 10 to 15 ft. above the sea. This alluvial plain varies in width from 50 m. to 18 m. and is traversed by ridges of sand and shells, roughly parallel to what is now the coast, indicating the trend of former shore lines. By the draining and diking of these lands the plantations have been formed along the coast and up the rivers. These low lands are attached to a somewhat higher plateau, which towards the coast is traversed by numerous huge sand-dunes and inland by ranges of hills rising in places to as much as 2000 ft. The greater part of this belt of country, in which the auriferous districts principally occur, is covered with a dense growth of jungle and high forest, but savannahs, growing only a long wiry grass and poor shrubs, intrude here and there, being in the S.E. much nearer to the coast than in the N.W. The hinterlands consist of undulating open savannahs rising into hills and mountains, some grass-covered, some in dense forest.
Geology[3].—Guiana is formed almost entirely of gneiss and crystalline schists penetrated by numerous dikes of diorite, diabase, &c. The gold of the placer deposits appears to be derived, not from quartz reefs, but from the schists and intrusive rocks, the selvages of the diabase dikes sometimes containing as much as 5 oz. of gold to the ton. In British Guiana a series of conglomerates, red and white sandstone and red shale, rests upon the gneiss and forms the remarkable table-topped mountains Roraima, Kukenaam, &c. The beds are horizontal, and according to Brown and Sawkins, three layers of greenstone, partly intrusive and partly contemporaneous, are interstratified with the sedimentary deposits. The age of these beds is uncertain, but they evidently correspond with the similar series which occurs in Brazil, partly Palaeozoic and partly Cretaceous. In Dutch Guiana there are a few small patches supposed to belong to the Cretaceous period. Along the coast, and in the lower parts of the river valleys, are deposits which are mainly Quaternary but may also include beds of Tertiary age.