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THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION


VOLUME XII SLICE III
Gordon, Lord George to Grasses


Articles in This Slice

[GORDON, LORD GEORGE][GOZZOLI, BENOZZO]
[GORDON, SIR JOHN WATSON][GRAAFF REINET]
[GORDON, LEON][GRABBE, CHRISTIAN DIETRICH]
[GORDON, PATRICK][GRABE, JOHN ERNEST]
[GORDON-CUMMING, ROUALEYN GEORGE][GRACCHUS]
[GORE, CATHERINE GRACE FRANCES][GRACE, WILLIAM GILBERT]
[GORE, CHARLES][GRACE]
[GORE][GRACES, THE]
[GOREE][GRACIÁN Y MORALES, BALTASAR]
[GORGE][GRACKLE]
[GÖRGEI, ARTHUR][GRADISCA]
[GORGES, SIR FERDINANDO][GRADO]
[GORGET][GRADUAL]
[GORGIAS][GRADUATE]
[GORGON, GORGONS][GRADUATION]
[GORGONZOLA][GRADUS]
[GORI][GRAETZ, HEINRICH]
[GORILLA][GRAEVIUS, JOHANN GEORG]
[GORINCHEM][GRAF, ARTURO]
[GORING, GEORGE GORING][GRAF, KARL HEINRICH]
[GORKI, MAXIM][GRÄFE, ALBRECHT VON]
[GÖRLITZ][GRAFE, HEINRICH]
[GÖRRES, JOHANN JOSEPH VON][GRÄFE, KARL FERDINAND VON]
[GORSAS, ANTOINE JOSEPH][GRAFFITO]
[GORST, SIR JOHN ELDON][GRAFLY, CHARLES]
[GORTON, SAMUEL][GRÄFRATH]
[GORTON][GRAFT]
[GORTYNA][GRAFTON, DUKES OF]
[GÖRTZ, GEORG HEINRICH VON][GRAFTON, RICHARD]
[GÖRZ][GRAFTON (New South Wales)]
[GÖRZ AND GRADISCA][GRAFTON] (Massachusetts, U.S.A.)
[GOSCHEN, GEORGE JOACHIM GOSCHEN][GRAFTON] (West Virginia, U.S.A.)
[GOS-HAWK][GRAHAM, SIR GERALD]
[GOSHEN] (Egypt)[GRAHAM, SIR JAMES ROBERT GEORGE]
[GOSHEN] (Indiana, U.S.A.)[GRAHAM, SYLVESTER]
[GOSLAR][GRAHAM, THOMAS]
[GOSLICKI, WAWRZYNIEC][GRAHAME, JAMES]
[GOSLIN][GRAHAM’S DYKE]
[GOSNOLD, BARTHOLOMEW][GRAHAM’S TOWN]
[GOSPATRIC][GRAIL, THE HOLY]
[GOSPEL][GRAIN]
[GOSPORT][GRAINS OF PARADISE]
[GOSS, SIR JOHN][GRAIN TRADE]
[GOSSAMER][GRAM]
[GOSSE, EDMUND][GRAMMAR]
[GOSSE, PHILIP HENRY][GRAMMICHELE]
[GOSSEC, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH][GRAMMONT]
[GOSSIP][GRAMONT, ANTOINE AGÉNOR ALFRED]
[GOSSNER, JOHANNES EVANGELISTA][GRAMONT, PHILIBERT]
[GOSSON, STEPHEN][GRAMOPHONE]
[GOT, FRANÇOIS JULES EDMOND][GRAMPIANS, THE]
[GÖTA][GRAMPOUND]
[GOTARZES][GRAMPUS]
[GOTHA][GRANADA, LUIS DE]
[GOTHAM, WISE MEN OF][GRANADA] (Nicaragua)
[GOTHENBURG][GRANADA] (province of Spain)
[GOTHIC][GRANADA] (town of Spain)
[GÖTHITE][GRANADILLA]
[GOTHS][GRANARIES]
[GOTLAND][GRANBY, JOHN MANNERS]
[GOTO ISLANDS][GRAN CHACO]
[GOTTER, FRIEDRICH WILHELM][GRAND ALLIANCE, WAR OF THE]
[GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG][GRAND CANARY]
[GÖTTINGEN][GRAND CANYON]
[GÖTTLING, CARL WILHELM][GRAND-DUKE]
[GOTTSCHALK][GRANDEE]
[GOTTSCHALL, RUDOLF VON][GRAND FORKS] (Canada)
[GOTTSCHED, JOHANN CHRISTOPH][GRAND FORKS] (North Dakota, U.S.A.)
[GÖTZ, JOHANN NIKOLAUS][GRAND HAVEN]
[GOUACHE][GRANDIER, URBAN]
[GOUDA][GRAND ISLAND]
[GOUDIMEL, CLAUDE][GRANDMONTINES]
[GOUFFIER][GRAND RAPIDS]
[GOUGE, MARTIN][GRAND RAPIDS]
[GOUGE][GRANDSON]
[GOUGH, HUGH GOUGH][GRANET, FRANÇOIS MARIUS]
[GOUGH, JOHN BARTHOLOMEW][GRANGE]
[GOUGH, RICHARD][GRANGEMOUTH]
[GOUJET, CLAUDE PIERRE][GRANGER, JAMES]
[GOUJON, JEAN][GRANITE]
[GOUJON, JEAN MARIE CLAUDE ALEXANDRE][GRAN SASSO D’ITALIA]
[GOULBURN, EDWARD MEYRICK][GRANT, SIR ALEXANDER]
[GOULBURN, HENRY][GRANT, ANNE]
[GOULBURN][GRANT, CHARLES]
[GOULD, AUGUSTUS ADDISON][GRANT, SIR FRANCIS]
[GOULD, BENJAMIN APTHORP][GRANT, GEORGE MONRO]
[GOULD, SIR FRANCIS CARRUTHERS][GRANT, JAMES]
[GOULD, JAY][GRANT, JAMES AUGUSTUS]
[GOUNOD, CHARLES FRANÇOIS][GRANT, SIR JAMES HOPE]
[GOURD][GRANT, SIR PATRICK]
[GOURGAUD, GASPAR][GRANT, ROBERT]
[GOURKO, JOSEPH VLADIMIROVICH][GRANT, ULYSSES SIMPSON]
[GOURMET][GRANT]
[GOUROCK][GRANTH]
[GOURVILLE, JEAN HERAULD][GRANTHAM, THOMAS ROBINSON]
[GOUT][GRANTHAM]
[GOUTHIÈRE, PIERRE][GRANTLEY, FLETCHER NORTON]
[GOUVION SAINT-CYR, LAURENT][GRANTOWN]
[GOVAN][GRANULITE]
[GOVERNMENT][GRANVELLA, ANTOINE PERRENOT]
[GOVERNOR][GRANVILLE, GRANVILLE GEORGE LEVESON-GOWER]
[GOW, NIEL][GRANVILLE, JOHN CARTERET]
[GOWER, JOHN][GRANVILLE] (Australia)
[GOWER][GRANVILLE] (France)
[GOWN][GRANVILLE] (Ohio, U.S.A.)
[GOWRIE, JOHN RUTHVEN][GRAPE]
[GOWRIE][GRAPHICAL METHODS]
[GOYA][GRAPHITE]
[GOYANNA][GRAPTOLITES]
[GOYA Y LUCIENTES, FRANCISCO][GRASLITZ]
[GOYÁZ][GRASMERE]
[GOYEN, JAN JOSEPHSZOON VAN][GRASS AND GRASSLAND]
[GOZLAN, LÉON][GRASSE, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH PAUL]
[GOZO][GRASSE]
[GOZZI, CARLO][GRASSES]
[GOZZI, GASPARO]

GORDON, LORD GEORGE (1751-1793), third and youngest son of Cosmo George, duke of Gordon, was born in London on the 26th of December 1751. After completing his education at Eton, he entered the navy, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant in 1772, but Lord Sandwich, then at the head of the admiralty, would not promise him the command of a ship, and he resigned his commission shortly before the beginning of the American War. In 1774 the pocket borough of Ludgershall was bought for him by General Fraser, whom he was opposing in Inverness-shire, in order to bribe him not to contest the county. He was considered flighty, and was not looked upon as being of any importance. In 1779 he organized, and made himself head of the Protestant associations, formed to secure the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act of 1778. On the 2nd of June 1780 he headed the mob which marched in procession from St George’s Fields to the Houses of Parliament in order to present the monster petition against the acts. After the mob reached Westminster a terrific riot ensued, which continued several days, during which the city was virtually at their mercy. At first indeed they dispersed after threatening to make a forcible entry into the House of Commons, but reassembled soon afterwards and destroyed several Roman Catholic chapels, pillaged the private dwellings of many Roman Catholics, set fire to Newgate and broke open all the other prisons, attacked the Bank of England and several other public buildings, and continued the work of violence and conflagration until the interference of the military, by whom no fewer than 450 persons were killed and wounded before the riots were quelled. For his share in instigating the riots Lord Gordon was apprehended on a charge of high treason; but, mainly through the skilful and eloquent defence of Erskine, he was acquitted on the ground that he had no treasonable intentions. His life was henceforth full of crack-brained schemes, political and financial. In 1786 he was excommunicated by the archbishop of Canterbury for refusing to bear witness in an ecclesiastical suit; and in 1787 he was convicted of libelling the queen of France, the French ambassador and the administration of justice in England. He was, however, permitted to withdraw from the court without bail, and made his escape to Holland; but on account of representations from the court of Versailles he was commanded to quit that country, and, returning to England, was apprehended, and in January 1788 was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in Newgate, where he lived at his ease, giving dinners and dances. As he could not obtain securities for his good behaviour on the termination of his term of imprisonment, he was not allowed to leave Newgate, and there he died of delirious fever on the 1st of November 1793. Some time before his apprehension he had become a convert to Judaism, and had undergone the initiatory rite.

A serious defence of most of his eccentricities is undertaken in The Life of Lord George Gordon, with a Philosophical Review of his Political Conduct, by Robert Watson, M.D. (London, 1795). The best accounts of Lord George Gordon are to be found in the Annual Registers from 1780 to the year of his death.


GORDON, SIR JOHN WATSON (1788-1864), Scottish painter, was the eldest son of Captain Watson, R.N., a cadet of the family of Watson of Overmains, in the county of Berwick. He was born in Edinburgh in 1788, and was educated specially with a view to his joining the Royal Engineers. He entered as a student in the government school of design, under the management of the Board of Manufactures. His natural taste for art quickly developed itself, and his father was persuaded to allow him to adopt it as his profession. Captain Watson was himself a skilful draughtsman, and his brother George Watson, afterwards president of the Scottish Academy, stood high as a portrait painter, second only to Sir Henry Raeburn, who also was a friend of the family. In the year 1808 John sent to the exhibition of the Lyceum in Nicolson Street a subject from the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and continued for some years to exhibit fancy subjects; but, although freely and sweetly painted, they were altogether without the force and character which stamped his portrait pictures as the works of a master. After the death of Sir Henry Raeburn in 1823, he succeeded to much of his practice. He assumed in 1826 the name of Gordon. One of the earliest of his famous sitters was Sir Walter Scott, who sat for a first portrait in 1820. Then came J. G. Lockhart in 1821; Professor Wilson, 1822 and 1850, two portraits; Sir Archibald Alison, 1839; Dr Chalmers, 1844; a little later De Quincey, and Sir David Brewster, 1864. Among his most important works may be mentioned the earl of Dalhousie (1833), in the Archers’ Hall, Edinburgh; Sir Alexander Hope (1835), in the county buildings, Linlithgow; Lord President Hope, in the Parliament House; and Dr Chalmers. These, unlike his later works, are generally rich in colour. The full length of Dr Brunton (1844), and Dr Lee, the principal of the university (1846), both on the staircase of the college library, mark a modification of his style, which ultimately resolved itself into extreme simplicity, both of colour and treatment.

During the last twenty years of his life he painted many distinguished Englishmen who came to Edinburgh to sit to him. And it is significant that David Cox, the landscape painter, on being presented with his portrait, subscribed for by many friends, chose to go to Edinburgh to have it executed by Watson Gordon, although he neither knew the painter personally nor had ever before visited the country. Among the portraits painted during this period, in what may be termed his third style, are De Quincey, in the National Portrait Gallery, London; General Sir Thomas Macdougall Brisbane, in the Royal Society; the prince of Wales, Lord Macaulay, Sir M. Packington, Lord Murray, Lord Cockburn, Lord Rutherford and Sir John Shaw Lefevre, in the Scottish National Gallery. These latter pictures are mostly clear and grey, sometimes showing little or no positive colour, the flesh itself being very grey, and the handling extremely masterly, though never obtruding its cleverness. He was very successful in rendering acute observant character. A good example of his last style, showing pearly flesh-painting freely handled, yet highly finished, is his head of Sir John Shaw Lefevre.

John Watson Gordon was one of the earlier members of the Royal Scottish Academy, and was elected its president in 1850; he was at the same time appointed limner for Scotland to the queen, and received the honour of knighthood. Since 1841 he had been an associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1851 he was elected a royal academician. He died on the 1st of June 1864.


GORDON, LEON, originally Judah Loeb Ben Asher (1831-1892), Russian-Jewish poet and novelist (Hebrew), was born at Wilna in 1831 and died at St Petersburg in 1892. He took a leading part in the modern revival of the Hebrew language and culture. His satires did much to rouse the Russian Jews to a new sense of the reality of life, and Gordon was the apostle of enlightenment in the Ghettos. His Hebrew style is classical and pure. His poems were collected in four volumes, Kol Shire Yehudah (St Petersburg, 1883-1884); his novels in Kol Kithbe Yehuda (Odessa, 1889).

For his works see Jewish Quarterly Review, xviii. 437 seq.


GORDON, PATRICK (1635-1699), Russian general, was descended from a Scottish family of Aberdeenshire, who possessed the small estate of Auchleuchries, and were connected with the house of Haddo. He was born in 1635, and after completing his education at the parish schools of Cruden and Ellon, entered, in his fifteenth year, the Jesuit college at Braunsberg, Prussia; but, as “his humour could not endure such a still and strict way of living,” he soon resolved to return home. He changed his mind, however, before re-embarking, and after journeying on foot in several parts of Germany, ultimately, in 1655, enlisted at Hamburg in the Swedish service. In the course of the next five years he served alternately with the Poles and Swedes as he was taken prisoner by either. In 1661, after further experience as a soldier of fortune, he took service in the Russian army under Alexis I., and in 1665 he was sent on a special mission to England. After his return he distinguished himself in several wars against the Turks and Tatars in southern Russia, and in recognition of his services he in 1678 was made major-general, in 1679 was appointed to the chief command at Kiev, and in 1683 was made lieutenant-general. He visited England in 1686, and in 1687 and 1689 took part as quartermaster-general in expeditions against the Crim Tatars in the Crimea, being made full general for his services, in spite of the denunciations of the Greek Church to which, as a heretic, he was exposed. On the breaking out of the revolution in Moscow in 1689, Gordon with the troops he commanded virtually decided events in favour of the tsar Peter I., and against the tsaritsa Sophia. He was therefore during the remainder of his life in high favour with the tsar, who confided to him the command of his capital during his absence from Russia, employed him in organizing his army according to the European system, and latterly raised him to the rank of general-in-chief. He died on the 29th of November 1699. The tsar, who had visited him frequently during his illness, was with him when he died, and with his own hands closed his eyes.

General Gordon left behind him a diary of his life, written in English. This is preserved in MS. in the archives of the Russian foreign office. A complete German translation, edited by Dr Maurice Possalt (Tagebuch des Generals Patrick Gordon) was published, the first volume at Moscow in 1849, the second at St Petersburg in 1851, and the third at St Petersburg in 1853; and Passages from the Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries (1635-1699), was printed, under the editorship of Joseph Robertson, for the Spalding Club, Aberdeen, 1859.


GORDON-CUMMING, ROUALEYN GEORGE (1820-1866), Scottish traveller and sportsman, known as the “lion hunter,” was born on the 15th of March 1820. He was the second son of Sir William G. Gordon-Cumming, 2nd baronet of Altyre and Gordonstown, Elginshire. From his early years he was distinguished by his passion for sport. He was educated at Eton, and at eighteen joined the East India Co.’s service as a cornet in the Madras Light Cavalry. The climate of India not suiting him, after two years’ experience he retired from the service and returned to Scotland. During his stay in the East he had laid the foundation of his collection of hunting trophies and specimens of natural history. In 1843 he joined the Cape Mounted Rifles, but for the sake of absolute freedom sold out at the end of the year and with an ox wagon and a few native followers set out for the interior. He hunted chiefly in Bechuanaland and the Limpopo valley, regions then swarming with big game. In 1848 he returned to England. The story of his remarkable exploits is vividly told in his book, Five Years of a Hunter’s Life in the Far Interior of South Africa (London, 1850, 3rd ed. 1851). Of this volume, received at first with incredulity by stay-at-home critics, David Livingstone, who furnished Gordon-Cumming with most of his native guides, wrote: “I have no hesitation in saying that Mr Cumming’s book conveys a truthful idea of South African hunting” (Missionary Travels, chap. vii.). His collection of hunting trophies was exhibited in London in 1851 at the Great Exhibition, and was illustrated by a lecture delivered by Gordon-Cumming. The collection, known as “The South Africa Museum,” was afterwards exhibited in various parts of the country. In 1858 Gordon-Cumming went to live at Fort Augustus on the Caledonian Canal, where the exhibition of his trophies attracted many visitors. He died there on the 24th of March 1866.

An abridgment of his book was published in 1856 under the title of The Lion Hunter of South Africa, and in this form was frequently reprinted, a new edition appearing in 1904.


GORE, CATHERINE GRACE FRANCES (1799-1861), English novelist and dramatist, the daughter of Charles Moody, a wine-merchant, was born in 1799 at East Retford, Nottinghamshire. In 1823 she was married to Captain Charles Gore; and, in the next year, she published her first work, Theresa Marchmont, or the Maid of Honour. Then followed, among others, the Lettre de Cachet (1827), The Reign of Terror (1827), Hungarian Tales (1829), Manners of the Day (1830), Mothers and Daughters (1831), and The Fair of May Fair (1832), Mrs Armytage (1836). Every succeeding year saw several volumes from her pen: The Cabinet Minister and The Courtier of the Days of Charles II., in 1839; Preferment in 1840. In 1841 Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb, attracted considerable attention. Greville, or a Season in Paris appeared in the same year; then Ormington, or Cecil a Peer, Fascination, The Ambassador’s Wife; and in 1843 The Banker’s Wife. Mrs Gore continued to write, with unfailing fertility of invention, till her death on the 29th of January 1861. She also wrote some dramas of which the most successful was the School for Coquettes, produced at the Haymarket (1831). She was a woman of versatile talent, and set to music Burns’s “And ye shall walk in silk attire,” one of the most popular songs of her day. Her extraordinary literary industry is proved by the existence of more than seventy distinct works. Her best novels are Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb, and The Banker’s Wife. Cecil gives extremely vivid sketches of London fashionable life, and is full of happy epigrammatic touches. For the knowledge of London clubs displayed in it Mrs Gore was indebted to William Beckford, the author of Vathek. The Banker’s Wife is distinguished by some clever studies of character, especially in the persons of Mr Hamlyn, the cold calculating money-maker, and his warm-hearted country neighbour, Colonel Hamilton.

Mrs Gore’s novels had an immense temporary popularity; they were parodied by Thackeray in Punch, in his “Lords and Liveries by the author of Dukes and Déjeuners”; but, tedious as they are to present-day readers, they presented on the whole faithful pictures of the contemporary life and pursuits of the English upper classes.


GORE, CHARLES (1853-  ), English divine, was born in 1853, the 3rd son of the Hon. Charles Alexander Gore, brother of the 4th earl of Arran. His mother was a daughter of the 4th earl of Bessborough. He was educated at Harrow and at Balliol College, Oxford, and was elected fellow of Trinity College in 1875. From 1880 to 1883 he was vice-principal of the theological college at Cuddesdon, and, when in 1884 Pusey House was founded at Oxford as a home for Dr Pusey’s library and a centre for the propagation of his principles, he was appointed principal, a position which he held until 1893. As principal of Pusey House Mr Gore exercised a wide influence over undergraduates and the younger clergy, and it was largely, if not mainly, under this influence that the “Oxford Movement” underwent a change which to the survivors of the old school of Tractarians seemed to involve a break with its basic principles. “Puseyism” had been in the highest degree conservative, basing itself on authority and tradition, and repudiating any compromise with the modern critical and liberalizing spirit. Mr Gore, starting from the same basis of faith and authority, soon found from his practical experience in dealing with the “doubts and difficulties” of the younger generation that this uncompromising attitude was untenable, and set himself the task of reconciling the principle of authority in religion with that of scientific authority by attempting to define the boundaries of their respective spheres of influence. To him the divine authority of the Catholic Church was an axiom, and in 1889 he published two works, the larger of which, The Church and the Ministry, is a learned vindication of the principle of Apostolic Succession in the episcopate against the Presbyterians and other Protestant bodies, while the second, Roman Catholic Claims, is a defence, couched in a more popular form, of the Anglican Church and Anglican orders against the attacks of the Romanists.

So far his published views had been in complete consonance with those of the older Tractarians. But in 1890 a great stir was created by the publication, under his editorship, of Lux Mundi, a series of essays by different writers, being an attempt “to succour a distressed faith by endeavouring to bring the Christian Creed into its right relation to the modern growth of knowledge, scientific, historic, critical; and to modern problems of politics and ethics.” Mr Gore himself contributed an essay on “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration.” The book, which ran through twelve editions in a little over a year, met with a somewhat mixed reception. Orthodox churchmen, Evangelical and Tractarian alike, were alarmed by views on the incarnate nature of Christ that seemed to them to impugn his Divinity, and by concessions to the Higher Criticism in the matter of the inspiration of Holy Scriptures which appeared to them to convert the “impregnable rock,” as Gladstone had called it, into a foundation of sand; sceptics, on the other hand, were not greatly impressed by a system of defence which seemed to draw an artificial line beyond which criticism was not to advance. None the less the book produced a profound effect, and that far beyond the borders of the English Church, and it is largely due to its influence, and to that of the school it represents, that the High Church movement developed thenceforth on “Modernist” rather than Tractarian lines.

In 1891 Mr Gore was chosen to deliver the Bampton lectures before the university, and chose for his subject the Incarnation. In these lectures he developed the doctrine, the enunciation of which in Lux Mundi had caused so much heart-searching. This is an attempt to explain how it came that Christ, though incarnate God, could be in error, e.g. in his citations from the Old Testament. The orthodox explanation was based on the principle of accommodation (q.v.). This, however, ignored the difficulty that if Christ during his sojourn on earth was not subject to human limitations, especially of knowledge, he was not a man as other men, and therefore not subject to their trials and temptations. This difficulty Gore sought to meet through the doctrine of the κένωσις. Ever since the Pauline epistles had been received into the canon theologians had, from various points of view, attempted to explain what St Paul meant when he wrote of Christ (2 Phil. ii. 7) that “he emptied himself and took upon him the form of a servant” (ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δουλοῦ λαβῶν). According to Mr Gore this means that Christ, on his incarnation, became subject to all human limitations, and had, so far as his life on earth was concerned, stripped himself of all the attributes of the Godhead, including the Divine omniscience, the Divine nature being, as it were, hidden under the human.[1]

Lux Mundi and the Bampton lectures led to a situation of some tension which was relieved when in 1893 Dr Gore resigned his principalship and became vicar of Radley, a small parish near Oxford. In 1894 he became canon of Westminster. Here he gained commanding influence as a preacher and in 1898 was appointed one of the court chaplains. In 1902 he succeeded J. J. S. Perowne as bishop of Worcester and in 1905 was installed bishop of Birmingham, a new see the creation of which had been mainly due to his efforts. While adhering rigidly to his views on the divine institution of episcopacy as essential to the Christian Church, Dr Gore from the first cultivated friendly relations with the ministers of other denominations, and advocated co-operation with them in all matters when agreement was possible. In social questions he became one of the leaders of the considerable group of High Churchmen known, somewhat loosely, as Christian Socialists. He worked actively against the sweating system, pleaded for European intervention in Macedonia, and was a keen supporter of the Licensing Bill of 1908. In 1892 he founded the clerical fraternity known as the Community of the Resurrection. Its members are priests, who are bound by the obligation of celibacy, live under a common rule and with a common purse. Their work is pastoral, evangelistic, literary and educational. In 1898 the House of the Resurrection at Mirfield, near Huddersfield, became the centre of the community; in 1903 a college for training candidates for orders was established there, and in the same year a branch house, for missionary work, was set up in Johannesburg in South Africa.

Dr Gore’s works include The Incarnation (Bampton Lectures, 1891), The Creed of the Christian (1895), The Body of Christ (1901), The New Theology and the Old Religion (1908), and expositions of The Sermon on the Mount (1896), Ephesians (1898), and Romans (1899), while in 1910 he published Orders and Unity.


[1] Cf. the Lutheran theologian Ernst Sartorius in his Lehre von der heiligen Liebe (1844), Lehre ii. pp. 21 et seq.: “the Son of God veils his all-seeing eye and descends into human darkness and as child of man opens his eye as the gradually growing light of the world of humanity, until at the right hand of the Father he allows it to shine forth in all its glory.” See Loofs, Art. “Kenosis” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 1901), x. 247.


GORE. (1) (O. Eng. gor, dung or filth), a word formerly used in the sense of dirt, but now confined to blood that has thickened after being shed. (2) (O. Eng. gára, probably connected with gare, an old word for “spear”), something of triangular shape, resembling therefore a spear-head. The word is used for a tapering strip of land, in the “common or open field” system of agriculture, where from the shape of the land the acre or half-acre strips could not be portioned out in straight divisions. Similarly “gore” is used in the United States, especially in Maine and Vermont, for a strip of land left out in surveying when divisions are made and boundaries marked. The triangular sections of material used in forming the covering of a balloon or an umbrella are also called “gores,” and in dressmaking the term is used for a triangular piece of material inserted in a dress to adjust the difference in widths. To gore, i.e. to stab or pierce with any sharp instrument, but more particularly used of piercing with the horns of a bull, is probably directly connected with gare, a spear.


GOREE, an island off the west coast of Africa, forming part of the French colony of Senegal. It lies at the entrance of the large natural harbour formed by the peninsula of Cape Verde. The island, some 900 yds. long by 330 broad, and 3 m. distant from the nearest point of the mainland, is mostly barren rock. The greater part of its surface is occupied by a town, formerly a thriving commercial entrepôt and a strong military post. Until 1906 it was a free port. With the rise of Dakar (q.v.), c. 1860, on the adjacent coast, Goree lost its trade and its inhabitants, mostly Jolofs, had dwindled in 1905 to about 1500. Its healthy climate, however, makes it useful as a sanatorium. The streets are narrow, and the houses, mainly built of dark-red stone, are flat-roofed. The castle of St Michael, the governor’s residence, the hospital and barracks, testify to the former importance of the town. Within the castle is an artesian well, the only water-supply, save that collected in rain tanks, on the island. Goree was first occupied by the Dutch, who took possession of it early in the 17th century and called it Goeree or Goedereede, in memory of the island on their own coast now united with Overflakkee. Its native name is Bir, i.e. a belly, in allusion to its shape. It was captured by the English under Commodore (afterwards Admiral Sir Robert) Holmes in 1663, but retaken in the following year by de Ruyter. The Dutch were finally expelled in 1677 by the French under Admiral d’Estrées. Goree subsequently fell again into the hands of the English, but was definitely occupied by France in 1817 (see [Senegal]: History).


GORGE, strictly the French word for the throat considered externally. Hence it is applied in falconry to a hawk’s crop, and thus, with the sense of something greedy or ravenous, to food given to a hawk and to the contents of a hawk’s crop or stomach. It is from this sense that the expression of a person’s “gorge rising at” anything in the sense of loathing or disgust is derived. “Gorge,” from analogy with “throat,” is used with the meaning of a narrow opening as of a ravine or valley between hills; in fortification, of the neck of an outwork or bastion; and in architecture, of the narrow part of a Roman Doric column, between the echinus and the astragal. From “gorge” also comes a diminutive “gorget,” a portion of a woman’s costume in the middle ages, being a close form of wimple covering the neck and upper part of the breast, and also that part of the body armour covering the neck and collarbone (see [Gorget]). The word “gorgeous,” of splendid or magnificent appearance, comes from the O. Fr. gorgias, with the same meaning, and has very doubtfully been connected with gorge, a ruffle or neck-covering, of a supposed elaborate kind.


GÖRGEI, ARTHUR (1818-  ), Hungarian soldier, was born at Toporcz, in Upper Hungary, on the 30th of January 1818. He came of a Saxon noble family who were converts to Protestantism. In 1837 he entered the Bodyguard of Hungarian Nobles at Vienna, where he combined military service with a course of study at the university. In 1845, on the death of his father, he retired from the army and devoted himself to the study of chemistry at Prague, after which he retired to the family estates in Hungary. On the outbreak of the revolutionary War of 1848, Görgei offered his sword to the Hungarian government. Entering the Honvéd army with the rank of captain, he was employed in the purchase of arms, and soon became major and commandant of the national guards north of the Theiss. Whilst he was engaged in preventing the Croatian army from crossing the Danube, at the island of Csepel, below Pest, the wealthy Hungarian magnate Count Eugene Zichy fell into his hands, and Görgei caused him to be arraigned before a court-martial on a charge of treason and immediately hanged. After various successes over the Croatian forces, of which the most remarkable was that at Ozora, where 10,000 prisoners fell into his hands, Görgei was appointed commander of the army of the Upper Danube, but, on the advance of Prince Windischgrätz across the Leitha, he resolved to fall back, and in spite of the remonstrances of Kossuth he held to his resolution and retreated upon Waitzen. Here, irritated by what he considered undue interference with his plans, he issued (January 5th, 1849) a proclamation throwing the blame for the recent want of success upon the government, thus virtually revolting against their authority. Görgei retired to the Hungarian Erzgebirge and conducted operations on his own initiative. Meanwhile the supreme command had been conferred upon the Pole Dembinski, but the latter fought without success the battle of Kapolna, at which action Görgei’s corps arrived too late to take an effective part, and some time after this the command was again conferred upon Görgei. The campaign in the spring of 1849 was brilliantly conducted by him, and in a series of engagements, he defeated Windischgrätz. In April he won the victories of Gödöllö Izaszeg and Nagy Sarló, relieved Komorn, and again won a battle at Acs or Waitzen. Had he followed up his successes by taking the offensive against the Austrian frontier, he might perhaps have dictated terms in the Austrian capital itself. As it was, he contented himself with reducing Ofen, the Hungarian capital, in which he desired to re-establish the diet, and after effecting this capture he remained inactive for some weeks. Meanwhile, at a diet held at Debreczin, Kossuth had formally proposed the dethronement of the Habsburg dynasty and Hungary had been proclaimed a republic. Görgei had refused the field-marshal’s bâton offered him by Kossuth and was by no means in sympathy with the new régime. However, he accepted the portfolio of minister of war, while retaining the command of the troops in the field. The Russians had now intervened in the struggle and made common cause with the Austrians; the allies were advancing into Hungary on all sides, and Görgei was defeated by Haynau at Pered (20th-21st of June). Kossuth, perceiving the impossibility of continuing the struggle and being unwilling himself to make terms, resigned his position as dictator, and was succeeded by Görgei, who meanwhile had been fighting hard against the various columns of the enemy. Görgei, convinced that he could not break through the enemy’s lines, surrendered, with his army of 20,000 infantry and 2000 cavalry, to the Russian general Rüdiger at Vilagos. Görgei was not court-marshaled, as were his generals, but kept in confinement at Klagenfurt, where he lived, chiefly employed in chemical work, until 1867, when he was pardoned and returned to Hungary. The surrender, and particularly the fact that his life was spared while his generals and many of his officers and men were hanged or shot, led, perhaps naturally, to his being accused of treason by public opinion of his countrymen. After his release he played no further part in public life. Even in 1885 an attempt which was made by a large number of his old comrades to rehabilitate him was not favourably received in Hungary. After some years’ work as a railway engineer he retired to Visegrád, where he lived thenceforward in retreat. (See also [Hungary]: History.)

General Görgei wrote a justification of his operations (Mein Leben und Wirken in Ungarn 1848-1859, Leipzig, 1852), an anonymous paper under the title Was verdanken wir der Revolution? (1875), and a reply to Kossuth’s charges (signed “Joh. Demár”) in Budapesti Szemle, 1881, 25-26. Amongst those who wrote in his favour were Captain Stephan Görgei (1848 és 1849 böl, Budapest, 1885), and Colonel Aschermann (Ein offenes Wort in der Sache des Honvéd-Generals Arthur Görgei, Klausenburg, 1867).

See also A. G. Horn, Görgei, Oberkommandant d. ung. Armee (Leipzig, 1850); Kinety, Görgei’s Life and Work in Hungary (London, 1853); Szinyei, in Magyár Irók (iii. 1378), Hentaller, Görgei as a Statesman (Hungarian); Elemár, Görgei in 1848-1849 (Hungarian, Budapest, 1886).


GORGES, SIR FERDINANDO (c. 1566-1647), English colonial pioneer in America and the founder of Maine, was born in Somersetshire, England, probably in 1566. From youth both a soldier and a sailor, he was a prisoner in Spain at the age of twenty-one, having been captured by a ship of the Spanish Armada. In 1589 he was in command of a small body of troops fighting for Henry IV. of France, and after distinguishing himself at the siege of Rouen was knighted there in 1591. In 1596 he was commissioned captain and keeper of the castle and fort at Plymouth and captain of St Nicholas Isle; in 1597 he accompanied Essex on the expedition to the Azores; in 1599 assisted him in the attempt to suppress the Tyrone rebellion in Ireland, and in 1600 was implicated in Essex’s own attempt at rebellion in London. In 1603, on the accession of James I., he was suspended from his post at Plymouth, but was restored in the same year and continued to serve as “governor of the forts and island of Plymouth” until 1629, when, his garrison having been without pay for three and a half years, his fort a ruin, and all his applications for aid having been ignored, he resigned. About 1605 he began to be greatly interested in the New World; in 1606 he became a member of the Plymouth Company, and he laboured zealously for the founding of the Popham colony at the mouth of the Sagadahoc (now the Kennebec) river in 1607. For several years following the failure of that enterprise in 1608 he continued to fit out ships for fishing, trading and exploring, with colonization as the chief end in view. He was largely instrumental in procuring the new charter of 1620 for the Plymouth Company, and was at all times of its existence perhaps the most influential member of that body. He was the recipient, either solely or jointly, of several grants of territory from it, for one of which he received in 1639 the royal charter of Maine (see [Maine]). In 1635 he sought to be appointed governor-general of all New England, but the English Civil War—in which he espoused the royal cause—prevented him from ever actually holding that office. A short time before his death at Long Ashton in 1647 he wrote his Briefe Narration of the Originall Undertakings of the Advancement of Plantations into the Parts of America. He was an advocate, especially late in life, of the feudal type of colony.

See J. P. Baxter (ed.), Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine (3 vols., Boston, 1890; in the Prince Society Publications), the first volume of which is a memoir of Gorges, and the other volumes contain a reprint of the Briefe Narration, Gorges’s letters, and other documentary material.


GORGET (O. Fr. gorgete, dim. of gorge, throat), the name applied after about 1480 to the collar-piece of a suit of armour. It was generally formed of small overlapping rings of plate, and attached either to the body armour or to the armet. It was worn in the 16th and 17th centuries with the half-armour, with the plain cuirass, and even occasionally without any body armour at all. During these times it gradually became a distinctive badge for officers, and as such it survived in several armies—in the form of a small metal plate affixed to the front of the collar of the uniform coat—until after the Napoleonic wars. In the German army to-day a gorget-plate of this sort is the distinctive mark of military police, while the former officer’s gorget is represented in British uniforms by the red patches or tabs worn on the collar by staff officers and by the white patches of the midshipmen in the Royal Navy.


GORGIAS (c. 483-375 B.C.), Greek sophist and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily. In 427 he was sent by his fellow-citizens at the head of an embassy to ask Athenian protection against the aggression of the Syracusans. He subsequently settled in Athens, and supported himself by the practice of oratory and by teaching rhetoric. He died at Larissa in Thessaly. His chief claim to recognition consists in the fact that he transplanted rhetoric to Greece, and contributed to the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the language of literary prose. He was the author of a lost work On Nature or the Non-existent (Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἦ περὶ φύσεως, fragments edited by M. C. Valeton, 1876), the substance of which may be gathered from the writings of Sextus Empiricus, and also from the treatise (ascribed to Theophrastus) De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia. Gorgias is the central figure in the Platonic dialogue Gorgias. The genuineness of two rhetorical exercises (The Encomium of Helen and The Defence of Palamedes, edited with Antiphon by F. Blass in the Teubner series, 1881), which have come down under his name, is disputed.

For his philosophical opinions see [Sophists] and [Scepticism]. See also Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Eng. trans. vol. i. bk. iii. chap. vii.; Jebb’s Attic Orators, introd. to vol. i. (1893); F. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit, i. (1887); and article [Rhetoric].


GORGON, GORGONS (Gr. Γοργώ, Γοργόνες, the “terrible,” or, according to some, the “loud-roaring”), a figure or figures in Greek mythology. Homer speaks of only one Gorgon, whose head is represented in the Iliad (v. 741) as fixed in the centre of the aegis of Zeus. In the Odyssey (xi. 633) she is a monster of the under-world. Hesiod increases the number of Gorgons to three—Stheno (the mighty), Euryale (the far-springer) and Medusa (the queen), and makes them the daughters of the sea-god Phorcys and of Keto. Their home is on the farthest side of the western ocean; according to later authorities, in Libya (Hesiod, Theog. 274; Herodotus ii. 91; Pausanias ii. 21). The Attic tradition, reproduced in Euripides (Ion 1002), regarded the Gorgon as a monster, produced by Gaea to aid her sons the giants against the gods and slain by Athena (the passage is a locus classicus on the aegis of Athena).

The Gorgons are represented as winged creatures, having the form of young women; their hair consists of snakes; they are round-faced, flat-nosed, with tongues lolling out and large projecting teeth. Sometimes they have wings of gold, brazen claws and the tusks of boars. Medusa was the only one of the three who was mortal; hence Perseus was able to kill her by cutting off her head. From the blood that spurted from her neck sprang Chrysaor and Pegasus, her two sons by Poseidon. The head, which had the power of turning into stone all who looked upon it, was given to Athena, who placed it in her shield; according to another account, Perseus buried it in the market-place of Argos. The hideously grotesque original type of the Gorgoneion, as the Gorgon’s head was called, was placed on the walls of cities, and on shields and breastplates to terrify an enemy (cf. the hideous faces on Chinese soldiers’ shields), and used generally as an amulet, a protection against the evil eye. Heracles is said to have obtained a lock of Medusa’s hair (which possessed the same powers as the head) from Athena and given it to Sterope, the daughter of Cepheus, as a protection for the town of Tegea against attack (Apollodorus ii. 7. 3). According to Roscher, it was supposed, when exposed to view, to bring on a storm, which put the enemy to flight. Frazer (Golden Bough, i. 378) gives examples of the superstition that cut hair caused storms. According to the later idea of Medusa as a beautiful maiden, whose hair had been changed into snakes by Athena, the head was represented in works of art with a wonderfully handsome face, wrapped in the calm repose of death. The Rondanini Medusa at Munich is a famous specimen of this conception. Various accounts of the Gorgons were given by later ancient writers. According to Diod. Sic. (iii. 54. 55) they were female warriors living near Lake Tritonis in Libya, whose queen was Medusa; according to Alexander of Myndus, quoted in Athenaeus (v. p. 221), they were terrible wild animals whose mere look turned men to stone. Pliny (Nat. Hist. vi. 36 [31]) describes them as savage women, whose persons were covered with hair, which gave rise to the story of their snaky hair and girdle. Modern authorities have explained them as the personification of the waves of the sea or of the barren, unproductive coast of Libya; or as the awful darkness of the storm-cloud, which comes from the west and is scattered by the sun-god Perseus. More recent is the explanation of anthropologists that Medusa, whose virtue is really in her head, is derived from the ritual mask common to primitive cults.

See Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903); W. H. Roscher, Die Gorgonen und Verwandtes (1879); J. Six, De Gorgone (1885), on the types of the Gorgon’s head; articles by Roscher and Furtwängler in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie, by G. Glotz in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités, and by R. Gädechens in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyclopädie; N. G. Polites (Ὁ περὶ τῶν Γοργόνων μῦθος παρὰ τῷ Ἑλληνικῷ λαῷ, 1878) gives an account of the Gorgons, and of the various superstitions connected with them, from the modern Greek point of view, which regards them as malevolent spirits of the sea.


GORGONZOLA, a town of Lombardy, Italy, in the province of Milan, from which it is 11 m. E.N.E. by steam tramway. Pop. (1901) 5134. It is the centre of the district in which is produced the well-known Gorgonzola cheese.


GORI, a town of Russian Transcaucasia, in the government of Tiflis and 49 m. by rail N.W. of the city of Tiflis, on the river Kura; altitude, 2010 ft. Pop. (1897) 10,457. The surrounding country is very picturesque. Gori has a high school for girls, and a school for Russian and Tatar teachers. At one time celebrated for its silk and cotton stuffs, it is now famous for corn, reputed the best in Georgia, and the wine is also esteemed. The climate is excellent, delightfully cool in summer, owing to the refreshing breezes from the mountains, though these are, however, at times disagreeable in winter. Gori was founded (1123) by the Georgian king David II., the Renovater, for the Armenians who fled their country on the Persian invasion. The earliest remains of the fortress are Byzantine; it was thoroughly restored in 1634-1658, but destroyed by Nadir Shah of Persia in the 18th century. There is a church constructed in the 17th century by Capuchin missionaries from Rome. Five miles east of Gori is the remarkable rock-cut town of Uplis-tsykhe, which was a fortress in the time of Alexander the Great of Macedon, and an inhabited city in the reign of the Georgian king Bagrat III. (980-1014).


GORILLA (or Pongo), the largest of the man-like apes, and a native of West Africa from the Congo to Cameroon, whence it extends eastwards across the continent to German East Africa. Many naturalists regard the gorilla as best included in the same genus as the chimpanzee, in which case it should be known as Anthropopithecus gorilla, but by others it is regarded as the representative of a genus by itself, when its title will be Gorilla savagei, or G. gorilla. That there are local forms of gorilla is quite certain: but whether any of these are entitled to rank as distinct species may be a matter of opinion. It was long supposed that the apes encountered on an island off the west coast of Africa by Hanno, the Carthaginian, were gorillas, but in the opinion of some of those best qualified to judge, it is probable that the creatures in question were really baboons. The first real account of the gorilla appears to be the one given by an English sailor, Andrew Battel, who spent some time in the wilds of West Africa during and about the year 1590; his account being presented in Purchas’s Pilgrimage, published in the year 1613. From this it appears that Battel was familiar with both the chimpanzee and the gorilla, the former of which he terms engeco and the latter pongo—names which ought apparently to be adopted for these two species in place of those now in use. Between Battel’s time and 1846 nothing appears to have been heard of the gorilla or pongo, but in that year a missionary at the Gabun accidentally discovered a skull of the huge ape; and in 1847 a sketch of that specimen, together with two others, came into the hands of Sir R. Owen, by whom the name Gorilla savagei was proposed for the new ape in 1848. Dr Thomas Savage, a missionary at the Gabun, who sent Owen information with regard to the original skull, had, however, himself proposed the name Troglodytes gorilla in 1847. The first complete skeleton of a gorilla sent to Europe was received at the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1851, and the first complete skin appears to have reached the British Museum in 1858. Paul B. du Chaillu’s account (1861) of his journeys in the Gabun region popularized the knowledge of the existence of the gorilla. Male gorillas largely exceed the females in size, and attain a height of from 5½ ft. to 6½ ft., or perhaps even more. Some of the features distinguishing the gorilla from the mere gorilla-like chimpanzees will be found mentioned in the article [Primates]. Among them are the small ears, elongated head, the presence of a deep groove alongside the nostrils, the small size of the thumb, and the great length of the arm, which reaches half-way down the shin-bone (tibia) in the erect posture. In old males the eyes are overhung by a beetling penthouse of bone, the hinder half of the middle line of the skull bears a wall-like bony ridge for the attachment of the powerful jaw-muscles, and the tusks, or canines, are of monstrous size, recalling those of a carnivorous animal. The general colour is blackish, with a more or less marked grey or brownish tinge on the hair of the shoulders, and sometimes of chestnut on the head. Mr G. L. Bates (in Proc. Zool. Soc., 1905, vol. i.) states that gorillas only leave the depths of the forest to enter the outlying clearings in the neighbourhood of human settlements when they are attracted by some special fruit or succulent plant; the favourite being the fruit of the “mejom,” a tall cane-like plant (perhaps a kind of Amomum) which grows abundantly on deserted clearings. At one isolated village the natives, who were unarmed, reported that they not unfrequently saw and heard the gorillas, which broke down the stalks of the plantains in the rear of the habitations to tear out and eat the tender heart. On the old clearings of another village Mr Bates himself, although he did not see a gorilla, saw the fresh tracks of these great apes and the torn stems and discarded fruit rinds of the “mejoms,” as well as the broken stalks of the latter, which had been used for beds. On another occasion he came across the bed of an old gorilla which had been used only the night before, as was proved by a negro woman, who on the previous evening had heard the animal breaking and treading down the stalks to form its couch. According to native report, the gorillas sleep on these beds, which are of sufficient thickness to raise them a foot or two above the ground, in a sitting posture, with the head inclined forwards on the breast. In the first case Mr Bates states that the tracks and beds indicated the presence of three or four gorillas, some of which were small. This account does not by any means accord with one given by von Koppenfels, in which it is stated that while the old male gorilla sleeps in a sitting posture at the base of a tree-trunk (no mention being made of a bed), the female and young ones pass the night in a nest in the tree several yards above the ground, made by bending the boughs together and covering them with twigs and moss. Mr Bates’s account, as being based on actual inspection of the beds, is probably the more trustworthy. Even when asleep and snoring, gorillas are difficult to approach, since they awake at the slightest rustle, and an attempt to surround the one heard making his bed by the woman resulted in failure. Most gorillas killed by natives are believed by Mr Bates to have been encountered suddenly in the daytime on the ground or in low trees in the outlying clearings. Many natives, even if armed, refuse, however, to molest an adult male gorilla, on account of its ferocity when wounded. Mr Bates, like Mr Winwood Reade, refused to credit du Chaillu’s account of his having killed gorillas, and stated that the only instance he knew of one of these animals being slain by a European was an old male (now in Mr Walter Rothschild’s museum at Tring) shot by the German trader Paschen in the Yaunde district, of which an illustrated account was published in 1901. Mr E. J. Corns states, however, that two European traders, apparently in the “’eighties” of the 19th century, were in the habit of surrounding and capturing these animals as occasion offered.[1] Fully adult gorillas have never been seen alive in captivity—and perhaps never will be, as the creature is ferocious and morose to a degree. So long ago as the year 1855, when the species was known to zoologists only by its skeleton, a gorilla was actually living in England. This animal, a young female, came from the Gabun, and was kept for some months in Wombwell’s travelling menagerie, where it was treated as a pet. On its death, the body was sent to Mr Charles Waterton, of Walton Hall, by whom the skin was mounted in a grotesque manner, and the skeleton given to the Leeds museum. Apparently, however, it was not till several years later that the skin was recognized by Mr A. D. Bartlett as that of a gorilla; the animal having probably been regarded by its owner as a chimpanzee. A young male was purchased by the Zoological Society in October 1887, from Mr Cross, the Liverpool dealer in animals. At the time of arrival it was supposed to be about three years old, and stood 2½ ft. high. A second, a male, supposed to be rather older, was acquired in March 1896, having been brought to Liverpool from the French Congo. It is described as having been thoroughly healthy at the date of its arrival, and of an amiable and tractable disposition. Neither survived long. Two others were received in the Zoological Society’s menagerie in 1904, and another was housed there for a short time in the following year, while a fifth was received in 1906. Falkenstein’s gorilla, exhibited at the Westminster aquarium under the name of pongo, and afterwards at the Berlin aquarium, survived for eighteen months. “Pussi,” the gorilla of the Breslau Zoological Gardens, holds a record for longevity, with over seven years of menagerie life. Writing in 1903 Mr W. T. Hornaday stated that but one live gorilla, and that a tiny infant, had ever landed in the United States; and it lived only five days after arrival.

(R. L.*)


[1] In 1905 the Rev. Geo. Grenfell reported that he had that summer shot a gorilla in the Bwela country, east of the Mongala affluent of the Congo.


GORINCHEM, or Gorcum, a fortified town of Holland in the province of south Holland, on the right bank of the Merwede at the confluence of the Linge, 16 m. by rail W. of Dordrecht. It is connected by the Zederik and Merwede canals with Amsterdam, and steamers ply hence in every direction. Pop. (1900) 11,987. Gorinchem possesses several interesting old houses, and overlooking the river are some fortified gateways of the 17th century. The principal buildings are the old church of St Vincent, containing the monuments of the lords of Arkel; the town hall, a prison, custom-house, barracks and a military hospital. The charitable and benevolent institutions are numerous, and there are also a library and several learned associations. Gorinchem possesses a good harbour, and besides working in gold and silver, carries on a considerable trade in grain, hemp, cheese, potatoes, cattle and fish, the salmon fishery being noted. Woerkum, or Woudrichem, a little below the town on the left bank of the Merwede, is famous for its quaint old buildings, which are decorated with mosaics.


GORING, GEORGE GORING, Lord (1608-1657), English Royalist soldier, son of George Goring, earl of Norwich, was born on the 14th of July 1608. He soon became famous at court for his prodigality and dissolute manners. His father-in-law, Richard Boyle, earl of Cork, procured for him a post in the Dutch army with the rank of colonel. He was permanently lamed by a wound received at Breda in 1637, and returned to England early in 1639, when he was made governor of Portsmouth. He served in the Scottish war, and already had a considerable reputation when he was concerned in the “Army Plot.” Officers of the army stationed at York proposed to petition the king and parliament for the maintenance of the royal authority. A second party was in favour of more violent measures, and Goring, in the hope of being appointed lieutenant-general, proposed to march the army on London and overawe the parliament during Strafford’s trial. This proposition being rejected by his fellow officers, he betrayed the proceedings to Mountjoy Blount, earl of Newport, who passed on the information indirectly to Pym in April. Colonel Goring was thereupon called on to give evidence before the Commons, who commended him for his services to the Commonwealth. This betrayal of his comrades induced confidence in the minds of the parliamentary leaders, who sent him back to his Portsmouth command. Nevertheless he declared for the king in August. He surrendered Portsmouth to the parliament in September 1642 and went to Holland to recruit for the Royalist army, returning to England in December. Appointed to a cavalry command by the earl of Newcastle, he defeated Fairfax at Seacroft Moor near Leeds in March 1643, but in May he was taken prisoner at Wakefield on the capture of the town by Fairfax. In April 1644 he effected an exchange. At Marston Moor he commanded the Royalist left, and charged with great success, but, allowing his troopers to disperse in search of plunder, was routed by Cromwell at the close of the battle. In November 1644, on his father’s elevation to the earldom of Norwich, he became Lord Goring. The parliamentary authorities, however, refused to recognize the creation of the earldom, and continued to speak of the father as Lord Goring and the son as General Goring. In August he had been dispatched by Prince Rupert, who recognized his ability, to join Charles in the south, and in spite of his dissolute and insubordinate character he was appointed to supersede Henry, Lord Wilmot, as lieut.-general of the Royalist horse (see [Great Rebellion]). He secured some successes in the west, and in January 1645 advanced through Hampshire and occupied Farnham; but want of money compelled him to retreat to Salisbury and thence to Exeter. The excesses committed by his troops seriously injured the Royalist cause, and his exactions made his name hated throughout the west. He had himself prepared to besiege Taunton in March, yet when in the next month he was desired by Prince Charles, who was at Bristol, to send reinforcements to Sir Richard Grenville for the siege of Taunton, he obeyed the order only with ill-humour. Later in the month he was summoned with his troops to the relief of the king at Oxford. Lord Goring had long been intriguing for an independent command, and he now secured from the king what was practically supreme authority in the west. It was alleged by the earl of Newport that he was willing to transfer his allegiance once more to the parliament. It is not likely that he meditated open treason, but he was culpably negligent and occupied with private ambitions and jealousies. He was still engaged in desultory operations against Taunton when the main campaign of 1645 opened. For the part taken by Goring’s army in the operations of the Naseby campaign see [Great Rebellion]. After the decisive defeat of the king, the army of Fairfax marched into the west and defeated Goring in a disastrous fight at Langport on the 10th of July. He made no further serious resistance to the parliamentary general, but wasted his time in frivolous amusements, and in November he obtained leave to quit his disorganized forces and retire to France on the ground of health. His father’s services secured him the command of some English regiments in the Spanish service. He died at Madrid in July or August 1657. Clarendon gives him a very unpleasing character, declaring that “Goring ... would, without hesitation, have broken any trust, or done any act of treachery to have satisfied an ordinary passion or appetite; and in truth wanted nothing but industry (for he had wit, and courage, and understanding and ambition, uncontrolled by any fear of God or man) to have been as eminent and successful in the highest attempt of wickedness as any man in the age he lived in or before. Of all his qualifications dissimulation was his masterpiece; in which he so much excelled, that men were not ordinarily ashamed, or out of countenance, with being deceived but twice by him.”

See the life by C. H. Firth in the Dictionary of National Biography; Dugdale’s Baronage, where there are some doubtful stories of his life in Spain; the Clarendon State Papers; Clarendon’s History of the Great Rebellion; and S. R. Gardiner’s History of the Great Civil War.


GORKI, MAXIM (1868-  ), the pen-name of the Russian novelist Alexei Maximovich Pyeshkov, who was born at Nizhni-Novgorod on the 26th of March 1868. His father was a dyer, but he lost both his parents in childhood, and in his ninth year was sent to assist in a boot-shop. We find him afterwards in a variety of callings, but devouring books of all sorts greedily, whenever they fell into his hands. He ran away from the boot-shop and went to help a land-surveyor. He was then a cook on board a steamer and afterwards a gardener. In his fifteenth year he tried to enter a school at Kazan, but was obliged to betake himself again to his drudgery. He became a baker, than hawked about kvas, and helped the barefooted tramps and labourers at the docks. From these he drew some of his most striking pictures, and learned to give sketches of humble life generally with the fidelity of a Defoe. After a long course of drudgery he had the good fortune to obtain the place of secretary to a barrister at Nizhni-Novgorod. This was the turning-point of his fortunes, as he found a sympathetic master who helped him. He also became acquainted with the novelist Korolenko, who assisted him in his literary efforts. His first story was Makar Chudra, which was published in the journal Kavkaz. He contributed to many periodicals and finally attracted attention by his tale called Chelkash, which appeared in Russkoe Bogatsvo (“Russian wealth”). This was followed by a series of tales in which he drew with extraordinary vigour the life of the bosniaki, or tramps. He has sometimes described other classes of society, tradesmen and the educated classes, but not with equal success. There are some vigorous pictures, however, of the trading class in his Foma Gordeyev. But his favourite type is the rebel, the man in revolt against society, and him he describes from personal knowledge, and enlists our sympathies with him. We get such a type completely in Konovalov. Gorki is always preaching that we must have ideals—something better than everyday life, and this view is brought out in his play At the Lowest Depths, which had great success at Moscow, but was coldly received at St Petersburg.

For a good criticism of Gorki see Ideas and Realities in Russian Literature, by Prince Kropotkin. Many of his works have been translated into English.


GÖRLITZ, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia, on the left bank of the Neisse, 62 m. E. from Dresden on the railway to Breslau, and at the junction of lines to Berlin, Zittau and Halle. Pop. (1885) 55,702, (1905) 80,931. The Neisse at this point is crossed by a railway bridge 1650 ft. long and 120 ft. high, with 32 arches. Görlitz is one of the handsomest, and, owing to the extensive forests of 70,000 acres, which are the property of the municipality, one of the wealthiest towns in Germany. It is surrounded by beautiful walks and fine gardens, and although its old walls and towers have now been demolished, many of its ancient buildings remain to form a picturesque contrast with the signs of modern industry. From the hill called Landskrone, about 1500 ft. high, an extensive prospect is obtained of the surrounding country. The principal buildings are the fine Gothic church of St Peter and St Paul, dating from the 15th century, with two stately towers, a famous organ and a very heavy bell; the Frauen Kirche, erected about the end of the 15th century, and possessing a fine portal and choir in pierced work; the Kloster Kirche, restored in 1868, with handsome choir stalls and a carved altar dating from 1383; and the Roman Catholic church, founded in 1853, in the Roman style of architecture, with beautiful glass windows and oil-paintings. The old town hall (Rathaus) contains a very valuable library, having at its entrance a fine flight of steps. There is also a new town hall which was erected in 1904-1906. Other buildings are: the old bastion, named Kaisertrutz, now used as a guardhouse and armoury; the gymnasium buildings in the Gothic style erected in 1851; the Ruhmeshalle with the Kaiser Friedrich museum, the house of the estates of the province (Ständehaus), two theatres and the barracks. Near the town is the chapel of the Holy Cross, where there is a model of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem made during the 15th century. In the public park there is a bust of Schiller, a monument to Alexander von Humboldt, and a statue of the mystic Jakob Böhme (1575-1624); a monument has been erected in the town in commemoration of the war of 1870-71, and also one to the emperor William I. and a statue of Prince Frederick Charles. In connexion with the natural history society there is a valuable museum, and the scientific institute possesses a large library and a rich collection of antiquities, coins and articles of virtu. Görlitz, next to Breslau, is the largest and most flourishing commercial town of Silesia, and is also regarded as classic ground for the study of German Renaissance architecture. Besides cloth, which forms its staple article of commerce, it has manufactories of various linen and woollen wares, machines, railway wagons, glass, sago, tobacco, leather, chemicals and tiles.

Görlitz existed as a village from a very early period, and at the beginning of the 12th century received civic rights. It was then known as Drebenau, but on being rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1131 it received the name of Zgorzelice. About the end of the 12th century it was strongly fortified, and for a short time it was the capital of a duchy of Görlitz. It was several times besieged and taken during the Thirty Years’ War, and it also suffered considerably in the Seven Years’ War. In the battle which took place near it between the Austrians and Prussians on the 7th of September 1757, Hans Karl von Winterfeldt, the general of Frederick the Great, was slain. In 1815 the town, with the greater part of Upper Lusatia, came into the possession of Prussia.

See Neumann, Geschichte von Görlitz (1850).


GÖRRES, JOHANN JOSEPH VON (1776-1848), German writer, was born on the 25th of January 1776, at Coblenz. His father was a man of moderate means, who sent his son to a Latin college under the direction of the Roman Catholic clergy. The sympathies of the young Görres were from the first strongly with the French Revolution, and the dissoluteness and irreligion of the French exiles in the Rhineland confirmed him in his hatred of princes. He harangued the revolutionary clubs, and insisted on the unity of interests which should ally all civilized states to one another. He then commenced a republican journal called Das rote Blatt, and afterwards Rübezahl, in which he strongly condemned the administration of the Rhenish provinces by France.

After the peace of Campo Formio (1797) there was some hope that the Rhenish provinces would be constituted into an independent republic. In 1799 the provinces sent an embassy, of which Görres was a member, to Paris to put their case before the directory. The embassy reached Paris on the 20th of November 1799; two days before this Napoleon had assumed the supreme direction of affairs. After much delay the embassy was received by him; but the only answer they obtained was “that they might rely on perfect justice, and that the French government would never lose sight of their wants.” Görres on his return published a tract called Resultate meiner Sendung nach Paris, in which he reviewed the history of the French Revolution. During the thirteen years of Napoleon’s dominion Görres lived a retired life, devoting himself chiefly to art or science. In 1801 he married Catherine de Lasaulx, and was for some years teacher at a secondary school in Coblenz; in 1806 he moved to Heidelberg, where he lectured at the university. As a leading member of the Heidelberg Romantic group, he edited together with K. Brentano and L. von Arnim the famous Zeitung für Einsiedler (subsequently re-named Tröst-Einsamkeit), and in 1807 he published Die teutschen Volksbücher. He returned to Coblenz in 1808, and again found occupation as a teacher in a secondary school, supported by civic funds. He now studied Persian, and in two years published a Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt, which was followed ten years later by Das Heldenbuch von Iran, a translation of part of the Shahnama, the epic of Firdousi. In 1813 he actively took up the cause of national independence, and in the following year founded Der rheinische Merkur. The intense earnestness of the paper, the bold outspokenness of its hostility to Napoleon, and its fiery eloquence secured for it almost instantly a position and influence unique in the history of German newspapers. Napoleon himself called it la cinquième puissance. The ideal it insisted on was a united Germany, with a representative government, but under an emperor after the fashion of other days,—for Görres now abandoned his early advocacy of republicanism. When Napoleon was at Elba, Görres wrote an imaginary proclamation issued by him to the people, the intense irony of which was so well veiled that many Frenchmen mistook it for an original utterance of the emperor. He inveighed bitterly against the second peace of Paris (1815), declaring that Alsace and Lorraine should have been demanded back from France.

Stein was glad enough to use the Merkur at the time of the meeting of the congress of Vienna as a vehicle for giving expression to his hopes. But Hardenberg, in May 1815, warned Görres to remember that he was not to arouse hostility against France, but only against Bonaparte. There was also in the Merkur an antipathy to Prussia, a continual expression of the desire that an Austrian prince should assume the imperial title, and also a tendency to pronounced liberalism—all of which made it most distasteful to Hardenberg, and to his master King Frederick William III. Görres disregarded warnings sent to him by the censorship and continued the paper in all its fierceness. Accordingly it was suppressed early in 1816, at the instance of the Prussian government; and soon after Görres was dismissed from his post as teacher at Coblenz. From this time his writings were his sole means of support, and he became a most diligent political pamphleteer. In the wild excitement which followed Kotzebue’s assassination, the reactionary decrees of Carlsbad were framed, and these were the subject of Görres’s celebrated pamphlet Teutschland und die Revolution (1820). In this work he reviewed the circumstances which had led to the murder of Kotzebue, and, while expressing all possible horror at the deed itself, he urged that it was impossible and undesirable to repress the free utterance of public opinion by reactionary measures. The success of the work was very marked, despite its ponderous style. It was suppressed by the Prussian government, and orders were issued for the arrest of Görres and the seizure of his papers. He escaped to Strassburg, and thence went to Switzerland. Two more political tracts, Europa und die Revolution (1821) and In Sachen der Rheinprovinzen und in eigener Angelegenheit (1822), also deserve mention.

In Görres’s pamphlet Die heilige Allianz und die Völker auf dem Kongress zu Verona he asserted that the princes had met together to crush the liberties of the people, and that the people must look elsewhere for help. The “elsewhere” was to Rome; and from this time Görres became a vehement Ultramontane writer. He was summoned to Munich by King Ludwig of Bavaria as Professor of History in the university, and there his writing enjoyed very great popularity. His Christliche Mystik (1836-1842) gave a series of biographies of the saints, together with an exposition of Roman Catholic mysticism. But his most celebrated ultramontane work was a polemical one. Its occasion was the deposition and imprisonment by the Prussian government of the archbishop Clement Wenceslaus, in consequence of the refusal of that prelate to sanction in certain instances the marriages of Protestants and Roman Catholics. Görres in his Athanasius (1837) fiercely upheld the power of the church, although the liberals of later date who have claimed Görres as one of their own school deny that he ever insisted on the absolute supremacy of Rome. Athanasius went through several editions, and originated a long and bitter controversy. In the Historisch-politische Blätter, a Munich journal, Görres and his son Guido (1805-1852) continually upheld the claims of the church. Görres received from the king the order of merit for his services. He died on the 29th of January 1848.

Görres’s Gesammelte Schriften (only his political writings) appeared in six volumes (1854-1860), to which three volumes of Gesammelte Briefe were subsequently added (1858-1874). Cp. J. Galland, Joseph von Görres (1876, 2nd ed. 1877); J. N. Sepp, Görres und seine Zeitgenossen (1877), and by the same author, Görres, in the series Geisteshelden (1896). A Görres-Gesellschaft was founded in 1876.


GORSAS, ANTOINE JOSEPH (1752-1793), French publicist and politician, was born at Limoges (Haute-Vienne) on the 24th of March 1752, the son of a shoemaker. He established himself as a private tutor in Paris, and presently set up a school for the army at Versailles, which was attended by commoners as well as nobles. In 1781 he was imprisoned for a short time in the Bicêtre on an accusation of corrupting the morals of his pupils, his real offence being the writing of satirical verse. These circumstances explain the violence of his anti-monarchical sentiment. At the opening of the states-general he began to publish the Courrier de Versailles à Paris et de Paris à Versailles, in which appeared on the 4th of October 1789 the account of the banquet of the royal bodyguard. Gorsas is said to have himself read it in public at the Palais Royal, and to have headed one of the columns that marched on Versailles. He then changed the name of his paper to the Courrier des quatre-vingt-trois départements, continuing his incendiary propaganda, which had no small share in provoking the popular insurrections of June and August 1792. During the September massacres he wrote in his paper that the prisons were the centre of an anti-national conspiracy and that the people exercised a just vengeance on the guilty. On the 10th of September 1792 he was elected to the Convention for the department of Seine-et-Oise, and on the 10th of January 1793 was elected one of its secretaries. He sat at first with the Mountain, but having been long associated with Roland and Brissot, his agreement with the Girondists became gradually more pronounced; during the trial of Louis XVI. he dissociated himself more and more from the principles of the Mountain, and he voted for the king’s detention during the war and subsequent banishment. A violent attack on Marat in the Courrier led to an armed raid on his printing establishment on the 9th of March 1793. The place was sacked, but Gorsas escaped the popular fury by flight. The facts being reported to the Convention, little sympathy was shown to Gorsas, and a resolution (which was evaded) was passed forbidding representatives to occupy themselves with journalism. On the 2nd of June he was ordered by the Convention to hold himself under arrest with other members of his party. He escaped to Normandy to join Buzot, and after the defeat of the Girondists at Pacy-sur-Eure he found shelter in Brittany. He was imprudent enough to return to Paris in the autumn, where he was arrested on the 6th of October and guillotined the next day.

See the Moniteur, No. 268 (1792), Nos. 20, 70 new series 18 (1793); M. Tourneux, Bibl. de l’hist. de Paris, 10,291 seq. (1894).


GORST, SIR JOHN ELDON (1835-  ). English statesman, was born at Preston in 1835, the son of Edward Chaddock Gorst, who took the name of Lowndes on succeeding to the family estate in 1853. He graduated third wrangler from St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1857, and was admitted to a fellowship. After beginning to read for the bar in London, his father’s illness and death led to his sailing to New Zealand, where he married in 1860 Mary Elizabeth Moore. The Maoris had at that time set up a king of their own in the Waikato district and Gorst, who had made friends with the chief Tamihana (William Thomson), acted as an intermediary between the Maoris and the government. Sir George Grey made him inspector of schools, then resident magistrate, and eventually civil commissioner in Upper Waikato. Tamihana’s influence secured his safety in the Maori outbreak of 1863. In 1908 he published a volume of recollections, under the title of New Zealand Revisited: Recollections of the Days of my Youth. He then returned to England and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1865, becoming Q.C. in 1875. He stood unsuccessfully for Hastings in the Conservative interest in 1865, and next year entered parliament as member for the borough of Cambridge, but failed to secure re-election at the dissolution of 1868. After the Conservative defeat of that year he was entrusted by Disraeli with the reorganization of the party machinery, and in five years of hard work he paved the way for the Conservative success at the general election of 1874. At a bye-election in 1875 he re-entered parliament as member for Chatham, which he continued to represent until 1892. He joined Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff, Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr Arthur Balfour in the “Fourth Party,” and he became solicitor-general in the administration of 1885-1886 and was knighted. On the formation of the second Salisbury administration (1886) he became under-secretary for India and in 1891 financial secretary to the Treasury. At the general election of 1892 he became member for Cambridge University. He was deputy chairman of committees in the House of Commons from 1888 to 1891, and on the formation of the third Salisbury administration in 1895 he became vice-president of the committee of the council on education (until 1902). Sir John Gorst adhered to the principles of Tory democracy which he had advocated in the days of the fourth party, and continued to exhibit an active interest in the housing of the poor, the education and care of their children, and in social questions generally, both in parliament and in the press. But he was always exceedingly “independent” in his political action. He objected to Mr Chamberlain’s proposals for tariff reform, and lost his seat at Cambridge at the general election of 1906 to a tariff reformer. He then withdrew from the vice-chancellorship of the Primrose League, of which he had been one of the founders, on the ground that it no longer represented the policy of Lord Beaconsfield. In 1910 he contested Preston as a Liberal, but failed to secure election.

His elder son, Sir J. Eldon Gorst (b. 1861), was financial adviser to the Egyptian government from 1898 to 1904, when he became assistant under-secretary of state for foreign affairs. In 1907 he succeeded Lord Cromer as British agent and consul-general in Egypt.

An account of Sir John Gorst’s connexion with Lord Randolph Churchill will be found in the Fourth Party (1906), by his younger son, Harold E. Gorst.


GORTON, SAMUEL (c. 1600-1677), English sectary and founder of the American sect of Gortonites, was born about 1600 at Gorton, Lancashire. He was first apprenticed to a clothier in London, but, fearing persecution for his religious convictions, he sailed for Boston, Massachusetts, in 1636. Constantly involved in religious disputes, he fled in turn to Plymouth, and (in 1637-1638) to Aquidneck (Newport), where he was publicly whipped for insulting the clergy and magistrates. In 1643 he bought land from the Narraganset Indians at Shawomet—now Warwick—where he was joined by a number of his followers; but he quarrelled with the Indians and the authorities at Boston sent soldiers to arrest Gorton and six of his companions. He served a term of imprisonment for heresy at Charlestown, after which he was ejected from the colony. In England in 1646 he published the curious tract “Simplicities Defence against Seven Headed Policy” (reprinted in 1835), giving an account of his grievances against the Massachusetts government. In 1648 he returned to New England with a letter of protection from the earl of Warwick, and joining his former companions at Shawomet, which he named Warwick, in honour of the earl, he remained there till his death at the end of 1677. He is chiefly remembered as the founder of a small sect called the Gortonites, which survived till the end of the 18th century. They had a great contempt for the regular clergy and for all outward forms of religion, holding that the true believers partook of the perfection of God.

Among his quaint writings are: An Incorruptible Key composed of the CX. Psalms wherewith you may open the rest of the Scriptures (1647), and Saltmarsh returned from the Dead, with its sequel, An Antidote against the Common Plague of the World (1657). See L. G. Jones, Samuel Gorton: a forgotten Founder of our Liberties (Providence, 1896).


GORTON, an urban district in the Gorton parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, forming an eastern suburb of Manchester. Pop. (1901) 26,564. It is largely a manufacturing district, having cotton mills and iron, engineering and chemical works.


GORTYNA, or Gortyn, an important ancient city on the southern side of the island of Crete. It stood on the banks of the small river Lethaeus (Mitropolipotamo), about three hours distant from the sea, with which it communicated by means of its two harbours, Metallum and Lebena. It had temples of Apollo Pythius, Artemis and Zeus. Near the town was the famous fountain of Sauros, inclosed by fruit-bearing poplars; and not far from this was another spring, overhung by an evergreen plane tree which in popular belief marked the scene of the amours of Zeus and Europa. Gortyna was, next to Cnossus, the largest and most powerful city of Crete. The two cities combined to subdue the rest of the island; but when they had gained their object they quarrelled with each other, and the history of both towns is from this time little more than a record of their feuds. Neither plays a conspicuous part in the history of Greece. Under the Romans Gortyna became the metropolis of the island. Extensive ruins may still be seen at the modern village of Hagii Deka, and here was discovered the great inscription containing chapters of its ancient laws. Though partly ruinous, the church of St Titus is a very interesting monument of early Christian architecture, dating from about the 4th century.

See also [Crete], and for a full account of the laws see [Greek Law].


GÖRTZ, GEORG HEINRICH VON, Baron von Schlitz (1668-1719), Holstein statesman, was educated at Jena. He entered the Holstein-Gottorp service, and after the death of the duchess Hedwig Sophia, Charles XII.’s sister, became very influential during the minority of her son Duke Charles Frederick. His earlier policy aimed at strengthening Holstein-Gottorp at the expense of Denmark. With this object, during Charles XII.’s stay at Altranstädt (1706-1707), he tried to divert the king’s attention to the Holstein question, and six years later, when the Swedish commander, Magnus Stenbock, crossed the Elbe, Görtz rendered him as much assistance as was compatible with not openly breaking with Denmark, even going so far as to surrender the fortress of Tönning to the Swedes. Görtz next attempted to undermine the grand alliance against Sweden by negotiating with Russia, Prussia and Saxony for the purpose of isolating Denmark, or even of turning the arms of the allies against her, a task by no means impossible in view of the strained relations between Denmark and the tsar. The plan foundered, however, on the refusal of Charles XII. to save the rest of his German domains by ceding Stettin to Prussia. Another simultaneous plan of procuring the Swedish crown for Duke Charles Frederick also came to nought. Görtz first suggested the marriage between the duke of Holstein and the tsarevna Anne of Russia, and negotiations were begun in St Petersburg with that object. On the arrival of Charles XII. from Turkey at Stralsund, Görtz was the first to visit him, and emerged from his presence chief minister or “grand-vizier” as the Swedes preferred to call the bold and crafty satrap, whose absolute devotion to the Swedish king took no account of the intense wretchedness of the Swedish nation. Görtz, himself a man of uncommon audacity, seems to have been fascinated by the heroic element in Charles’s nature and was determined, if possible, to save him from his difficulties. He owed his extraordinary influence to the fact that he was the only one of Charles’s advisers who believed, or pretended to believe, that Sweden was still far from exhaustion, or at any rate had a sufficient reserve of power to give support to an energetic diplomacy—Charles’s own opinion, in fact. Görtz’s position, however, was highly peculiar. Ostensibly, he was only the Holstein minister at Charles’s court, in reality he was everything in Sweden except a Swedish subject—finance minister, plenipotentiary to foreign powers, factotum, and responsible to the king alone, though he had not a line of instructions. But he was just the man for a hero in extremities, and his whole course of procedure was, of necessity, revolutionary. His chief financial expedient was to debase, or rather ruin, the currency by issuing copper tokens redeemable in better times; but it was no fault of his that Charles XII., during his absence, flung upon the market too enormous an amount of this copper money for Görtz to deal with. By the end of 1718 it seemed as if Görtz’s system could not go on much longer, and the hatred of the Swedes towards him was so intense and universal that they blamed him for Charles XII.’s tyranny as well as for his own. Görtz hoped, however, to conclude peace with at least some of Sweden’s numerous enemies before the crash came and then, by means of fresh combinations, to restore Sweden to her rank as a great power. It must be admitted that, in pursuance of his “system,” Görtz displayed a genius for diplomacy which would have done honour to a Metternich or a Talleyrand. He desired peace with Russia first of all, and at the congress of Åland even obtained relatively favourable terms, only to have them rejected by his obstinately optimistic master. Simultaneously, Görtz was negotiating with Cardinal Alberoni and with the whigs in England; but all his ingenious combinations collapsed like a house of cards on the sudden death of Charles XII. The whole fury of the Swedish nation instantly fell upon Görtz. After a trial before a special commission which was a parody of justice—the accused was not permitted to have any legal assistance or the use of writing materials—he was condemned to decapitation and promptly executed. Perhaps Görtz deserved his fate for “unnecessarily making himself the tool of an unheard-of despotism,” but his death was certainly a judicial murder, and some historians even regard him as a political martyr.

See R. N. Bain, Charles XII. (London, 1895), and Scandinavia, chap. 12 (Cambridge, 1905); B. von Beskow, Freherre Georg Heinrich von Görtz (Stockholm, 1868).

(R. N. B.)


GÖRZ (Ital. Gorizia; Slovene, Gorica), the capital of the Austrian crownland of Görz and Gradisca, about 390 m. S.W. of Vienna by rail. Pop (1900) 25,432, two-thirds Italians, the remainder mostly Slovenes and Germans. It is picturesquely situated on the left bank of the Isonzo in a fertile valley, 35 m. N.N.W. of Trieste by rail. It is the seat of an archbishop and possesses an interesting cathedral, built in the 14th century and the richly decorated church of St Ignatius, built in the 17th century by the Jesuits. On an eminence, which dominates the town, is situated the old castle, formerly the seat of the counts of Görz, now partly used as barracks. Owing to the mildness of its climate Görz has become a favourite winter-resort, and has received the name of the Nice of Austria. Its mean annual temperature is 55° F.; while the mean winter temperature is 38.7° F. It is adorned with several pretty gardens with a luxuriant southern vegetation. On a height to the N. of the town is situated the Franciscan convent of Castagnavizza, in whose chapel lie the remains of Charles X. of France (d. 1836), the last Bourbon king, of the duke of Angoulême (d. 1844), his son, and of the duke of Chambord (d. 1883). Seven miles to the north of Görz is the Monte Santo (2275 ft.), a much-frequented place on which stands a pilgrimage church. The industries include cotton and silk weaving, sugar refining, brewing, the manufacture of leather and the making of rosoglio. There is also a considerable trade in wooden work, vegetables, early fruit and wine. Görz is mentioned for the first time at the beginning of the 11th century, and received its charter as a town in 1307. During the middle ages the greater part of its population was German.


GÖRZ AND GRADISCA, a county and crownland of Austria, bounded E. by Carniola, S. by Istria, the Triestine territory and the Adriatic, W. by Italy and N. by Carinthia. It has an area of 1140 sq. m. The coast line, though extending for 25 m., does not present any harbour of importance. It is fringed by alluvial deposits and lagoons, which are for the most part of very modern formation, for as late as the 4th or 5th centuries Aquileia was a great seaport. The harbour of Grado is the only one accessible to the larger kind of coasting craft. On all sides, except towards the south-west where it unites with the Friulian lowland, it is surrounded by mountains, and about four-sixths of its area is occupied by mountains and hills. From the Julian Alps, which traverse the province in the north, the country descends in successive terraces towards the sea, and may roughly be divided into the upper highlands, the lower highlands, the hilly district and the lowlands. The principal peaks in the Julian Alps are the Monte Canin (8469 ft.), the Manhart (8784 ft.), the Jalouc (8708 ft.), the Krn (7367 ft.), the Matajur (5386 ft.), and the highest peak in the whole range, the Triglav or Terglou (9394 ft.). The Julian Alps are crossed by the Predil Pass (3811 ft.), through which passes the principal road from Carinthia to the Coastland. The southern part of the province belongs to the Karst region, and here are situated the famous cascades and grottoes of Sankt Kanzian, where the river Reka begins its subterranean course. The principal river of the province is the Isonzo, which rises in the Triglav, and pursues a strange zigzag course for a distance of 78 m. before it reaches the Adriatic. At Görz the Isonzo is still 138 ft. above the sea, and it is navigable only in its lowest section, where it takes the name of the Sdobba. Its principal affluents are the Idria, the Wippach and the Torre with its tributary the Judrio, which forms for a short distance the boundary between Austria and Italy. Of special interest not only in itself but for the frequent allusions to it in classical literature is the Timavus or Timavo, which appears near Duino, and after a very short course flows into the Gulf of Trieste. In ancient times it appears, according to the well-known description of Virgil (Aen. i. 244) to have rushed from the mountain by nine separate mouths and with much noise and commotion, but at present it usually issues from only three mouths and flows quiet and still. It is strange enough, however, to see the river coming out full formed from the rock, and capable at its very source of bearing vessels on its bosom. According to a probable hypothesis it is a continuation of the above-mentioned river Reka, which is lost near Sankt Kanzian.

Agriculture, and specially viticulture, is the principal occupation of the population, and the vine is here planted not only in regular vineyards, but is introduced in long lines through the ordinary fields and carried up the hills in terraces locally called ronchi. The rearing of the silk-worm, especially in the lowlands, constitutes another great source of revenue, and furnishes the material for the only extensive industry of the country. The manufacture of silk is carried on at Görz, and in and around the village of Haidenschaft. Görz and Gradisca had in 1900 a population of 232,338, which is equivalent to 203 inhabitants per square mile. According to nationality about two-thirds were Slovenes, and the remainder Italians, with only about 2200 Germans. Almost the whole of the population (99.6%) belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. The local diet, of which the archbishop of Görz is a member ex-officio, is composed of 22 members, and the crownland sends 5 deputies to the Reichsrat at Vienna. For administrative purposes the province is divided into 4 districts and an autonomous municipality, Görz (pop. 25,432), the capital. Other principal places are Cormons (5824), Monfalcone (5536), Kirchheim (5699), Gradisca (3843) and Aquileia (2319).

Görz first appears distinctly in history about the close of the 10th century, as part of a district bestowed by the emperor Otto III. on John, patriarch of Aquileia. In the 11th century it became the seat of the Eppenstein family, who frequently bore the title of counts of Gorizia; and in the beginning of the 12th century the countship passed from them to the Lurngau family which continued to exist till the year 1500, and acquired possessions in Tirol, Carinthia, Friuli and Styria. On the death of Count Leonhard (12th April 1500) the fief reverted to the house of Habsburg. The countship of Gradisca was united with it in 1754. The province was occupied by the French in 1809, but reverted again to Austria in 1815. It formed a district of the administrative province of Trieste until 1861, when it became a separate crownland under its actual name.


GOSCHEN, GEORGE JOACHIM GOSCHEN, 1st Viscount (1831-1907), British statesman, son of William Henry Göschen, a London merchant of German extraction, was born in London on the 10th of August 1831. He was educated at Rugby under Dr Tait, and at Oriel College, Oxford, where he took a first-class in classics. He entered his father’s firm of Frühling & Göschen, of Austin Friars, in 1853, and three years later became a director of the Bank of England. His entry into public life took place in 1863, when he was returned without opposition as member for the city of London in the Liberal interest, and this was followed by his re-election, at the head of the poll, in the general election of 1865. In November of the same year he was appointed vice-president of the Board of Trade and paymaster-general, and in January 1866 he was made chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, with a seat in the cabinet. When Mr Gladstone became prime minister in December 1868, Mr Goschen joined the cabinet as president of the Poor Law Board, and continued to hold that office until March 1871, when he succeeded Mr Childers as first lord of the admiralty. In 1874 he was elected lord rector of the university of Aberdeen. Being sent to Cairo in 1876 as delegate for the British holders of Egyptian bonds, in order to arrange for the conversion of the debt, he succeeded in effecting an agreement with the Khedive.

In 1878 his views upon the county franchise question prevented him from voting uniformly with his party, and he informed his constituents in the city that he would not stand again at the forthcoming general election. In 1880 he was elected for Ripon, and continued to represent that constituency until the general election of 1885, when he was returned for the Eastern Division of Edinburgh. Being opposed to the extension of the franchise, he was unable to join Mr Gladstone’s government in 1880; declining the post of viceroy of India, he accepted that of special ambassador to the Porte, and was successful in settling the Montenegrin and Greek frontier questions in 1880 and 1881. He was made an ecclesiastical commissioner in 1882, and when Sir Henry Brand was raised to the peerage in 1884, the speakership of the House of Commons was offered to him, but declined. During the parliament of 1880-1885 he frequently found himself unable to concur with his party, especially as regards the extension of the franchise and questions of foreign policy; and when Mr Gladstone adopted the policy of Home Rule for Ireland, Mr Goschen followed Lord Hartington (afterwards duke of Devonshire) and became one of the most active of the Liberal Unionists. His vigorous and eloquent opposition to Mr Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill of 1886 brought him into greater public prominence than ever, but he failed to retain his seat for Edinburgh at the election in July of that year. On the resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill in December 1886, Mr Goschen, though a Liberal Unionist, accepted Lord Salisbury’s invitation to join his ministry, and became chancellor of the exchequer. Being defeated at Liverpool, 26th of January 1887, by seven votes, he was elected for St George’s, Hanover Square, on the 9th of February. His chancellorship of the exchequer during the ministry of 1886 to 1892 was rendered memorable by his successful conversion of the National Debt in 1888 (see National Debt). With that financial operation, under which the new 2¾% Consols became known as “Goschens,” his name will long be connected. Aberdeen University again conferred upon him the honour of the lord rectorship in 1888, and he received a similar honour from the University of Edinburgh in 1890. In the Unionist opposition of 1893 to 1895 Mr Goschen again took a vigorous part, his speeches both in and out of the House of Commons being remarkable for their eloquence and debating power. From 1895 to 1900 Mr Goschen was first lord of the admiralty, and in that office he earned the highest reputation for his business-like grasp of detail and his statesmanlike outlook on the naval policy of the country. He retired in 1900, and was raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Goschen of Hawkhurst, Kent. Though retired from active politics he continued to take a great interest in public affairs; and when Mr Chamberlain started his tariff reform movement in 1903, Lord Goschen was one of the weightiest champions of free trade on the Unionist side. He died on the 7th of February 1907, being succeeded in the title by his son George Joachim (b. 1866), who was Conservative M.P. for East Grinstead from 1895 to 1900, and married a daughter of the 1st earl of Cranbrook.

In educational subjects Goschen had always taken the greatest interest, his best known, but by no means his only, contribution to popular culture being his participation in the University Extension Movement; and his first efforts in parliament were devoted to advocating the abolition of religious tests and the admission of Dissenters to the universities. His published works indicate how ably he combined the wise study of economics with a practical instinct for business-like progress, without neglecting the more ideal aspects of human life. In addition to his well-known work on The Theory of the Foreign Exchanges, he published several financial and political pamphlets and addresses on educational and social subjects, among them being that on Cultivation of the Imagination, Liverpool, 1877, and that on Intellectual Interest, Aberdeen, 1888. He also wrote The Life and Times of Georg Joachim Goschen, publisher and printer of Leipzig (1903).

(H. Ch.)


GOS-HAWK, i.e. goose-hawk, the Astur palumbarius of ornithologists, and the largest of the short-winged hawks used in falconry. Its English name, however, has possibly been transferred to this species from one of the long-winged hawks or true falcons, since there is no tradition of the gos-hawk, now so called, having ever been used in Europe to take geese or other large and powerful birds. The genus Astur may be readily distinguished from Falco by the smooth edges of its beak, its short wings (not reaching beyond about the middle of the tail), and its long legs and toes—though these last are stout and comparatively shorter than in the sparrow-hawks (Accipiter). In plumage the gos-hawk has a general resemblance to the peregrine falcon, and it undergoes a corresponding change as it advances from youth to maturity—the young being longitudinally streaked beneath, while the adults are transversely barred. The irides, however, are always yellow, or in old birds orange, while those of the falcons are dark brown. The sexes differ greatly in size. There can be little doubt that the gos-hawk, nowadays very rare in Britain, was once common in England, and even towards the end of the 18th century Thornton obtained a nestling in Scotland, while Irish gos-hawks were of old highly celebrated. Being strictly a woodland-bird, its disappearance may be safely connected with the disappearance of the ancient forests in Great Britain, though its destructiveness to poultry and pigeons has doubtless contributed to its present scarcity. In many parts of the continent of Europe it still abounds. It ranges eastward to China and is much valued in India. In North America it is represented by a very nearly allied species, A. atricapillus, chiefly distinguished by the closer barring of the breast. Three or four examples corresponding with this form have been obtained in Britain. A good many other species of Astur (some of them passing into Accipiter) are found in various parts of the world, but the only one that need here be mentioned is the A. novae-hollandiae of Australia, which is remarkable for its dimorphism—one form possessing the normal dark-coloured plumage of the genus and the other being perfectly white, with crimson irides. Some writers hold these two forms to be distinct species and call the dark-coloured one A. cinereus or A. raii.

(A. N.)


GOSHEN, a division of Egypt settled by the Israelites between Jacob’s immigration and the Exodus. Its exact delimitation is a difficult problem. The name may possibly be of Semitic, or at least non-Egyptian origin, as in Palestine we meet with a district (Josh. x. 41) and a city (ib. xv. 51) of the same name. The Septuagint reads Γέσεμ Ἀραβίας in Gen. xlv. 10, and xlvi. 34, elsewhere simply Γέσεμ. In xlvi. 28 “Goshen ... the land of Goshen” are translated respectively “Heroopolis ... the land of Rameses.” This represents a late Jewish identification. Ptolemy defines “Arabia” as an Egyptian nome on the eastern border of the delta, with capital Phacussa, corresponding to the Egyptian nome Sopt and town Kesem. It is doubtful whether Phacussa be situated at the mounds of Fākūs, or at another place, Saft-el-Henneh, which suits Strabo’s description of its locality rather better. The extent of Goshen, according to the apocryphal book of Judith (i. 9, 10), included Tanis and Memphis; this is probably an overstatement. It is indeed impossible to say more than that it was a place of good pasture, on the frontier of Palestine, and fruitful in edible vegetables and in fish (Numbers xi. 5).

(R. A. S. M.)


GOSHEN, a city and the county-seat of Elkhart county, Indiana, U.S.A., on the Elkhart river, about 95 m. E. by S. of Chicago, at an altitude of about 800 ft. Pop. (1890) 6033; (1900) 7810 (462 foreign-born); (1910) 8514. Goshen is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, and the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railways, and is connected by electric railway with Warsaw and South Bend. The city has a Carnegie library, and is the seat of Goshen College (under Mennonite control), chartered as Elkhart Institute, at Elkhart, Ind., in 1895, and removed to Goshen and opened under its present name in 1903. The college includes a collegiate department, an academy, a Bible school, a normal school, a summer school and correspondence courses, and schools of business, of music and of oratory, and in 1908-1909 had 331 students, 73 of whom were in the Academy. Goshen is situated in a good farming region and is an important lumber market. There is a good water-power. Among the city’s manufactures are wagons and carriages, furniture, wooden-ware, veneering, sash and doors, ladders, lawn swings, rubber goods, flour, foundry products and agricultural machinery. The municipality owns its water works and its electric-lighting system. Goshen was first settled in 1828 and was first chartered as a city in 1868.


GOSLAR, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, romantically situated on the Gose, an affluent of the Oker, at the north foot of the Harz, 24 m. S.E. of Hildesheim and 31 m. S.W. from Brunswick, by rail. Pop. (1905) 17,817. It is surrounded by walls and is of antique appearance. Among the noteworthy buildings are the “Zwinger,” a tower with walls 23 ft. thick; the market church, in the Romanesque style, restored since its partial destruction by fire in 1844, and containing the town archives and a library in which are some of Luther’s manuscripts; the old town hall (Rathaus), possessing many interesting antiquities; the Kaiserworth (formerly the hall of the tailors’ gild and now an inn) with the statues of eight of the German emperors; and the Kaiserhaus, the oldest secular building in Germany, built by the emperor Henry III. before 1050 and often the residence of his successors. This was restored in 1867-1878 at the cost of the Prussian government, and was adorned with frescoes portraying events in German history. Other buildings of interest are:—the small chapel which is all that remains since 1820 of the old and famous cathedral of St Simon and St Jude founded by Henry III. about 1040, containing among other relics of the cathedral an old altar supposed to be that of the idol Krodo which formerly stood on the Burgberg near Neustadt-Harzburg; the church of the former Benedictine monastery of St Mary, or Neuwerk, of the 12th century, in the Romanesque style, with wall-paintings of considerable merit; and the house of the bakers’ gild now an hotel, the birthplace of Marshal Saxe. There are four Evangelical churches, a Roman Catholic church, a synagogue, several schools, a natural science museum, containing a collection of Harz minerals, the Fenkner museum of antiquities and a number of small foundations. The town has equestrian statues of the emperor Frederick I. and of the German emperor William I. The population is chiefly occupied in connexion with the sulphur, copper, silver and other mines in the neighbourhood. The town has also been long noted for its beer, and possesses some small manufactures and a considerable trade in fruit.

Goslar is believed to have been founded by Henry the Fowler about 920, and when in the time of Otto the Great the mineral treasures in the neighbourhood were discovered it increased rapidly in prosperity. It was often the meeting-place of German diets, twenty-three of which are said to have been held here, and was frequently the residence of the emperors. About 1350 it joined the Hanseatic League. In the middle of the 14th century the famous Goslar statutes, a code of laws, which was adopted by many other towns, was published. The town was unsuccessfully besieged in 1625, during the Thirty Years’ War, but was taken by the Swedes in 1632 and nearly destroyed by fire. Further conflagrations in 1728 and 1780 gave a severe blow to its prosperity. It was a free town till 1802, when it came into the possession of Prussia. In 1807 it was joined to Westphalia, in 1816 to Hanover and in 1866 it was, along with Hanover, re-united to Prussia.

See T. Erdmann, Die alte Kaiserstadt Goslar und ihre Umgebung in Geschichte, Sage und Bild (Goslar, 1892); Crusius, Geschichte der vormals kaiserlichen freien Reichstadt Goslar (1842-1843); A. Wolfstieg, Verfassungsgeschichte von Goslar (Berlin, 1885); T. Asche, Die Kaiserpfalz zu Goslar (1892); Neuburg, Goslars Bergbau bis 1552 (Hanover, 1892); and the Urkundenbuch der Stadt Goslar, edited by G. Bode (Halle, 1893-1900). For the Goslarische Statuten see the edition published by Göschen (Berlin, 1840).


GOSLICKI, WAWRZYNIEC (? 1533-1607), Polish bishop, better known under his Latinized name of Laurentius Grimalius Goslicius, was born about 1533. After having studied at Cracow and Padua, he entered the church, and was successively appointed bishop of Kaminietz and of Posen. Goslicki was an active man of business, was held in high estimation by his contemporaries and was frequently engaged in political affairs. It was chiefly through his influence, and through the letter he wrote to the pope against the Jesuits, that they were prevented from establishing their schools at Cracow. He was also a strenuous advocate of religious toleration in Poland. He died on the 31st of October 1607.

His principal work is De Optimo senatore, &c. (Venice, 1568). There are two English translations published respectively under the titles A commonwealth of good counsaile, &c. (1607), and The Accomplished Senator, done into English by Mr Oldisworth (1733).


GOSLIN, or Gauzlinus (d. c. 886), bishop of Paris and defender of the city against the Northmen (885), was, according to some authorities, the son of Roricon II., count of Maine, according to others the natural son of the emperor Louis I. In 848 he became a monk, and entered a monastery at Reims, later he became abbot of St Denis. Like most of the prelates of his time he took a prominent part in the struggle against the Northmen, by whom he and his brother Louis were taken prisoners (858), and he was released only after paying a heavy ransom (Prudentii Trecensis episcopi Annales, ann. 858). From 855 to 867 he held intermittently, and from 867 to 881 regularly, the office of chancellor to Charles the Bald and his successors. In 883 or 884 he was elected bishop of Paris, and foreseeing the dangers to which the city was to be exposed from the attacks of the Northmen, he planned and directed the strengthening of the defences, though he also relied for security on the merits of the relics of St Germain and St Geneviève. When the attack finally came (885), the defence of the city was entrusted to him and to Odo, count of Paris, and Hugh, abbot of St Germain l’Auxerrois. The city was attacked on the 26th of November, and the struggle for the possession of the bridge (now the Pont-au-Change) lasted for two days; but Goslin repaired the destruction of the wooden tower overnight, and the Normans were obliged to give up the attempt to take the city by storm. The siege lasted for about a year longer, while the emperor Charles the Fat was in Italy. Goslin died soon after the preliminaries of the peace had been agreed on, worn out by his exertions, or killed by a pestilence which raged in the city.

See Amaury Duval, L’Évêque Gozlin ou le siège de Paris par les Normands, chronique du IXe siècle (2 vols., Paris, 1832, 3rd ed. ib. 1835).


GOSNOLD, BARTHOLOMEW (d. 1607), English navigator. Nothing is known of his birth, parentage or early life. In 1602, in command of the “Concord,” chartered by Sir Walter Raleigh and others, he crossed the Atlantic; coasted from what is now Maine to Martha’s Vineyard, landing at and naming Cape Cod and Elizabeth Island (now Cuttyhunk) and giving the name Martha’s Vineyard to the island now called No Man’s Land; and returned to England with a cargo of furs, sassafras and other commodities obtained in trade with the Indians about Buzzard’s Bay. In London he actively promoted the colonization of the regions he had visited and, by arousing the interest of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and other influential persons, contributed toward securing the grants of the charters to the London and Plymouth Companies in 1606. In 1606-1607 he was associated with Christopher Newport in command of the three vessels by which the first Jamestown colonists were carried to Virginia. As a member of the council he took an active share in the affairs of the colony, ably seconding the efforts of John Smith to introduce order, industry and system among the motley array of adventurers and idle “gentlemen” of which the little band was composed. He died from swamp fever on the 22nd of August 1607.

See The Works of John Smith (Arber’s Edition, London, 1884); and J. M. Brereton, Brief and True Relation of the North Part of Virginia (reprinted by B. F. Stevens, London, 1901), an account of Gosnold’s voyage of 1602.


GOSPATRIC (fl. 1067), earl of Northumberland, belonged to a family which had connexions with the royal houses both of Wessex and Scotland. Before the Conquest he accompanied Tostig on a pilgrimage to Rome (1061); and at that time was a landholder in Cumberland. About 1067 he bought the earldom of Northumberland from William the Conqueror; but, repenting of his submission, fled with other Englishmen to the court of Scotland (1068). He joined the Danish army of invasion in the next year; but was afterwards able, from his possession of Bamburgh castle, to make terms with the conqueror, who left him undisturbed till 1072. The peace concluded in that year with Scotland left him at William’s mercy. He lost his earldom and took refuge in Scotland, where Malcolm seems to have provided for him.

See E. A. Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. i. (Oxford, 1877), and the English Hist. Review, vol. xix. (London, 1904).


GOSPEL (O. Eng. godspel, i.e. good news, a translation of Lat. bona annuntiatio, or evangelium, Gr. εὐαγγέλιον; cf. Goth. iu spillon, “to announce good news,” Ulfilas’ translation of the Greek, from iu, that which is good, and spellon to announce), primarily the “glad tidings” announced to the world by Jesus Christ. The word thus came to be applied to the whole body of doctrine taught by Christ and his disciples, and so to the Christian revelation generally (see [Christianity]); by analogy the term “gospel” is also used in other connexions as equivalent to “authoritative teaching.” In a narrower sense each of the records of the life and teaching of Christ preserved in the writings of the four “evangelists” is described as a Gospel. The many more or less imaginative lives of Christ which are not accepted by the Christian Church as canonical are known as “apocryphal gospels” (see [Apocryphal Literature]). The present article is concerned solely with general considerations affecting the four canonical Gospels; see for details of each, the articles under [Matthew], [Mark], [Luke] and [John].

The Four Gospels.—The disciples of Jesus proclaimed the Gospel that He was the Christ. Those to whom this message was first delivered in Jerusalem and Palestine had seen and heard Jesus, or had heard much about Him. They did not require to be told who He was. But more and more as the work of preaching and teaching extended to such as had not this knowledge, it became necessary to include in the Gospel delivered some account of the ministry of Jesus. Moreover, alike those who had followed Him during His life on earth, and all who joined themselves to them, must have felt the need of dwelling on His precepts, so that these must have been often repeated, and also in all probability from an early time grouped together according to their subjects, and so taught. For some time, probably for upwards of thirty years, both the facts of the life of Jesus and His words were only related orally. This would be in accordance with the habits of mind of the early preachers of the Gospel. Moreover, they were so absorbed in the expectation of the speedy return of Christ that they did not feel called to make provision for the instruction of subsequent generations. The Epistles of the New Testament contain no indications of the existence of any written record of the life and teaching of Christ. Tradition indicates A.D. 60-70 as the period when written accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus began to be made (see [Mark, Gospel of], and [Matthew, Gospel of]). This may be accepted as highly probable. We cannot but suppose that at a time when the number of the original band of disciples of Jesus who survived must have been becoming noticeably smaller, and all these were advanced in life, the importance of writing down that which had been orally delivered concerning the Gospel-history must have been realized. We also gather from Luke’s preface (i. 1-4) that the work of writing was undertaken in these circumstances and under the influence of this feeling, and that various records had already in consequence been made.

But do our Gospels, or any of them, in the form in which we actually have them, belong to the number of those earliest records? Or, if not, what are the relations in which they severally stand to them? These are questions which in modern criticism have been greatly debated. With a view to obtaining answers to them, it is necessary to consider the reception of the Gospels in the early Church, and also to examine and compare the Gospels themselves. Some account of the evidence supplied in these two ways must be given in the present article, so far as it is common to all four Gospels, or to three or two of them, and in the articles on the several Gospels so far as it is especial to each.

1. The Reception of the Gospels in the Early Church.—The question of the use of the Gospels and of the manner in which they were regarded during the period extending from the latter years of the 1st century to the beginning of the last quarter of the 2nd is a difficult one. There is a lack of explicit references to the Gospels;[1] and many of the quotations which may be taken from them are not exact. At the same time these facts can be more or less satisfactorily accounted for by various circumstances. In the first place, it would be natural that the habits of thought of the period when the Gospel was delivered orally should have continued to exert influence even after the tradition had been committed to writing. Although documents might be known and used, they would not be regarded as the authorities for that which was independently remembered, and would not, therefore, necessarily be mentioned. Consequently, it is not strange that citations of sayings of Christ—and these are the only express citations in writings of the Subapostolic Age—should be made without the source whence they were derived being named, and (with a single exception) without any clear indication that the source was a document. The exception is in the little treatise commonly called the Epistle of Barnabas, probably composed about A.D. 130, where (c. iv. 14) the words “many are called but few chosen” are introduced by the formula “as it is written.”

For the identification, therefore, of the source or sources used we have to rely upon the amount of correspondence with our Gospels in the quotations made, and in respect to other parallelisms of statement and of expression, in these early Christian writers. The correspondence is in the main full and true as regards spirit and substance, but it is rarely complete in form. The existence of some differences of language may, however, be too readily taken to disprove derivation. Various forms of the same saying occurring in different documents, or remembered from oral tradition and through catechetical instruction, would sometimes be purposely combined. Or, again, the memory might be confused by this variety, and the verification of quotations, especially of brief ones, was difficult, not only from the comparative scarcity of the copies of books, but also because ancient books were not provided with ready means of reference to particular passages. On the whole there is clearly a presumption that where we have striking expressions which are known to us besides only in one of our Gospel-records, that particular record has been the source of it. And where there are several such coincidences the ground for the supposition that the writing in question has been used may become very strong. There is evidence of this kind, more or less clear in the several cases, that all the four Gospels were known in the first two or three decades of the 2nd century. It is fullest as to our first Gospel and, next to this one, as to our third.

After this time it becomes manifest that, as we should expect, documents were the recognized authorities for the Gospel history; but there is still some uncertainty as to the documents upon which reliance was placed, and the precise estimation in which they were severally held. This is in part at least due to the circumstance that nearly all the writings which have remained of the Christian literature belonging to the period circa A.D. 130-180 are addressed to non-Christians, and that for the most part they give only summaries of the teaching of Christ and of the facts of the Gospel, while terms that would not be understood by, and names that would not carry weight with, others than Christians are to a large extent avoided. The most important of the writings now in question are two by Justin Martyr (circa A.D. 145-160), viz. his Apology and his Dialogue with Trypho. In the former of these works he shows plainly his intention of adapting his language and reasoning to Gentile, and in the latter to Jewish, readers. In both his name for the Gospel-records is “Memoirs of the Apostles.” After a great deal of controversy there has come to be very wide agreement that he reckoned the first three Gospels among these Memoirs. In the case of the second and third there are indications, though slight ones, that he held the view of their composition and authorship which was common from the last quarter of the century onwards (see [Mark, Gospel of], and [Luke, Gospel of]), but he has made the largest use of our first Gospel. It is also generally allowed that he was acquainted with the fourth Gospel, though some think that he used it with a certain reserve. Evidence may, however, be adduced which goes far to show that he regarded it, also, as of apostolic authority. There is a good deal of difference of opinion still as to whether Justin reckoned other sources for the Gospel-history besides our Gospels among the Apostolic Memoirs. In this connexion, however, as well as on other grounds, it is a significant fact that within twenty years or so after the death of Justin, which probably occurred circa A.D. 160, Tatian, who had been a hearer of Justin, produced a continuous narrative of the Gospel-history which received the name Diatessaron (“through four”), in the main a compilation from our four Gospels.[2]

Before the close of the 2nd century the four Gospels had attained a position of unique authority throughout the greater part of the Church, not different from that which they have held since, as is evident from the treatise of Irenaeus Against Heresies (c. A.D. 180; see esp. iii. i. 1 f. and x., xi.) and from other evidence only a few years later. The struggle against Gnosticism, which had been going on during the middle part of the century, had compelled the Church both to define her creed and to draw a sharper line of demarcation than heretofore between those writings whose authority she regarded as absolute and all others. The effect of this was no doubt to enhance the sense generally entertained of the value of the four Gospels. At the same time in the formal statements now made it is plainly implied that the belief expressed is no new one. And it is, indeed, difficult to suppose that agreement on this subject between different portions of the Church could have manifested itself at this time in the spontaneous manner that it does, except as the consequence of traditional feelings and convictions, which went back to the early part of the century, and which could hardly have arisen without good foundation, with respect to the special value of these works as embodiments of apostolic testimony, although all that came to be supposed in regard to their actual authorship cannot be considered proved.

2. The Internal Criticism of the Gospels.—In the middle of the 19th century an able school of critics, known as the Tübingen school, sought to show from indications in the several Gospels that they were composed well on in the 2nd century in the interests of various strongly marked parties into which the Church was supposed to have been divided by differences in regard to the Judaic and Pauline forms of Christianity. These theories are now discredited. It may on the contrary be confidently asserted with regard to the first three Gospels that the local colouring in them is predominantly Palestinian, and that they show no signs of acquaintance with the questions and the circumstances of the 2nd century; and that the character even of the Fourth Gospel is not such as to justify its being placed, at furthest, much after the beginning of that century.

We turn to the literary criticism of the Gospels, where solid results have been obtained. The first three Gospels have in consequence of the large amount of similarity between them in contents, arrangement, and even in words and the forms of sentences and paragraphs, been called Synoptic Gospels. It has long been seen that, to account for this similarity, relations of interdependence between them, or of common derivation, must be supposed. And the question as to the true theory of these relations is known as the Synoptic Problem. Reference has already been made to the fact that during the greater part of the Apostolic age the Gospel history was taught orally. Now some have held that the form of this oral teaching was to a great extent a fixed one, and that it was the common source of our first three Gospels. This oral theory was for a long time the favourite one in England; it was never widely held in Germany, and in recent years the majority of English students of the Synoptic Problem have come to feel that it does not satisfactorily explain the phenomena. Not only are the resemblances too close, and their character in part not of a kind, to be thus accounted for, but even many of the differences between parallel contexts are rather such as would arise through the revision of a document than through the freedom of oral delivery.

It is now and has for many years been widely held that a document which is most nearly represented by the Gospel of Mark, or which (as some would say) was virtually identical with it, has been used in the composition of our first and third Gospels. This source has supplied the Synoptic Outline, and in the main also the narratives common to all three. Questions connected with the history of this document are treated in the article on [Mark, Gospel of].

There is also a considerable amount of matter common to Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark. It is introduced into the Synoptic Outline very differently in those two Gospels, which clearly suggests that it existed in a separate form, and was independently combined by the first and third evangelists with their other document. This common matter has also a character of its own; it consists mainly of pieces of discourse. The form in which it is given in the two Gospels is in several passages so nearly identical that we must suppose these pieces at least to have been derived immediately or ultimately from the same Greek document. In other cases there is more divergence, but in some of them this is accounted for by the consideration that in Matthew passages from the source now in question have been interwoven with parallels in the other chief common source before mentioned. There are, however, instances in which no such explanation will serve, and it is possible that our first and third evangelists may have used two documents which were not in all respects identical, but which corresponded very closely on the whole. The ultimate source of the subject matter in question, or of the most distinctive and larger part of it, was in all probability an Aramaic one, and in some parts different translations may have been used.

This second source used in the composition of Matthew and Luke has frequently been called “The Logia” in order to signify that it was a collection of the sayings and discourses of Jesus. This name has been suggested by Schleiermacher’s interpretation of Papias’ fragment on Matthew (see [Matthew, Gospel of]). But some have maintained that the source in question also contained a good many narratives, and in order to avoid any premature assumption as to its contents and character several recent critics have named it “Q.” It may, however, fairly be called “the Logian document,” as a convenient way of indicating the character of the greater part of the matter which our first and third evangelists have taken from it, and this designation is used in the articles on the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. The reconstruction of this document has been attempted by several critics. The arrangement of its contents can, it seems, best be learned from Luke.

3. One or two remarks may here be added as to the bearing of the results of literary criticism upon the use of the Gospels. Their effect is to lead us, especially when engaged in historical inquiries, to look beyond our Gospels to their sources, instead of treating the testimony of the Gospels severally as independent and ultimate. Nevertheless it will still appear that each Gospel has its distinct value, both historically and in regard to the moral and spiritual instruction afforded. And the fruits of much of that older study of the Gospels, which was largely employed in pointing out the special characteristics of each, will still prove serviceable.

Authorities.—1. German Books: Introductions to the New Testament—H. J. Holtzmann (3rd ed., 1892), B. Weiss (Eng. trans., 1887), Th. Zahn (2nd ed., 1900), G. A. Jülicher (6th ed., 1906; Eng. trans., 1904); H. v. Soden, Urchristliche Literaturgeschichte, vol. i. (1905; Eng. trans., 1906). Books on the Synoptic Gospels, especially the Synoptic Problem: H. J. Holtzmann, Die synoptischen Evangelien (1863); Weizsäcker, Untersuchungen über die evangelische Geschichte (1864); B. Weiss, Das Marcus-Evangelium und seine synoptischen Parallelen (1872); Das Matthäus-Evangelium und seine Lucas-Parallelen (1876); H. H. Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu (1886); A. Resch, Agrapha (1889); &c.; P. Wernle, Die synoptische Frage (1899); W. Soltau, Unsere Evangelien, ihre Quellen und ihr Quellenwert (1901); H. J. Holtzmann, Hand-Commentar zum N.T., vol. i. (1889); J. Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Marci, Das Evangelium Matthäi, Das Evangelium Lucas (1904), Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (1905); A. Harnack, Sprüche und Reden Jesu, die zweite Quelle des Matthäus und Lukas (1907).

2. French Books: A. Loisy, Les Évangiles synoptiques (1907-1908).

3. English Books: G. Salmon, Introduction to the New Testament (1st ed., 1885; 9th ed., 1904); W. Sanday, Inspiration (Lect. vi., 3rd ed., 1903); B. F. Westcott, An Introduction to the Study of the Gospels (1st ed., 1851; 8th ed., 1895); A. Wright, The Composition of the Four Gospels (1890); J. E. Carpenter, The First Three Gospels, their Origin and Relations (1890); A. J. Jolley, The Synoptic Problem (1893); J. C. Hawkins, Horae synopticae (1899); W. Alexander, Leading Ideas of the Gospels (new ed., 1892); E. A. Abbott, Clue (1900); J. A. Robinson, The Study of the Gospels (1902); F. C. Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission (1906); G. Salmon, The Human Element in the Gospels (1907); V. H. Stanton, The Gospels as Historical Documents: Pt. I., The Early Use of the Gospels (1903); Pt. II., The Synoptic Gospels (1908).

4. Synopses.—W. G. Rushbrooke, Synopticon, An Exposition of the Common Matter of the Synoptic Gospels (1880); A. Wright, The Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek (2nd ed., 1903).

See also the articles on each Gospel, and the article [Bible], section New Testament.

(V. H. S.)


[1] For the only two that can be held to be such in the first half of the 2nd century, and the doubts whether they refer to our present Gospels, see [Mark, Gospel of], and [Matthew, Gospel of].

[2] The character of Tatian’s Diatessaron has been much disputed in the past, but there can no longer be any reasonable doubt on the subject after recent discoveries and investigations. (An account of these may be seen most conveniently in The Diatessaron of Tatian, by S. Hemphill; see under [Tatian].)


GOSPORT, a seaport in the Fareham parliamentary division of Hampshire, England, facing Portsmouth across Portsmouth harbour, 81 m. S.W. from London by the London & Southwestern railway. Pop. of urban district of Gosport and Alverstoke (1901), 28,884. A ferry and a floating bridge connect it with Portsmouth. It is enclosed within a double line of fortifications, consisting of the old Gosport lines, and, about 3000 yds. to the east, a series of forts connected by strong lines with occasional batteries, forming part of the defence works of Portsmouth harbour. The principal buildings are the town hall and market hall, and the church of Holy Trinity, erected in the time of William III. To the south at Haslar there is a magnificent naval hospital, capable of containing 2000 patients, and adjoining it a gunboat slipway and large barracks. To the north is the Royal Clarence victualling yard, with brewery, cooperage, powder magazines, biscuit-making establishment, and storehouses for various kinds of provisions for the royal navy.

Gosport (Goseporte, Gozeport, Gosberg, Godsport) was originally included in Alverstoke manor, held in 1086 by the bishop and monks of Winchester under whom villeins farmed the land. In 1284 the monks agreed to give up Alverstoke with Gosport to the bishop, whose successors continued to hold them until the lands were taken over by the ecclesiastical commissioners. After the confiscation of the bishop’s lands in 1641, however, the manor of Alverstoke with Gosport was granted to George Withers, but reverted to the bishop at the Restoration. In the 16th century Gosport was “a little village of fishermen.” It was called a borough in 1461, when there are also traces of burgage tenure. From 1462 one bailiff was elected annually in the borough court, and government by a bailiff continued until 1682, when Gosport was included in Portsmouth borough under the charter of Charles II. to that town. This was annulled in 1688, since which time there is no evidence of the election of bailiffs. With this exception no charter of incorporation is known, although by the 16th century the inhabitants held common property in the shape of tolls of the ferry. The importance of Gosport increased during the 16th and 17th centuries owing to its position at the mouth of Portsmouth harbour, and its convenience as a victualling station. For this reason also the town was particularly prosperous during the American and Peninsular Wars. About 1540 fortifications were built there for the defence of the harbour, and in the 17th century it was a garrison town under a lord-lieutenant.


GOSS, SIR JOHN (1800-1880), English composer, was born at Fareham, Hampshire, on the 27th of December 1800. He was elected a chorister of the Chapel Royal in 1811, and in 1816, on the breaking of his voice, became a pupil of Attwood. A few early compositions, some for the theatre, exist, and some glees were published before 1825. He was appointed organist of St Luke’s, Chelsea, in 1824, and in 1838 became organist of St Paul’s in succession to Attwood; he kept the post until 1872, when he resigned and was knighted. His position in the London musical world of the time was an influential one, and he did much by his teaching and criticism to encourage the study and appreciation of good music. In 1876 he was given the degree of Mus.D. at Cambridge. Though his few orchestral works have very small importance, his church music includes some fine compositions, such as the anthems “O taste and see,” “O Saviour of the world” and others. He was the last of the great English school of church composers who devoted themselves almost exclusively to church music; and in the history of the glee his is an honoured name, if only on account of his finest work in that form, the five-part glee, Ossian’s “Hymn to the sun.” He died at Brixton, London, on the 10th of May 1880.


GOSSAMER, a fine, thread like and filmy substance spun by small spiders, which is seen covering stubble fields and gorse bushes, and floating in the air in clear weather; especially in the autumn. By transference anything light, unsubstantial or flimsy is known as “gossamer.” A thin gauzy material used for trimming and millinery, resembling the “chiffon” of to-day, was formerly known as gossamer; and in the early Victorian period it was a term used in the hat trade, for silk hats of very light weight.

The word is obscure in origin, it is found in numerous forms in English, and is apparently taken from gose, goose and somere, summer. The Germans have Mädchensommer, maidens’ summer, and Altweibersommer, old women’s summer, as well as Sommerfäden, summer-threads, as equivalent to the English gossamer, the connexion apparently being that gossamer is seen most frequently in the warm days of late autumn (St Martin’s summer) when geese are also in season. Another suggestion is that the word is a corruption of gaze à Marie (gauze of Mary) through the legend that gossamer was originally the threads which fell away from the Virgin’s shroud on her assumption.


GOSSE, EDMUND (1849-  ), English poet and critic, was born in London on the 21st of September 1849, son of the zoologist P. H. Gosse. In 1867 he became an assistant in the department of printed books in the British Museum, where he remained until he became in 1875 translator to the Board of Trade. In 1904 he was appointed librarian to the House of Lords. In 1884-1890 he was Clark Lecturer in English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge. Himself a writer of literary verse of much grace, and master of a prose style admirably expressive of a wide and appreciative culture, he was conspicuous for his valuable work in bringing foreign literature home to English readers. Northern Studies (1879), a collection of essays on the literature of Holland and Scandinavia, was the outcome of a prolonged visit to those countries, and was followed by later work in the same direction. He translated Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1891), and, with W. Archer, The Master-Builder (1893), and in 1907 he wrote a life of Ibsen for the “Literary Lives” series. He also edited the English translation of the works of Björnson. His services to Scandinavian letters were acknowledged in 1901, when he was made a knight of the Norwegian order of St Olaf of the first class. Mr Gosse’s published volumes of verse include On Viol and Flute (1873), King Erik (1876), New Poems (1879), Firdausi in Exile (1885), In Russet and Silver (1894), Collected Poems (1896). Hypolympia, or the Gods on the Island (1901), an “ironic phantasy,” the scene of which is laid in the 20th century, though the personages are Greek gods, is written in prose, with some blank verse. His Seventeenth Century Studies (1883), Life of William Congreve (1888), The Jacobean Poets (1894), Life and Letters of Dr John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s (1899), Jeremy Taylor (1904, “English Men of Letters”), and Life of Sir Thomas Browne (1905) form a very considerable body of critical work on the English 17th-century writers. He also wrote a life of Thomas Gray, whose works he edited (4 vols., 1884); A History of Eighteenth Century Literature (1889); a History of Modern English Literature (1897), and vols. iii. and iv. of an Illustrated Record of English Literature (1903-1904) undertaken in connexion with Dr Richard Garnett. Mr Gosse was always a sympathetic student of the younger school of French and Belgian writers, some of his papers on the subject being collected as French Profiles (1905). Critical Kit-Kats (1896) contains an admirable criticism of J. M. de Heredia, reminiscences of Lord de Tabley and others. He edited Heinemann’s series of “Literature of the World” and the same publisher’s “International Library.” To the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica he contributed numerous articles, and his services as chief literary adviser in the preparation of the 10th and 11th editions incidentally testify to the high position held by him in the contemporary world of letters. In 1905 he was entertained in Paris by the leading littérateurs as a representative of English literary culture. In 1907 Mr Gosse published anonymously Father and Son, an intimate study of his own early family life. He married Ellen, daughter of Dr G. W. Epps, and had a son and two daughters.


GOSSE, PHILIP HENRY (1810-1888), English naturalist, was born at Worcester on the 6th of April 1810, his father, Thomas Gosse (1765-1844) being a miniature painter. In his youth the family settled at Poole, where Gosse’s turn for natural history was noticed and encouraged by his aunt, Mrs Bell, the mother of the zoologist, Thomas Bell (1792-1880). He had, however, little opportunity for developing it until, in 1827, he found himself clerk in a whaler’s office at Carbonear, in Newfoundland, where he beguiled the tedium of his life by observations, chiefly with the microscope. After a brief and unsuccessful interlude of farming in Canada, during which he wrote an unpublished work on the entomology of Newfoundland, he travelled in the United States, was received and noticed by men of science, was employed as a teacher for some time in Alabama, and returned to England in 1839. His Canadian Naturalist (1840), written on the voyage home, was followed in 1843 by his Introduction to Zoology. His first widely popular book was The Ocean (1844). In 1844 Gosse, who had meanwhile been teaching in London, was sent by the British Museum to collect specimens of natural history in Jamaica. He spent nearly two years on that island, and after his return published his Birds of Jamaica (1847) and his Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica (1851). He also wrote about this time several zoological works for the S.P.C.K., and laboured to such an extent as to impair his health. While recovering at Ilfracombe, he was attracted by the forms of marine life so abundant on that shore, and in 1853 published A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast, accompanied by a description of the marine aquarium invented by him, by means of which he succeeded in preserving zoophytes and other marine animals of the humbler grades alive and in good condition away from the sea. This arrangement was more fully set forth and illustrated in his Aquarium (1854), succeeded in 1855-1856 by A Manual of Marine Zoology, in two volumes, illustrated by nearly 700 wood engravings after the author’s drawings. A volume on the marine fauna of Tenby succeeded in 1856. In June of the same year he was elected F.R.S. Gosse, who was a most careful observer, but who lacked the philosophical spirit, was now tempted to essay work of a more ambitious order, publishing in 1857 two books, Life and Omphalos, embodying his speculations on the appearance of life on the earth, which he considered to have been instantaneous, at least as regarded its higher forms. His views met with no favour from scientific men, and he returned to the field of observation, which he was better qualified to cultivate. Taking up his residence at St Marychurch, in South Devon, he produced from 1858 to 1860 his standard work on sea-anemones, the Actinologia Britannica. The Romance of Natural History and other popular works followed. In 1865 he abandoned authorship, and chiefly devoted himself to the cultivation of orchids. Study of the Rotifera, however, also engaged his attention, and his results were embodied in a monograph by Dr C. T. Hudson (1886). He died at St Marychurch on the 23rd of August 1888.

His life was written by his son, Edmund Gosse.


GOSSEC, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH (1734-1829), French musical composer, son of a small farmer, was born at the village of Vergnies, in Belgian Hainaut, and showing early a taste for music became a choir-boy at Antwerp. He went to Paris in 1751 and was taken up by Rameau. He became conductor of a private band kept by La Popelinière, a wealthy amateur, and gradually determined to do something to revive the study of instrumental music in France. He had his own first symphony performed in 1754, and as conductor to the Prince de Condé’s orchestra he produced several operas and other compositions of his own. He imposed his influence upon French music with remarkable success, founded the Concert des Amateurs in 1770, organized the École de Chant in 1784, was conductor of the band of the Garde Nationale at the Revolution, and was appointed (with Méhul and Cherubini) inspector of the Conservatoire de Musique when this institution was created in 1795. He was an original member of the Institute and a chevalier of the legion of honour. Outside France he was but little known, and his own numerous compositions, sacred and secular, were thrown into the shade by those of men of greater genius; but he has a place in history as the inspirer of others, and as having powerfully stimulated the revival of instrumental music. He died at Passy on the 16th of February 1829.

See the Lives by P. Hédouin (1852) and E. G. J. Gregoir (1878).


GOSSIP (from the O. E. godsibb, i.e. God, and sib, akin, standing in relation to), originally a god-parent, i.e. one who by taking a sponsor’s vows at a baptism stands in a spiritual relationship to the child baptized. The common modern meaning is of light personal or social conversation, or, with an invidious sense, of idle tale-bearing. “Gossip” was early used with the sense of a friend or acquaintance, either of the parent of the child baptized or of the other god-parents, and thus came to be used, with little reference to the position of sponsor, for women friends of the mother present at a birth; the transition of meaning to an idle chatterer or talker for talking’s sake is easy. The application to the idle talk of such persons does not appear to be an early one.


GOSSNER, JOHANNES EVANGELISTA (1773-1858), German divine and philanthropist, was born at Hausen near Augsburg on the 14th of December 1773, and educated at the university of Dillingen. Here like Martin Boos and others he came under the spell of the Evangelical movement promoted by Johann Michael Sailer, the professor of pastoral theology. After taking priest’s orders, Gossner held livings at Dirlewang (1804-1811) and Munich (1811-1817), but his evangelical tendencies brought about his dismissal and in 1826 he formally left the Roman Catholic for the Protestant communion. As minister of the Bethlehem church in Berlin (1829-1846) he was conspicuous not only for practical and effective preaching, but for the founding of schools, asylums and missionary agencies. He died on the 20th of March 1858.

Lives by Bethmann-Hollweg (Berlin, 1858) and H. Dalton (Berlin, 1878).


GOSSON, STEPHEN (1554-1624), English satirist, was baptized at St George’s, Canterbury, on the 17th of April 1554. He entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1572, and on leaving the university in 1576 he went to London. In 1598 Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia mentions him with Sidney, Spenser, Abraham Fraunce and others among the “best for pastorall,” but no pastorals of his are extant. He is said to have been an actor, and by his own confession he wrote plays, for he speaks of Catilines Conspiracies as a “Pig of mine own Sowe.” To this play and some others, on account of their moral intention, he extends indulgence in the general condemnation of stage plays contained in his Schoole of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters and such like Caterpillars of the Commonwealth (1579). The euphuistic style of this pamphlet and its ostentatious display of learning were in the taste of the time, and do not necessarily imply insincerity. Gosson justified his attack by considerations of the disorder which the love of melodrama and of vulgar comedy was introducing into the social life of London. It was not only by extremists like Gosson that these abuses were recognized. Spenser, in his Teares of the Muses (1591), laments the same evils, although only in general terms. The tract was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, who seems not unnaturally to have resented being connected with a pamphlet which opened with a comprehensive denunciation of poets, for Spenser, writing to Gabriel Harvey (Oct. 16, 1579) of the dedication, says the author “was for hys labor scorned.” He dedicated, however, a second tract, The Ephemerides of Phialo ... and A Short Apologie of the Schoole of Abuse, to Sidney on Oct. 28th, 1579. Gosson’s abuse of poets seems to have had a large share in inducing Sidney to write his Apologie for Poetrie, which probably dates from 1581. After the publication of the Schoole of Abuse Gosson retired into the country, where he acted as tutor to the sons of a gentleman (Plays Confuted. “To the Reader,” 1582). Anthony à Wood places this earlier and assigns the termination of his tutorship indirectly to his animosity against the stage, which apparently wearied his patron of his company. The publication of his polemic provoked many retorts, the most formidable of which was Thomas Lodge’s Defence of Playes (1580). The players themselves retaliated by reviving Gosson’s own plays. Gosson replied to his various opponents in 1582 by his Playes Confuted in Five Actions, dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham. Meanwhile he had taken orders, was made lecturer of the parish church at Stepney (1585), and was presented by the queen to the rectory of Great Wigborough, Essex, which he exchanged in 1600 for St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate. He died on the 13th of February 1624. Pleasant Quippes for Upstart New-fangled Gentlewomen (1595), a coarse satiric poem, is also ascribed to Gosson.

The Schoole of Abuse and Apologie were edited (1868) by Prof. E. Arber in his English Reprints. Two poems of Gosson’s are included.


GOT, FRANÇOIS JULES EDMOND (1822-1901), French actor, was born at Lignerolles on the 1st of October 1822, and entered the Conservatoire in 1841, winning the second prize for comedy that year and the first in 1842. After a year of military service he made his début at the Comédie Française on the 17th of July 1844, as Alexis in Les Héritiers and Mascarelles in Les Précieuses ridicules. He was immediately admitted pensionnaire, and became sociétaire in 1850. By special permission of the emperor in 1866 he played at the Odéon in Emile Augier’s Contagion. His golden jubilee at the Théâtre Français was celebrated in 1894, and he made his final appearance the year after. Got was a fine representative of the grand style of French acting, and was much admired in England as well as in Paris. He wrote the libretto of the opera François Villon (1857) and also of L’Esclave (1874). In 1881 he was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honour.


GÖTA, a river of Sweden, draining the great Lake Vener. The name, however, is more familiar in its application to the canal which affords communication between Gothenburg and Stockholm. The river flows out of the southern extremity of the lake almost due south to the Cattegat, which it enters by two arms enclosing the island of Hisingen, the eastern forming the harbour and bearing the heavy sea-traffic of the port of Gothenburg. The Göta river is 50 m. in length, and is navigable for large vessels, a series of locks surmounting the famous falls of Trollhättan (q.v.). Passing the abrupt wooded Halleberg and Hunneberg (royal shooting preserves) Lake Vener is reached at Venersborg. Several important ports lie on the north, east and south shores (see [Vener]). From Sjötorp, midway on the eastern shore, the western Göta canal leads S.E. to Karlsborg. Its course necessitates over twenty locks to raise it from the Vener level (144 ft.) to its extreme height of 300 ft., and lower it over the subsequent fall through the small lakes Viken and Botten to Lake Vetter (q.v.; 289 ft.), which the route crosses to Motala. The eastern canal continues eastward from this point, and a descent is followed through five locks to Lake Boren, after which the canal, carried still at a considerable elevation, overlooks a rich and beautiful plain. The picturesque Lake Roxen with its ruined castle of Stjernarp is next traversed. At Norsholm a branch canal connects Lake Glan to the north, giving access to the important manufacturing centre of Norrköping. Passing Lake Asplången, the canal follows a cut through steep rocks, and then resumes an elevated course to the old town of Söderköping, after which the Baltic is reached at Mem. Vessels plying to Stockholm run N.E. among the coastal island-fringe (skärgård), and then follow the Södertelge canal into Lake Mälar. The whole distance from Gothenburg to Stockholm is about 360 m., and the voyage takes about 2½ days. The length of artificial work on the Göta canal proper is 54 m., and there are 58 locks. The scenery is not such as will bear adverse weather conditions; that of the western canal is without any interest save in the remarkable engineering work. The idea of a canal dates from 1516, but the construction was organized by Baron von Platten and engineered by Thomas Telford in 1810-1832. The falls of Trollhättan had already been locked successfully in 1800.


GOTARZES, or Goterzes, king of Parthia (c. A.D. 42-51). In an inscription at the foot of the rock of Behistun[1] he is called Γωτάρζης Γεόποθρος, i.e. “son of Gēw,” and seems to be designated as “satrap of satrap.” This inscription therefore probably dates from the reign of Artabanus II. (A.D. 10-40), to whose family Gotarzes must have belonged. From a very barbarous coin of Gotarzes with the inscription βασιλεως βασιλεων Αρσανοζ υος κεκαλουμενος Αρταβανου Γωτερζης (Wroth, Catalogue of the Coins of Parthia, p. 165; Numism. Chron., 1900, p. 95; the earlier readings of this inscription are wrong), which must be translated “king of kings Arsakes, named son of Artabanos, Gotarzes,” it appears that he was adopted by Artabanus. When the troublesome reign of Artabanus II. ended in A.D. 39 or 40, he was succeeded by Vardanes, probably his son; but against him in 41 rose Gotarzes (the dates are fixed by the coins). He soon made himself detested by his cruelty—among many other murders he even slew his brother Artabanus and his whole family (Tac. Ann. xi. 8)—and Vardanes regained the throne in 42; Gotarzes fled to Hyrcania and gathered an army from the Dahan nomads. The war between the two kings was at last ended by a treaty, as both were afraid of the conspiracies of their nobles. Gotarzes returned to Hyrcania. But when Vardanes was assassinated in 45, Gotarzes was acknowledged in the whole empire (Tac. Ann. xi. 9 ff.; Joseph. Antiq. xx. 3, 4, where Gotarzes is called Kotardes). He now takes on his coins the usual Parthian titles, “king of kings Arsaces the benefactor, the just, the illustrious (Epiphanes), the friend of the Greeks (Philhellen),” without mentioning his proper name. The discontent excited by his cruelty and luxury induced the hostile party to apply to the emperor Claudius and fetch from Rome an Arsacid prince Meherdates (i.e. Mithradates), who lived there as hostage. He crossed the Euphrates in 49, but was beaten and taken prisoner by Gotarzes, who cut off his ears (Tac. Ann. xii. 10 ff.). Soon after Gotarzes died, according to Tacitus, of an illness; Josephus says that he was murdered. His last coin is dated from June 51.

An earlier “Arsakes with the name Gotarzes,” mentioned on some astronomical tablets from Babylon (Strassmaier in Zeitschr. für Assyriologie, vi. 216; Mahler in Wiener Zeitschr. für Kunde des Morgenlands, xv. 63 ff.), appears to have reigned for some time in Babylonia about 87 B.C.

(Ed. M.)


[1] Rawlinson, Journ. Roy. Geog. Soc. ix. 114; Flandin and Coste, La Perse ancienne, i. tab. 19; Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci inscr. 431.


GOTHA, a town of Germany, alternately with Coburg the residence of the dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, in a pleasant situation on the Leine canal, 6 m. N. of the slope of the Thuringian forest, 17 m. W. from Erfurt, on the railway to Bebra-Cassel. Pop. (1905) 36,906. It consists of an old inner town and encircling suburbs, and is dominated by the castle of Friedenstein, lying on the Schlossberg at an elevation of 1100 ft. With the exception of those in the older portion of the town, the streets are handsome and spacious, and the beautiful gardens and promenades between the suburbs and the castle add greatly to the town’s attractiveness. To the south of the castle there is an extensive and finely adorned park. To the north-west of the town the Galberg—on which there is a public pleasure garden—and to the south-west the Seeberg rise to a height of over 1300 ft. and afford extensive views. The castle of Friedenstein, begun by Ernest the Pious, duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, in 1643 and completed in 1654, occupies the site of the old fortress of Grimmenstein. It is a huge square building flanked with two wings, having towers rising to the height of about 140 ft. It contains the ducal cabinet of coins and the ducal library of nearly 200,000 volumes, among which are several rare editions and about 6900 manuscripts. The picture gallery, the cabinet of engravings, the natural history museum, the Chinese museum, and the cabinet of art, which includes a collection of Egyptian, Etruscan, Roman and German antiquities, are now included in the new museum, completed in 1878, which stands on a terrace to the south of the castle. The principal other public buildings are the church of St Margaret with a beautiful portal and a lofty tower, founded in the 12th century, twice burnt down, and rebuilt in its present form in 1652; the church of the Augustinian convent, with an altar-piece by the painter Simon Jacobs; the theatre; the fire insurance bank and the life insurance bank; the ducal palace, in the Italian villa style, with a winter garden and picture gallery; the buildings of the ducal legislature; the hospital; the old town-hall, dating from the 11th century; the old residence of the painter Lucas Cranach, now used as a girls’ school; the ducal stable; and the Friedrichsthal palace, now used as public offices. The educational establishments include a gymnasium (founded in 1524, one of the most famous in Germany), two training schools for teachers, conservatoires of music and several scientific institutions. Gotha is remarkable for its insurance societies and for the support it has given to cremation. The crematorium was long regarded as a model for such establishments.

Gotha is one of the most active commercial towns of Thuringia, its manufactures including sausages, for which it has a great reputation, porcelain, tobacco, sugar, machinery, mechanical and surgical instruments, musical instruments, shoes, lamps and toys. There are also a number of nurseries and market gardens. The book trade is represented by about a dozen firms, including that of the great geographical house of Justus Perthes, founded in 1785.

Gotha (in old chronicles called Gotegewe and later Gotaha) existed as a village in the time of Charlemagne. In 930 its lord Gothard abbot of Hersfeld surrounded it with walls. It was known as a town as early as 1200, about which time it came into the possession of the landgraves of Thuringia. On the extinction of that line Gotha came into the possession of the electors of Saxony, and it fell later to the Ernestine line of dukes. After the battle of Mühlberg in 1547 the castle of Grimmenstein was partly destroyed, but it was again restored in 1554. In 1567 the town was taken from Duke John Frederick by the elector Augustus of Saxony. After the death of John Frederick’s sons, it came into the possession of Duke Ernest the Pious, the founder of the line of the dukes of Gotha; and on the extinction of this family it was united in 1825 along with the dukedom to Coburg.

See Gotha und seine Umgebung (Gotha, 1851); Kühne, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Entwicklung der socialen Zustände der Stadt und des Herzogtums Gotha (Gotha, 1862); Humbert, Les Villes de la Thuringe (Paris, 1869), and Beck, Geschichte der Stadt Gotha (Gotha, 1870).


GOTHAM, WISE MEN OF, the early name given to the people of the village of Gotham, Nottingham, in allusion to their reputed simplicity. But if tradition is to be believed the Gothamites were not so very simple. The story is that King John intended to live in the neighbourhood, but that the villagers, foreseeing ruin as the cost of supporting the court, feigned imbecility when the royal messengers arrived. Wherever the latter went they saw the rustics engaged in some absurd task. John, on this report, determined to have his hunting lodge elsewhere, and the “wise men” boasted, “we ween there are more fools pass through Gotham than remain in it.” The “foles of Gotham” are mentioned as early as the 15th century in the Towneley Mysteries; and a collection of their “jests” was published in the 16th century under the title Merrie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham, gathered together by A.B., of Phisicke Doctour. The “A.B.” was supposed to represent Andrew Borde or Boorde (1490?-1549), famous among other things for his wit, but he probably had nothing to do with the compilation. As typical of the Gothamite folly is usually quoted the story of the villagers joining hands round a thornbush to shut in a cuckoo so that it would sing all the year. The localizing of fools is common to most countries, and there are many other reputed “imbecile” centres in England besides Gotham. Thus there are the people of Coggeshall, Essex, the “carles of Austwick,” Yorkshire, “the gowks of Gordon,” Berwickshire, and for many centuries the charge of folly has been made against “silly” Suffolk and Norfolk (Descriptio Norfolciensium about 12th century, printed in Wright’s Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems). In Germany there are the Schildburgers, in Holland the people of Kampen. Among the ancient Greeks Boeotia was the home of fools; among the Thracians, Abdera; among the ancient Jews, Nazareth.

See W. A. Clouston, Book of Noodles (London, 1888); R. H. Cunningham, Amusing Prose Chap-books (1889).


GOTHENBURG (Swed. Göteborg), a city and seaport of Sweden, on the river Göta, 5 m. above its mouth in the Cattegat, 285 m. S.W. of Stockholm by rail, and 360 by the Göta canal-route. Pop. (1900) 130,619. It is the chief town of the district (län) of Göteborg och Bohus, and the seat of a bishop. It lies on the east or left bank of the river, which is here lined with quays on both sides, those on the west belonging to the large island of Hisingen, contained between arms of the Göta. On this island are situated the considerable suburbs of Lindholmen and Lundby.

The city itself stretches east and south from the river, with extensive and pleasant residential suburbs, over a wooded plain enclosed by low hills. The inner city, including the business quarter, is contained almost entirely between the river and the Rosenlunds canal, continued in the Vallgraf, the moat of the old fortifications; and is crossed by the Storahamn, Östrahamn and Vestrahamn canals. The Storahamn is flanked by the handsome tree-planted quays, Norra and Södra Hamngatan. The first of these, starting from the Stora Bommenshamn, where the sea-going passenger-steamers lie, leads past the museum to the Gustaf-Adolfs-Torg. The museum, in the old East India Company’s house, has fine collections in natural history, entomology, botany, anatomy, archaeology and ethnography, a picture and sculpture gallery, and exhibits of coins and industrial art. Gustaf-Adolfs-Torg is the business centre, and contains the town-hail (1670) and exchange (1849). Here are statues by B. E. Fogelberg of Gustavus Adolphus and of Odin, and of Oscar I. by J. P. Molin. Among several churches in this quarter of the city is the cathedral (Gustavii Domkyrka), a cruciform church founded in 1633 and rebuilt after fires in 1742 and 1815. Here are also the customs-house and residence of the governor of the län. On the north side, closely adjacent, are the Lilla Bommenshamn, where the Göta canal steamers lie, and the two principal railway stations, Statens and Bergslafs Bangård. Above the Rosenlunds canal rises a low, rocky eminence, Lilla Otterhälleberg. The inner city is girdled on the south and east by the Kungspark, which contains Molin’s famous group of statuary, the Belt-bucklers (Bältespännare), and by the beautiful gardens of the Horticultural Society (Trädgårdsforeningen). These grounds are traversed by the broad Nya Allé, a favourite promenade, and beyond them lies the best residential quarter, the first houses facing Vasa Street, Vasa Park and Kungsport Avenue. At the north end of the last are the university and the New theatre. At the west end of Vasa Street is the city library, the most important in the country except the royal library at Stockholm and the university libraries at Upsala and Lund. The suburbs are extensive. To the south-west are Majorna and Masthugget, with numerous factories. Beyond these lie the fine Slottskog Park, planted with oaks, and picturesquely broken by rocky hills commanding views of the busy river and the city. The suburb of Annedal is the workmen’s quarter; others are Landala, Garda and Stampen. All are connected with the city by electric tramways. Six railways leave the city from four stations. The principal lines, from the Statens and Bergslafs stations, run N. to Trollhättan, and into Norway (Christiania); N.E. between Lakes Vener and Vetter to Stockholm, Falun and the north; E. to Borås and beyond, and S. by the coast to Helsingborg, &c. From the Vestgöta station a narrow-gauge line runs N.E. to Skara and the southern shores of Vener, and from Sarö station near Slottskog Park a line serves Sarö, a seaside watering-place on an island 20 m. S. of Gothenburg.

The city has numerous important educational establishments. The university (Högskola) was a private foundation (1891), but is governed by a board, the members of which are nominated by the state, the town council, Royal Society of Science and Literature, directors of the museum, and the staffs of the various local colleges. There are several boys’ schools, a college for girls, a scientific college, a commercial college (1826), a school of navigation, and Chalmers’ Polytechnical College, founded by William Chalmers (1748-1811), a native of Gothenburg of English parentage. He bequeathed half his fortune to this institution, and the remainder to the Sahlgrenska hospital. A people’s library was founded by members of the family of Dickson, several of whom have taken a prominent part in philanthropical works in the city. The connexion of the family with Gothenburg dates from 1802, when Robert Dickson, a native of Montrose in Scotland, founded the business in which he was joined in 1807 by his brother James.

In respect of industry and commerce as a whole Gothenburg ranks as second to Stockholm in the kingdom; but it is actually the principal centre of export trade and port of register; and as a manufacturing town it is slightly inferior to Malmö. Its principal industrial establishments are mechanical works (both in the city and at Lundby), saw-mills, dealing with the timber which is brought down the Göta, flour-mills, margarine factories, breweries and distilleries, tobacco works, cotton mills, dyeing and bleaching works (at Levanten in the vicinity), furniture factories, paper and leather works, and shipbuilding yards. The vessels registered at the port in 1901 were 247 of 120,488 tons. There are about 3 m. of quays approachable by vessels drawing 20 ft., and slips for the accommodation of large vessels. Gothenburg is the principal port of embarkation of Swedish emigrants for America.

The city is governed by a council including two mayors, and returns nine members to the second chamber of the Riksdag (parliament).

Founded by Gustavus Adolphus in 1619, Gothenburg was from the first designed to be fortified, a town of the same name founded on Hisingen in 1603 having been destroyed by the Danes during the Calmar war. From 1621, when it was first chartered, it steadily increased, though it suffered greatly in the Danish wars of the last half of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries, and from several extensive conflagrations (the last in 1813), which have destroyed important records of its history. The great development of its herring fishery in the latter part of the 18th century gave a new impulse to the city’s trade, which was kept up by the influence of the “Continental System,” under which Gothenburg became a depot for the colonial merchandise of England. After the fall of Napoleon it began to decline, but after its closer connexion with the interior of the country by the Göta canal (opened 1832) and Western railway it rapidly advanced both in population and trade. Since the demolition of its fortifications in 1807, it has been defended only by some small forts. Gothenburg was the birthplace of the poet Bengt Lidner (1757-1793) and two of Sweden’s greatest sculptors, Bengt Erland Fogelberg (1786-1854) and Johann Peter Molin (1814-1873). After the French Revolution Gothenburg was for a time the residence of the Bourbon family. The name of this city is associated with the municipal licensing system known as the Gothenburg System (see [Liquor Laws]).

See W. Berg, Samlingar till Göteborgs historia (Gothenburg, 1893); Lagerberg, Göteborg i äldre och nyare tid (Gothenburg, 1902); Fröding, Det forna Göteborg (Stockholm, 1903).


GOTHIC, the term generally applied to medieval architecture, and more especially to that in which the pointed arch appears. The style was at one time supposed to have originated with the warlike people known as the Goths, some of whom (the East Goths, or Ostrogoths) settled in the eastern portion of Europe, and others (the West Goths, or Visigoths) in the Asturias of Spain; but as no buildings or remains of any description have ever been found, in which there are any traces of an independent construction in either brick or stone, the title is misleading; since, however, it is now so generally accepted it would be difficult to change it. The term when first employed was one of reproach, as Evelyn (1702) when speaking of the faultless building (i.e. classic) says, “they were demolished by the Goths or Vandals, who introduced their own licentious style now called modern or Gothic.” The employment of the pointed arch in Syria, Egypt and Sicily from the 8th century onwards by the Mahommedans for their mosques and gateways, some four centuries before it made its appearance in Europe, also makes it advisable to adhere to the old term Gothic in preference to Pointed Architecture. (See [Architecture])


GÖTHITE, or Goethite, a mineral composed of an iron hydrate, Fe2O3·H2O, crystallizing in the orthorhombic system and isomorphous with diaspore and manganite (q.v.). It was first noticed in 1789, and in 1806 was named after the poet Goethe. Crystals are prismatic, acicular or scaly in habit; they have a perfect cleavage parallel to the brachypinacoid (M in the figure). Reniform and stalactitic masses with a radiated fibrous structure also occur. The colour varies from yellowish or reddish to blackish-brown, and by transmitted light it is often blood-red; the streak is brownish-yellow; hardness, 5; specific gravity, 4.3. The best crystals are the brilliant, blackish-brown prisms with terminal pyramidal planes (fig.) from the Restormel iron mines at Lostwithiel, and the Botallack mine at St Just in Cornwall. A variety occurring as thin red scales at Siegen in Westphalia is known as Rubinglimmer or pyrrhosiderite (from Gr. πυρρός, flame-coloured, and σίδηρος, iron): a scaly-fibrous variety from the same locality is called lepidocrocite (from λεπίς, scale, and κροκίς, fibre). Sammetblende or przibramite is a variety, from Przibram in Bohemia, consisting of delicate acicular or capillary crystals arranged in radiating groups with a velvety surface and yellow colour.

Göthite occurs with other iron oxides, especially limonite and hematite, and when found in sufficient quantity is mined with these as an ore of iron. It often occurs also as an enclosure in other minerals. Acicular crystals, resembling rutile in appearance, sometimes penetrate crystals of pale-coloured amethyst, for instance, at Wolf’s Island in Lake Onega in Russia: this form of the mineral has long been known as onegite, and the crystals enclosing it are cut for ornamental purposes under the name of “Cupid’s darts” (flèches d’amour). The metallic glitter of avanturine or sun-stone (q.v.) is due to the enclosed scales of göthite and certain other minerals.

(L. J. S.)


GOTHS (Gotones, later Gothis), a Teutonic people who in the 1st century of the Christian era appear to have inhabited the middle part of the basin of the Vistula. They were probably the easternmost of the Teutonic peoples. Early history. According to their own traditions as recorded by Jordanes, they had come originally from the island Scandza, i.e. Skåne or Sweden, under the leadership of a king named Berig, and landed first in a region called Gothiscandza. Thence they invaded the territories of the Ulmerugi (the Holmryge of Anglo-Saxon tradition), probably in the neighbourhood of Rügenwalde in eastern Pomerania, and conquered both them and the neighbouring Vandals. Under their sixth king Filimer they migrated into Scythia and settled in a district which they called Oium. The rest of their early history, as it is given by Jordanes following Cassiodorus, is due to an erroneous identification of the Goths with the Getae, and ancient Thracian people.

The credibility of the story of the migration from Sweden has been much discussed by modern authors. The legend was not peculiar to the Goths, similar traditions being current among the Langobardi, the Burgundians, and apparently several other Teutonic nations. It has been observed with truth that so many populous nations can hardly have sprung from the Scandinavian peninsula; on the other hand, the existence of these traditions certainly requires some explanation. Possibly, however, many of the royal families may have contained an element of Scandinavian blood, a hypothesis which would well accord with the social conditions of the migration period, as illustrated, e.g., in Völsunga Saga and in Hervarar Saga ok Heiðreks Konungs. In the case of the Goths a connexion with Gotland is not unlikely, since it is clear from archaeological evidence that this island had an extensive trade with the coasts about the mouth of the Vistula in early times. If, however, there was any migration at all, one would rather have expected it to have taken place in the reverse direction. For the origin of the Goths can hardly be separated from that of the Vandals, whom according to Procopius they resembled in language and in all other respects. Moreover the Gepidae, another Teutonic people, who are said to have formerly inhabited the delta of the Vistula, also appear to have been closely connected with the Goths. According to Jordanes they participated in the migration from Scandza.

Apart from a doubtful reference by Pliny to a statement of the early traveller Pytheas, the first notices we have of the Goths go back to the first years of the Christian era, at which time they seem to have been subject to the Marcomannic king Maroboduus. They do not enter into Roman history, however, until after the beginning of the 3rd century, at which time they appear to have come in conflict with the emperor Caracalla. During this century their frontier seems to have been advanced considerably farther south, and the whole country as far as the lower Danube was frequently ravaged by them. The emperor Gordianus is called “victor Gothorum” by Capitolinus, though we have no record of the ground for the claim, and further conflicts are recorded with his successors, one of whom, Decius, was slain by the Goths in Moesia. According to Jordanes the kings of the Goths during these campaigns were Ostrogotha and afterwards Cniva, the former of whom is praised also in the Anglo-Saxon poem Widsith. The emperor Gallus was forced to pay tribute to the Goths. By this time they had reached the coasts of the Black Sea, and during the next twenty years they frequently ravaged the maritime regions of Asia Minor and Greece. Aurelian is said to have won a victory over them, but the province of Dacia had to be given up. In the time of Constantine the Great Thrace and Moesia were again plundered by the Goths, A.D. 321. Constantine drove them back and concluded peace with their king Ariaric in 336. From the end of the 3rd century we hear of subdivisions of the nation called Greutungi, Teruingi, Austrogothi (Ostrogothi), Visigothi, Taifali, though it is not clear whether these were all distinct.

Though by this time the Goths had extended their territories far to the south and east, it must not be assumed that they had evacuated their old lands on the Vistula. Jordanes records several traditions of their conflicts with other Teutonic tribes, in particular a victory won by Ostrogotha over Fastida, king of the Gepidae, and another by Geberic over Visimar, king of the Vandals, about the end of Constantine’s reign, in consequence of which the Vandals sought and obtained permission to settle in Pannonia. Geberic was succeeded by the most famous of the Gothic kings, Hermanaric (Eormenric, Iörmunrekr), whose deeds are recorded in the traditions of all Teutonic nations. According to Jordanes he conquered the Heruli, the Aestii, the Venedi, and a number of other tribes who seem to have been settled in the southern part of Russia. From Anglo-Saxon sources it seems probable that his supremacy reached westwards as far as Holstein. He was of a cruel disposition, and is said to have killed his nephews Embrica (Emerca) and Fritla (Fridla) in order to obtain the great treasure which they possessed. Still more famous is the story of Suanihilda (Svanhildr), who according to Northern tradition was his wife and was cruelly put to death on a false charge of unfaithfulness. An attempt to avenge her death was made by her brothers Ammius (Hamðir) and Sarus (Sörli) by whom Hermanaric was severely wounded. To his time belong a number of other heroes whose exploits are recorded in English and Northern tradition, amongst whom we may mention Wudga (Vidigoia), Hama and several others, who in Widsith are represented as defending their country against the Huns in the forest of the Vistula. Hermanaric committed suicide in his distress at an invasion of the Huns about A.D. 370, and the portion of the nation called Ostrogoths then came under Hunnish supremacy. The Visigoths obtained permission to cross the Danube and settle in Moesia. A large part of the nation became Christian about this time (see [below]). The exactions of the Roman governors, however, soon led to a quarrel, which ended in the total defeat and death of Valens at Adrianople in the year 378.

(F. G. M. B.)

From about 370 the history of the East and West Goths parts asunder, to be joined together again only incidentally and for a season. The great mass of the East Goths stayed north of the Danube, and passed under the Later history. overlordship of the Hun. They do not for the present play any important part in the affairs of the Empire. The great mass of the West Goths crossed the Danube into the Roman provinces, and there played a most important part in various characters of alliance and enmity. The great migration was in 376, when they were allowed to pass as peaceful settlers under their chief Frithigern. His rival Athanaric seems to have tried to maintain his party for a while north of the Danube in defiance of the Huns; but he had presently to follow the example of the great mass of the nation. The peaceful designs of Frithigern were meanwhile thwarted by the ill-treatment which the Goths suffered from the Roman officials, which led first to disputes and then to open war. In 378 the Goths won the great battle of Adrianople, and after this Theodosius the Great, the successor of Valens, made terms with them in 381, and the mass of the Gothic warriors entered the Roman service as foederati. Many of their chiefs were in high favour; but it seems that the orthodox Theodosius showed more favour to the still remaining heathen party among the Goths than to the larger part of them who had embraced Arian Christianity. Athanaric himself came to Constantinople in 381; he was received with high honours, and had a solemn funeral when he died. His saying is worth recording, as an example of the effect which Roman civilization had on the Teutonic mind. “The emperor,” he said, “was a god upon earth, and he who resisted him would have his blood on his own head.”

The death of Theodosius in 395 broke up the union between the West Goths and the Empire. Dissensions arose between them and the ministers of Arcadius; the Goths threw off their allegiance, and chose Alaric as their king. This was a restoration alike of national unity and of national independence. The royal title had not been borne by their leaders in the Roman service. Alaric’s position is quite different from that of several Goths in the Roman service, who appear as simple rebels. He was of the great West Gothic house of the Balthi, or Bold-men, a house second in nobility only to that of the Amali. His whole career was taken up with marchings to and fro within the lands, first of the Eastern, then of the Western empire. The Goths are under him an independent people under a national king; their independence is in no way interfered with if the Gothic king, in a moment of peace, accepts the office and titles of a Roman general. But under Alaric the Goths make no lasting settlement. In the long tale of intrigue and warfare between the Goths and the two imperial courts which fills up this whole time, cessions of territory are offered to the Goths, provinces are occupied by them, but as yet they do not take root anywhere; no Western land as yet becomes Gothia. Alaric’s designs of settlement seem in his first stage to have still kept east of the Adriatic, in Illyricum, possibly in Greece. Towards the end of his career his eyes seem fixed on Africa.

Greece was the scene of his great campaign in 395-96, the second Gothic invasion of that country. In this campaign the religious position of the Goths is strongly marked. The Arian appeared as an enemy alike to the pagan majority and the Catholic minority; but he came surrounded by monks, and his chief wrath was directed against the heathen temples (vide G. F. Hertzberg, Geschichte Griechenlands, iii. 391). His Italian campaigns fall into two great divisions, that of 402-3, when he was driven back by Stilicho, and that of 408-10, after Stilicho’s death. In this second war he thrice besieged Rome (408, 409, 410). The second time it suited a momentary policy to set up a puppet emperor of his own, and even to accept a military commission from him. The third time he sacked the city, the first time since Brennus that Rome had been taken by an army of utter foreigners. The intricate political and military details of these campaigns are of less importance in the history of the Gothic nation than the stage which Alaric’s reign marks in the history of that nation. It stands between two periods of settlement within the Empire and of service under the Empire. Under Alaric there is no settlement, and service is quite secondary and precarious; after his death in 410 the two begin again in new shapes.

Contemporary with the campaigns of Alaric was a barbarian invasion of Italy, which, according to one view, again brings the East and West Goths together. The great mass of the East Goths, as has been already said, became one of the many nations which were under vassalage to the Huns; but their relation was one merely of vassalage. They remained a distinct people under kings of their own, kings of the house of the Amali and of the kindred of Ermanaric (Jordanes, 48). They had to follow the lead of the Huns in war, but they were also able to carry on wars of their own; and it has been held that among these separate East Gothic enterprises we are to place the invasion of Italy in 405 by Radagaisus (whom R. Pallmann[1] writes Ratiger, and takes him for the chief of the heathen part of the East Goths). One chronicler, Prosper, makes this invasion preceded by another in 400, in which Alaric and Radagaisus appear as partners. The paganism of Radagaisus is certain. The presence of Goths in his army is certain, but it seems dangerous to infer that his invasion was a national Gothic enterprise.

Under Ataulphus, the brother-in-law and successor of Alaric, another era opens, the beginning of enterprises which did in the end lead to the establishment of a settled Gothic monarchy in the West. The position of Ataulphus is well marked by the speech put into his mouth by Orosius. He had at one time dreamed of destroying the Roman power, of turning Romania into Gothia, and putting Ataulphus in the stead of Augustus; but he had learned that the world could be governed only by the laws of Rome and he had determined to use the Gothic arms for the support of the Roman power. And in the confused and contradictory accounts of his actions (for the story in Jordanes cannot be reconciled with the accounts in Olympiodorus and the chroniclers), we can see something of this principle at work throughout. Gaul and Spain were overrun both by barbarian invaders and by rival emperors. The sword of the Goth was to win back the last lands for Rome. And, amid many shiftings of allegiance, Ataulphus seems never to have wholly given up the position of an ally of the Empire. His marriage with Placidia, the daughter of the great Theodosius, was taken as the seal of the union between Goth and Roman, and, had their son Theodosius lived, a dynasty might have arisen uniting both claims. But the career of Ataulphus was cut short at Barcelona in 415, by his murder at the hands of another faction of the Goths. The reign of Sigeric was momentary. Under Wallia in 418 a more settled state of things was established. The Empire received again, as the prize of Gothic victories, the Tarraconensis in Spain, and Novempopulana and the Narbonensis in Gaul. The “second Aquitaine,” with the sea-coast from the mouth of the Garonne to the mouth of the Loire, became the West Gothic kingdom of Toulouse. The dominion of the Goths was now strictly Gaulish; their lasting Spanish dominion does not yet begin.

The reign of the first West Gothic Theodoric (419-451) shows a shifting state of relations between the Roman and Gothic powers; but, after defeats and successes both ways, the older relation of alliance against common enemies was again established. At last Goth and Roman had to join together against the common enemy of Europe and Christendom, Attila the Hun. But they met Gothic warriors in his army. By the terms of their subjection to the Huns, the East Goths came to fight for Attila against Christendom at Châlons, just as the Servians came to fight for Bajazet against Christendom at Nicopolis. Theodoric fell in the battle (451). After this momentary meeting, the history of the East and West Goths again separates for a while. The kingdom of Toulouse grew within Gaul at the expense of the Empire, and in Spain at the expense of the Suevi. Under Euric (466-485) the West Gothic power again became largely a Spanish power. The kingdom of Toulouse took in nearly all Gaul south of the Loire and west of the Rhône, with all Spain, except the north-west corner, which was still held by the Suevi. Provence alone remained to the Empire. The West Gothic kings largely adopted Roman manners and culture; but, as they still kept to their original Arian creed, their rule never became thoroughly acceptable to their Catholic subjects. They stood, therefore, at a great disadvantage when a new and aggressive Catholic power appeared in Gaul through the conversion of the Frank Clovis or Chlodwig. Toulouse was, as in days long after, the seat of an heretical power, against which the forces of northern Gaul marched as on a crusade. In 507 the West Gothic king Alaric II. fell before the Frankish arms at Campus Vogladensis, near Poitiers, and his kingdom, as a great power north of the Alps, fell with him. That Spain and a fragment of Gaul still remained to form a West Gothic kingdom was owing to the intervention of the East Goths under the rule of the greatest man in Gothic history.

When the Hunnish power broke in pieces on the death of Attila, the East Goths recovered their full independence. They now entered into relations with the Empire, and were settled on lands in Pannonia. During the greater part of the latter half of the 5th century, the East Goths play in south-eastern Europe nearly the same part which the West Goths played in the century before. They are seen going to and fro, in every conceivable relation of friendship and enmity with the Eastern Roman power, till, just as the West Goths had done before them, they pass from the East to the West. They are still ruled by kings of the house of the Amali, and from that house there now steps forward a great figure, famous alike in history and in romance, in the person of Theodoric, son of Theodemir. Born about 454, his childhood was spent at Constantinople as a hostage, where he was carefully educated. The early part of his life is taken up with various disputes, intrigues and wars within the Eastern empire, in which he has as his rival another Theodoric, son of Triarius, and surnamed Strabo. This older but lesser Theodoric seems to have been the chief, not the king, of that branch of the East Goths which had settled within the Empire at an earlier time. Theodoric the Great, as he is sometimes distinguished, is sometimes the friend, sometimes the enemy, of the Empire. In the former case he is clothed with various Roman titles and offices, as patrician and consul; but in all cases alike he remains the national East Gothic king. It was in both characters together that he set out in 488, by commission from the emperor Zeno, to recover Italy from Odoacer. By 493 Ravenna was taken; Odoacer was killed by Theodoric’s own hand; and the East Gothic power was fully established over Italy, Sicily, Dalmatia and the lands to the north of Italy. In this war the history of the East and West Goths begins again to unite, if we may accept the witness of one writer that Theodoric was helped by West Gothic auxiliaries. The two branches of the nation were soon brought much more closely together, when, through the overthrow of the West Gothic kingdom of Toulouse, the power of Theodoric was practically extended over a large part of Gaul and over nearly the whole of Spain. A time of confusion followed the fall of Alaric II., and, as that prince was the son-in-law of Theodoric, the East Gothic king stepped in as the guardian of his grandson Amalaric, and preserved for him all his Spanish and a fragment of his Gaulish dominion. Toulouse passed away to the Frank; but the Goth kept Narbonne and its district, the land of Septimania—the land which, as the last part of Gaul held by the Goths, kept the name of Gothia for many ages. While Theodoric lived, the West Gothic kingdom was practically united to his own dominion. He seems also to have claimed a kind of protectorate over the Teutonic powers generally, and indeed to have practically exercised it, except in the case of the Franks.

The East Gothic dominion was now again as great in extent and far more splendid than it could have been in the time of Ermanaric. But it was now of a wholly different character. The dominion of Theodoric was not a barbarian but a civilized power. His twofold position ran through everything. He was at once national king of the Goths, and successor, though without any imperial titles, of the Roman emperors of the West. The two nations, differing in manners, language and religion, lived side by side on the soil of Italy; each was ruled according to its own law, by the prince who was, in his two separate characters, the common sovereign of both. The picture of Theodoric’s rule is drawn for us in the state papers drawn up in his name and in the names of his successors by his Roman minister Cassiodorus. The Goths seem to have been thick on the ground in northern Italy; in the south they formed little more than garrisons. In Theodoric’s theory the Goth was the armed protector of the peaceful Roman; the Gothic king had the toil of government, while the Roman consul had the honour. All the forms of the Roman administration went on, and the Roman polity and Roman culture had great influence on the Goths themselves. The rule of the prince over two distinct nations in the same land was necessarily despotic; the old Teutonic freedom was necessarily lost. Such a system as that which Theodoric established needed a Theodoric to carry it on. It broke in pieces after his death.

On the death of Theodoric (526) the East and West Goths were again separated. The few instances in which they are found acting together after this time are as scattered and incidental as they were before. Amalaric succeeded to the West Gothic kingdom in Spain and Septimania. Provence was added to the dominion of the new East Gothic king Athalaric, the grandson of Theodoric through his daughter Amalasuntha. The weakness of the East Gothic position in Italy now showed itself. The long wars of Justinian’s reign (535-555) recovered Italy for the Empire, and the Gothic name died out on Italian soil. The chance of forming a national state in Italy by the union of Roman and Teutonic elements, such as those which arose in Gaul, in Spain, and in parts of Italy under Lombard rule, was thus lost. The East Gothic kingdom was destroyed before Goths and Italians had at all mingled together. The war of course made the distinction stronger; under the kings who were chosen for the purposes of the war national Gothic feeling had revived. The Goths were now again, if not a wandering people, yet an armed host, no longer the protectors but the enemies of the Roman people of Italy. The East Gothic dominion and the East Gothic name wholly passed away. The nation had followed Theodoric. It is only once or twice after his expedition that we hear of Goths, or even of Gothic leaders, m the eastern provinces. From the soil of Italy the nation passed away almost without a trace, while the next Teutonic conquerors stamped their name on the two ends of the land, one of which keeps it to this day.

The West Gothic kingdom lasted much longer, and came much nearer to establishing itself as a national power in the lands which it took in. But the difference of race and faith between the Arian Goths and the Catholic Romans of Gaul and Spain influenced the history of the West Gothic kingdom for a long time. The Arian Goths ruled over Catholic subjects, and were surrounded by Catholic neighbours. The Franks were Catholics from their first conversion; the Suevi became Catholics much earlier than the Goths. The African conquests of Belisarius gave the Goths of Spain, instead of the Arian Vandals, another Catholic neighbour in the form of the restored Roman power. The Catholics everywhere preferred either Roman, Suevian or Frankish rule to that of the heretical Goths; even the unconquerable mountaineers of Cantabria seem for a while to have received a Frankish governor. In some other mountain districts the Roman inhabitants long maintained their independence, and in 534 a large part of the south of Spain, including the great cities of Cadiz, Cordova, Seville and New Carthage, was, with the good will of its Roman inhabitants, reunited to the Empire, which kept some points on the coast as late as 624. That is to say, the same work which the Empire was carrying on in Italy against the East Goths was at the same moment carried on in Spain against the West Goths. But in Italy the whole land was for a while won back, and the Gothic power passed away for ever. In Spain the Gothic power outlived the Roman power, but it outlived it only by itself becoming in some measure Roman. The greatest period of the Gothic power as such was in the reign of Leovigild (568-586). He reunited the Gaulish and Spanish parts of the kingdom which had been parted for a moment; he united the Suevian dominion to his own; he overcame some of the independent districts, and won back part of the recovered Roman province in southern Spain. He further established the power of the crown over the Gothic nobles, who were beginning to grow into territorial lords. The next reign, that of his son Recared (586-601), was marked by a change which took away the great hindrance which had thus far stood in the way of any national union between Goths and Romans. The king and the greater part of the Gothic people embraced the Catholic faith. A vast degree of influence now fell into the hands of the Catholic bishops; the two nations began to unite; the Goths were gradually romanized and the Gothic language began to go out of use. In short, the Romance nation and the Romance speech of Spain began to be formed. The Goths supplied the Teutonic infusion into the Roman mass. The kingdom, however, still remained a Gothic kingdom. “Gothic,” not “Roman” or “Spanish,” is its formal title; only a single late instance of the use of the formula “regnum Hispaniae” is known. In the first half of the 7th century that name became for the first time geographically applicable by the conquest of the still Roman coast of southern Spain. The Empire was then engaged in the great struggle with the Avars and Persians, and, now that the Gothic kings were Catholic, the great objection to their rule on the part of the Roman inhabitants was taken away. The Gothic nobility still remained a distinct class, and held, along with the Catholic prelacy, the right of choosing the king. Union with the Catholic Church was accompanied by the introduction of the ecclesiastical ceremony of anointing, a change decidedly favourable to elective rule. The growth of those later ideas which tended again to favour the hereditary doctrine had not time to grow up in Spain before the Mahommedan conquest (711). The West Gothic crown therefore remained elective till the end. The modern Spanish nation is the growth of the long struggle with the Mussulmans; but it has a direct connexion with the West Gothic kingdom. We see at once that the Goths hold altogether a different place in Spanish memory from that which they hold in Italian memory. In Italy the Goth was but a momentary invader and ruler; the Teutonic element in Italy comes from other sources. In Spain the Goth supplies an important element in the modern nation. And that element has been neither forgotten nor despised. Part of the unconquered region of northern Spain, the land of Asturia, kept for a while the name of Gothia, as did the Gothic possessions in Gaul and in Crim. The name of the people who played so great a part in all southern Europe, and who actually ruled over so large a part of it has now wholly passed away; but it is in Spain that its historical impress is to be looked for.

Of Gothic literature in the Gothic language we have the Bible of Ulfilas, and some other religious writings and fragments (see [Gothic Language] below). Of Gothic legislation in Latin we have the edict of Theodoric of the year 500, edited by F. Bluhme in the Monumenta Germaniae historica; and the books of Variae of Cassiodorus may pass as a collection of the state papers of Theodoric and his immediate successors. Among the West Goths written laws had already been put forth by Euric. The second Alaric (484-507) put forth a Breviarium of Roman law for his Roman subjects; but the great collection of West Gothic laws dates from the later days of the monarchy, being put forth by King Recceswinth about 654. This code gave occasion to some well-known comments by Montesquieu and Gibbon, and has been discussed by Savigny (Geschichte des römischen Rechts, ii. 65) and various other writers. They are printed in the Monumenta Germaniae, leges, tome i. (1902). Of special Gothic histories, besides that of Jordanes, already so often quoted, there is the Gothic history of Isidore, archbishop of Seville, a special source of the history of the West Gothic kings down to Svinthala (621-631). But all the Latin and Greek writers contemporary with the days of Gothic predominance make their constant contributions. Not for special facts, but for a general estimate, no writer is more instructive than Salvian of Marseilles in the 5th century, whose work De Gubernatione Dei is full of passages contrasting the vices of the Romans with the virtues of the barbarians, especially of the Goths. In all such pictures we must allow a good deal for exaggeration both ways, but there must be a ground-work of truth. The chief virtues which the Catholic presbyter praises in the Arian Goths are their chastity, their piety according to their own creed, their tolerance towards the Catholics under their rule, and their general good treatment of their Roman subjects. He even ventures to hope that such good people may be saved, notwithstanding their heresy. All this must have had some groundwork of truth in the 5th century, but it is not very wonderful if the later West Goths of Spain had a good deal fallen away from the doubtless somewhat ideal picture of Salvian.

(E. A. F.)

There is now an extensive literature on the Goths, and among the principal works may be mentioned: T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (Oxford, 1880-1899); J. Aschbach, Geschichte der Westgoten (Frankfort, 1827); F. Dahn, Die Könige der Germanen (1861-1899); E. von Wietersheim, Geschichte der Völkerwanderung (1880-1881); R. Pallmann, Die Geschichte der Völkerwanderung (Gotha, 1863-1864); B. Rappaport, Die Einfälle der Goten in das römische Reich (Leipzig, 1899), and K. Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme (Munich, 1837). Other works which may be consulted are: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by J. B. Bury (1896-1900); H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity (1867); J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (1889); P. Villari, Le Invasioni barbariche in Italia (Milan, 1901); and F. Martroye, L’Occident à l’époque byzantine: Goths et Vandales (Paris, 1903). There is a popular history of the Goths by H. Bradley in the “Story of the Nations” series (London, 1888). For the laws see the Leges in Band I. of the Monumenta Germaniae historica, leges (1902). A. Helfferich, Entstehung und Geschichte des Westgotenrechts (Berlin, 1858); F. Bluhme, Zur Textkritik des Westgotenrechts (1872); F. Dahn, Lex Visigothorum. Westgotische Studien (Würzburg, 1874); C. Rinaudo, Leggi dei Visigote, studio (Turin, 1878); and K. Zeumer, “Geschichte der westgotischen Gesetzgebung” in the Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde. See also the article on [Theodoric].

Gothic Language.—Our knowledge of the Gothic language is derived almost entirely from the fragments of a translation of the Bible which is believed to have been made by the Arian bishop Wulfila or Ulfilas (d. 383) for the Goths who dwelt on the lower Danube. The MSS. which have come down to us and which date from the period of Ostrogothic rule in Italy (489-555) contain the Second Epistle to the Corinthians complete, together with more or less considerable fragments of the four Gospels and of all the other Pauline Epistles. The only remains of the Old Testament are three short fragments of Ezra and Nehemiah. There is also an incomplete commentary (skeireins) on St John’s Gospel, a fragment of a calendar, and two charters (from Naples and Arezzo, the latter now lost) which contain some Gothic sentences. All these texts are written in a special character, which is said to have been invented by Wulfila. It is based chiefly on the uncial Greek alphabet, from which indeed most of the letters are obviously derived, and several orthographical peculiarities, e.g. the use of ai for e and ei for ī reflect the Greek pronunciation of the period. Other letters, however, have been taken over from the Runic and Latin alphabets. Apart from the texts mentioned above, the only remains of the Gothic language are the proper names and occasional words which occur in Greek and Latin writings, together with some notes, including the Gothic alphabet, in a Salzburg MS. of the 10th century, and two short inscriptions on a torque and a spear-head, discovered at Buzeo (Walachia) and Kovel (Volhynia) respectively. The language itself, as might be expected from the date of Wulfila’s translation, is of a much more archaic type than that of any other Teutonic writings which we possess, except a few of the earliest Northern inscriptions. This may be seen, e.g. in the better preservation of final and unaccented syllables and in the retention of the dual and the middle (passive) voice in verbs. It would be quite erroneous, however, to regard the Gothic fragments as representing a type of language common to all Teutonic nations in the 4th century. Indeed the distinctive characteristics of the language are very marked, and there is good reason for believing that it differed considerably from the various northern and western languages, whereas the differences among the latter at this time were probably comparatively slight (see [Teutonic Languages]). On the other hand, it must not be supposed that the language of the Goths stood quite isolated. Procopius (Vand. i. 2) states distinctly that the Gothic language was spoken not only by the Ostrogoths and Visigoths but also by the Vandals and the Gepidae; and in the former case there is sufficient evidence, chiefly from proper names, to prove that his statement is not far from the truth. With regard to the Gepidae we have less information; but since the Goths, according to Jordanes (cap. 17), believed them to have been originally a branch of their own nation, it is highly probable that the two languages were at least closely related. Procopius elsewhere (Vand. i. 3; Goth. i. 1, iii. 2) speaks of the Rugii, Sciri and Alani as Gothic nations. The fact that the two former were sprung from the north-east of Germany renders it probable that they had Gothic affinities, while the Alani, though non-Teutonic in origin, may have become gothicized in the course of the migration period. Some modern writers have included in the same class the Burgundians, a nation which had apparently come from the basin of the Oder, but the evidence at our disposal on the whole hardly justifies the supposition that their language retained a close affinity with Gothic.

In the 4th and 5th centuries the Gothic language—using the term in its widest sense—must have spread over the greater part of Europe together with the north coast of Africa. It disappeared, however, with surprising rapidity. There is no evidence for its survival in Italy or Africa after the fall of the Ostrogothic and Vandal kingdoms, while in Spain it is doubtful whether the Visigoths retained their language until the Arabic conquest. In central Europe it may have lingered somewhat longer in view of the evidence of the Salzburg MS. mentioned above. Possibly the information there given was derived from southern Hungary or Transylvania where remains of the Gepidae were to be found shortly before the Magyar invasion (889). According to Walafridus Strabo (de Reb. Eccles. cap. 7) also Gothic was still used in his time (the 9th century) in some churches in the region of the lower Danube. Thenceforth the language seems to have survived only among the Goths (Goti Tetraxitae) of the Crimea, who are mentioned for the last time by Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, an imperial envoy at Constantinople about the middle of the 16th century. He collected a number of words and phrases in use among them which show clearly that their language, though not unaffected by Iranian influence, was still essentially a form of Gothic.

See H. C. von der Gabelentz and J. Loebe, Ulfilas (Altenburg and Leipzig, 1836-1846); E. Bernhardt, Vulfila oder die gotische Bibel (Halle, 1875). For other works on the Gothic language see J. Wright, A Primer of the Gothic Language (Oxford, 1892), p. 143 f. To the references there given should be added: C. C. Uhlenbeck, Etymologisches Wörterbuch d. got. Sprache (Amsterdam, 2nd ed. 1901); F. Kluge, “Geschichte d. got. Sprache” in H. Paul’s Grundriss d. germ. Philologie (2nd ed., vol. i., Strassburg, 1897); W. Streitberg, Gotisches Elementarbuch (Heidelberg, 1897); Th. von Grienberger, Beiträge zur Geschichte d. deutschen Sprache u. Literatur, xxi. 185 ff.; L. F. A. Wimmer, Die Runenschrift (Berlin, 1887), p. 61 ff.; G. Stephens, Handbook to the Runic Monuments (London, 1884), p. 203; F. Wrede, Über die Sprache der Wandalen (Strassburg, 1886). For further references see K. Zeuss, Die Deutschen, p. 432 f. (where earlier references to the Crimean Goths are also given); F. Kluge, op. cit., p. 515 ff.; and O. Bremer, ib. vol. iii., p. 822.

(H. M. C.)


[1] Geschichte der Völkerwanderung (Gotha, 1863-1864).


GOTLAND, an island in the Baltic Sea belonging to Sweden, lying between 57° and 58° N., and having a length from S.S.W. to N.N.E. of 75 m., a breadth not exceeding 30 m., and an area of 1142 sq. m. The nearest point on the mainland is 50 m. from the westernmost point of the island. With the island Fårö, off the northern extremity, the Karlsöe, off the west coast, and Götska Sandö, 25 m. N. by E., Gotland forms the administrative district (län) of Gotland. The island is a level plateau of Silurian limestone, rising gently eastward, of an average height of 80 to 100 ft., with steep coasts fringed with tapering, free-standing columns of limestone (raukar). A few low isolated hills rise inland. The climate is temperate, and the soil, although in parts dry and sterile, is mostly fertile. Former marshy moors have been largely drained and cultivated. There are extensive sand-dunes in the north. As usual in a limestone formation, some of the streams have their courses partly below the surface, and caverns are not infrequent. Less than half the total area is under forest, the extent of which was formerly much greater. Barley, rye, wheat and oats are grown, especially the first, which is exported to the breweries on the mainland. The sugar-beet is also produced and exported, and there are beet-sugar works on the island. Sheep and cattle are kept; there is a government sheep farm at Roma, and the cattle may be noted as belonging principally to an old native breed, yellow and horned. Some lime-burning, cement-making and sea-fishing are carried on. The capital of the island is Visby, on the west coast. There are over 80 m. of railways. Lines run from Visby N.E. to Tingstäde and S. to Hofdhem, with branches from Roma to Klintehamn, a small watering-place on the west coast, and to Slitehamn on the east. Excepting along the coast the island has no scenic attraction, but it is of the highest archaeological interest. Nearly every village has its ruined church, and others occur where no villages remain. The shrunken walled town of Visby was one of the richest commercial centres of the Baltic from the 11th to the 14th century, and its prosperity was shared by the whole island. It retains ten churches besides the cathedral. The massive towers of the village churches are often detached, and doubtless served purposes of defence. The churches of Roma, Hemse, with remarkable mural paintings, Othen and Lärbo may be specially noted. Some contain fine stained glass, as at Dalhem near Visby. The natives of Gotland speak a dialect distinguished from that of any part of the Swedish mainland. Pop. of län (1900) 52,781.

Gotland was subject to Sweden before 890, and in 1030 was christianized by St Olaf, king of Norway, when returning from his exile at Kiev. He dedicated the first church in the island to St Peter at Visby. At that time Visby had long been one of the most important trading towns in the Baltic, and the chief distributing centre of the oriental commerce which came to Europe along the rivers of Russia. In the early years of the Hanseatic League, or about the middle of the 13th century, it became the chief depôt for the produce of the eastern Baltic countries, including, in a commercial sense, its daughter colony (11th century or earlier) of Novgorod the Great. Although Visby was an independent member of the Hanseatic League, the influence of Lübeck was paramount in the city, and half its governing body were men of German descent. Indeed, Björkander endeavours to prove that the city was a German (Hanseatic) foundation, dating principally from the middle of the 12th century. However that may be, the importance of Visby in the sea trade of the North is conclusively attested by the famous code of maritime law which bears its name. This Waterrecht dat de Kooplüde en de Schippers gemakt hebben to Visby (“sea-law which the merchants and seamen have made at Visby”) was a compilation based upon the Lübeck code, the Oléron code and the Amsterdam code, and was first printed in Low German in 1505, but in all probability had its origin about 1240, or not much later (see [Sea Laws]). By the middle of the the city was so great that, according to an old ballad, “the Gotlanders weighed out gold with stone weights and played with the choicest jewels. The swine ate out of silver troughs, and the women spun with distaffs of gold.” This fabled wealth was too strong a temptation for the energetic Valdemar Atterdag of Denmark. In 1361 he invaded the island, routed the defenders of Visby under the city walls (a monolithic cross marks the burial-place of the islanders who fell) and plundered the city. From this blow it never recovered, its decay being, however, materially helped by the fact that for the greater part of the next 150 years it was the stronghold of successive freebooters or sea-rovers—first, of the Hanseatic privateers called Vitalienbrödre or Viktualienbrüder, who made it their stronghold during the last eight years of the 14th century; then of the Teutonic Knights, whose Grand Master drove out the “Victuals Brothers,” and kept the island until it was redeemed by Queen Margaret. There too Erik XIII. (the Pomeranian), after being driven out of Denmark by his own subjects, established himself in 1437, and for a dozen years waged piracy upon Danes and Swedes alike. After him came Olaf and Ivar Thott, two Danish lords, who down to the year 1487 terrorized the seas from their pirates’ stronghold of Visby. Lastly, the Danish admiral Sören Norrby, the last supporter of Christian I. of Denmark, when his master’s cause was lost, waged a guerrilla war upon the Danish merchant ships and others from the same convenient base. But this led to an expedition by the men of Lübeck, who partly destroyed Visby in 1525. By the peace of Stettin (1570) Gotland was confirmed to the Danish crown, to which it had been given by Queen Margaret. But at the peace of Brömsebro in 1645 it was at length restored to Sweden, to which it has since belonged, except for the three years 1676-1679, when it was forcibly occupied by the Danes, and a few weeks in 1808, when the Russians landed a force.

The extreme wealth of the Gotlanders naturally fostered a spirit of independence, and their relations with Sweden were curious. The island at one period paid an annual tribute of 60 marks of silver to Sweden, but it was clearly recognized that it was paid by the desire of the Gotlanders, and not enforced by Sweden. The pope recognized their independence, and it was by their own free will that they came under the spiritual charge of the bishop of Linköping. Their local government was republican in form, and a popular assembly is indicated in the written Gotland Law, which dates not later than the middle of the 13th century. Sweden had no rights of objection to the measures adopted by this body, and there was no Swedish judge or other official in the island. Visby had a system of government and rights independent of, and in some measure opposed to, that of the rest of the island. It seems clear that there were at one time two separate corporations, for the native Gotlanders and the foreign traders respectively, and that these were subsequently fused. The rights and status of native Gotlanders were not enjoyed by foreigners as a whole—even intermarriage was illegal—but Germans, on account of their commercial pre-eminence in the island, were excepted.

See C. H. Bergman, Gotland’s geografi och historia (Stockholm, 1898) and Gotländska skildringar och minnen (Visby, 1902); A. T. Snöbohm, Gotlands land och folk (Visby, 1897 et seq.); W. Moler, Bidrag till en Gotländsk bibliografi (Stockholm, 1890); Hans Hildebrand, Visby och dess Minnesmärken (Stockholm, 1892 et seq.); A. Björkander, Till Visby Stads Aeldsta Historia (1898), where most of the literature dealing with the subject is mentioned; but some of the author’s arguments require criticism. For local government and rights see K. Hegel, Städter und Gilden im Mittelalter (book iii. ch. iii., Leipzig, 1891).


GOTO ISLANDS [Goto Retto, Gotto], a group of islands belonging to Japan, lying west of Kiushiu, in 33° N., 129° E. The southern of the two principal islands, Fukae-shima, measures 17 m. by 13½; the northern, Nakaori-shima, measures 23 m. by 7½. These islands lie almost in the direct route of steamers plying between Nagasaki and Shanghai, and are distant some 50 m. from Nagasaki. Some dome-shaped hills command the old castle-town of Fukae. The islands are highly cultivated; deer and other game abound, and trout are plentiful in the mountain streams. A majority of the inhabitants are Christians.


GOTTER, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1746-1797), German poet and dramatist, was born on the 3rd of September 1746, at Gotha. After the completion of his university career at Göttingen, he was appointed second director of the Archive of his native town, and subsequently went to Wetzlar, the seat of the imperial law courts, as secretary to the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha legation. In 1768 he returned to Gotha as tutor to two young noblemen, and here, together with H. C. Boie, he founded the famous Göttinger Musenalmanach. In 1770 he was once more in Wetzlar, where he belonged to Goethe’s circle of acquaintances. Four years later he took up his permanent abode in Gotha, where he died on the 18th of March 1797. Gotter was the chief representative of French taste in the German literary life of his time. His own poetry is elegant and polished, and in great measure free from the trivialities of the Anacreontic lyric of the earlier generation of imitators of French literature; but he was lacking in the imaginative depth that characterizes the German poetic temperament. His plays, of which Merope (1774), an adaptation in admirable blank verse of the tragedies of Maffei and Voltaire, and Medea (1775), a melodrame, are best known, were mostly based on French originals and had considerable influence in counteracting the formlessness and irregularity of the Sturm und Drang drama.

Gutter’s collected Gedichte appeared in 2 vols. in 1787 and 1788; a third volume (1802) contains his Literarischer Nachlass. See B. Litzmann, Schröder und Gotter (1887), and R. Schlösser, F. W. Gotter, sein Leben und seine Werke (1894).


GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG, one of the chief German poets of the middle ages. The dates of his birth and death are alike unknown, but he was the contemporary of Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide, and his epic Tristan was written about the year 1210. In all probability he did not belong to the nobility, as he is entitled Meister, never Herr, by his contemporaries; his poem—the only work that can with any certainty be attributed to him—bears witness to a learned education. The story of Tristan had been evolved from its shadowy Celtic origins by the French trouvères of the early 12th century, and had already found its way into Germany before the close of that century, in the crude, unpolished version of Eilhart von Oberge. It was Gottfried, however, who gave it its final form. His version is based not on that of Chrétien de Troyes, but on that of a trouvère Thomas, who seems to have been more popular with contemporaries. A comparison of the German epic with the French original is, however, impossible, as Chrétien’s Tristan is entirely lost, and of Thomas’s only a few fragments have come down to us. The story centres in the fatal voyage which Tristan, a vassal to the court of his uncle King Marke of Kurnewal (Cornwall), makes to Ireland to bring back Isolde as the king’s bride. On the return voyage Tristan and Isolde drink by mistake a love potion, which binds them irrevocably to each other. The epic resolves itself into a series of love intrigues in which the two lovers ingeniously outwit the trusting king. They are ultimately discovered, and Tristan flees to Normandy where he marries another Isolde—“Isolde with the white hands”—without being able to forget the blond Isolde of Ireland. At this point Gottfried’s narrative breaks off and to learn the close of the story we have to turn to two minor poets of the time, Ulrich von Türheim and Heinrich von Freiberg—the latter much the superior—who have supplied the conclusion. After further love adventures Tristan is fatally wounded by a poisoned spear in Normandy; the “blond Isolde,” as the only person who has power to cure him, is summoned from Cornwall. The ship that brings her is to bear a white sail if she is on board, a black one if not. Tristan’s wife, however, deceives him, announcing that the sail is black, and when Isolde arrives, she finds her lover dead. Marke at last learns the truth concerning the love potion, and has the two lovers buried side by side in Kurnewal.

It is difficult to form an estimate of Gottfried’s independence of his French source; but it seems clear that he followed closely the narrative of events he found in Thomas. He has, however, introduced into the story an astounding fineness of psychological motive, which, to judge from a general comparison of the Arthurian epic in both lands, is German rather than French; he has spiritualized and deepened the narrative; he has, above all, depicted with a variety and insight, unusual in medieval literature, the effects of an overpowering passion. Yet, glowing and seductive as Gottfried’s love-scenes are, they are never for a moment disfigured by frivolous hints or innuendo; the tragedy is unrolled with an earnestness that admits of no touch of humour, and also, it may be added, with a freedom from moralizing which was easier to attain in the 13th than in later centuries. The mastery of style is no less conspicuous. Gottfried had learned his best lessons from Hartmann von Aue, but he was a more original and daring artificer of rhymes and rhythms than that master; he delighted in the sheer music of words, and indulged in antitheses and allegorical conceits to an extent that proved fatal to his imitators. As far as beauty of expression is concerned, Gottfried’s Tristan is the masterpiece of the German court epic.

Gottfried’s Tristan has been frequently edited: by H. F. Massman (Leipzig, 1843); by R. Bechstein (2 vols., 3rd ed., Leipzig,1890-1891); by W. Golther (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1889); by K. Marold (1906). Translations into modern German have been made by H. Kurz (Stuttgart, 1844); by K. Simrock (Leipzig, 1855); and, best of all, by W. Hertz (Stuttgart, 1877). There is also an abbreviated English translation by Jessie L. Weston (London, 1899). The continuation of Ulrich von Türheim will be found in Massman’s edition; that by Heinrich von Freiberg has been separately edited by R. Bechstein (Leipzig, 1877). See also R. Heinzel, “Gottfrieds von Strassburg Tristan und seine Quelle” in the Zeit. für deut. Alt. xiv. (1869), pp. 272 ff.; W. Golther, Die Sage von Tristan und Isolde (Munich, 1887); F. Piquet, L’Originalité de Gottfried de Strasbourg dans son poème de Tristan et Isolde (Lille, 1905). K. Immermann (q.v.) has written an epic of Tristan und Isolde (1840), R. Wagner (q.v.) a musical drama (1865). Cp. R. Bechstein, Tristan und Isolde in der deutschen Dichtung der Neuzeit (Leipzig, 1877).


GÖTTINGEN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, pleasantly situated at the west foot of the Hainberg (1200 ft.), in the broad and fertile valley of the Leine, 67 m. S. from Hanover, on the railway to Cassel. Pop. (1875) 17,057, (1905) 34,030. It is traversed by the Leine canal, which separates the Altstadt from the Neustadt and from Masch, and is surrounded by ramparts, which are planted with lime-trees and form an agreeable promenade. The streets in the older part of the town are for the most part crooked and narrow, but the newer portions are spaciously and regularly built. Apart from the Protestant churches of St John, with twin towers, and of St James, with a high tower (290 ft.), the medieval town hall, built in the 14th century and restored in 1880, and the numerous university buildings, Göttingen possesses few structures of any public importance. There are several thriving industries, including, besides the various branches of the publishing trade, the manufacture of cloth and woollens and of mathematical and other scientific instruments.

The university, the famous Georgia Augusta, founded by George II. in 1734 and opened in 1737, rapidly attained a leading position, and in 1823 its students numbered 1547. Political disturbances, in which both professors and students were implicated, lowered the attendance to 860 in 1834. The expulsion in 1837 of the famous seven professors—Die Göttinger Sieben—viz. the Germanist, Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht (1800-1876); the historian, Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (1785-1860); the orientalist, Georg Heinrich August Ewald (1803-1875); the historian, Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805-1875); the physicist, Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804-1891); and the philologists, the brothers Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785-1863), and Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786-1859),—for protesting against the revocation by King Ernest Augustus of Hanover of the liberal constitution of 1833, further reduced the prosperity of the university. The events of 1848, on the other hand, told somewhat in its favour; and, since the annexation of Hanover in 1866, it has been carefully fostered by the Prussian government. In 1903 its teaching staff numbered 121 and its students 1529. The main university building lies on the Wilhelmsplatz, and, adjoining, is the famous library of 500,000 vols, and 5300 MSS., the richest collection of modern literature in Germany. There is a good chemical laboratory as well as adequate zoological, ethnographical and mineralogical collections, the most remarkable being Blumenbach’s famous collection of skulls in the anatomical institute. There are also a celebrated observatory, long under the direction of Wilhelm Klinkerfues (1827-1884), a botanical garden, an agricultural institute and various hospitals, all connected with the university. Of the scientific societies the most noted is the Royal Society of Sciences (Königliche Sozietät der Wissenschaften) founded by Albrecht von Haller, which is divided into three classes, the physical, the mathematical and the historical-philological. It numbers about 80 members and publishes the well-known Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen. There are monuments in the town to the mathematicians K. F. Gauss and W. E. Weber, and also to the poet G. A. Bürger.

The earliest mention of a village of Goding or Gutingi occurs in documents of about 950 A.D. The place received municipal rights from the German king Otto IV. about 1210, and from 1286 to 1463 it was the seat of the princely house of Brunswick-Göttingen. During the 14th century it held a high place among the towns of the Hanseatic League. In 1531 it joined the Reformation movement, and in the following century it suffered considerably in the Thirty Years’ War, being taken by Tilly in 1626, after a siege of 25 days, and recaptured by the Saxons in 1632. After a century of decay, it was anew brought into importance by the establishment of its university; and a marked increase in its industrial and commercial prosperity has again taken place in recent years. Towards the end of the 18th century Göttingen was the centre of a society of young poets of the Sturm und Drang period of German literature, known as the Göttingen Dichterbund or Hainbund (see [Germany]: Literature).

See Freusdorff, Göttingen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Göttingen, 1887); the Urkundenbuch der Stadt Göttingen, edited by G. Schmidt, A. Hasselblatt and G. Kästner; Unger, Göttingen und die Georgia Augusta (1861); and Göttinger Professoren (Gotha, 1872); and O. Mejer, Kulturgeschichtliche Bilder aus Göttingen (1889).


GÖTTLING, CARL WILHELM (1793-1869), German classical scholar, was born at Jena on the 19th of January 1793. He studied at the universities of Jena and Berlin, took part in the war against France in 1814, and finally settled down in 1822 as professor at the university of his native town, where he continued to reside till his death on the 20th of January 1869. In his early years Göttling devoted himself to German literature, and published two works on the Nibelungen: Über das Geschichtliche im Nibelungenliede (1814) and Nibelungen und Gibelinen (1817). The greater part of his life, however, was devoted to the study of classical literature, especially the elucidation of Greek authors. The contents of his Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus dem klassischen Altertum (1851-1863) and Opuscula Academica (published in 1869 after his death) sufficiently indicate the varied nature of his studies. He edited the Τέχνη (grammatical manual) of Theodosius of Alexandria (1822), Aristotle’s Politics (1824), and Economics (1830) and Hesiod (1831; 3rd ed. by J. Flach, 1878). Mention may also be made of his Allgemeine Lehre vom Accent der griechischen Sprache (1835), enlarged from a smaller work, which was translated into English (1831) as the Elements of Greek Accentuation; and of his Correspondence with Goethe (published 1880).

See memoirs by C. Nipperdey, his colleague at Jena (1869), G. Lothholz (Stargard, 1876), K. Fischer (preface to the Opuscula Academica), and C. Bursian in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, ix.


GOTTSCHALK [Godescalus, Gottescale], (c. 808-867 ?), German theologian, was born near Mainz, and was devoted (oblatus) from infancy by his parents,—his father was a Saxon, Count Bern,—to the monastic life. He was trained at the monastery of Fulda, then under the abbot Hrabanus Maurus, and became the friend of Walafrid Strabo and Loup of Ferrières. In June 829, at the synod of Mainz, on the pretext that he had been unduly constrained by his abbot, he sought and obtained his liberty, withdrew first to Corbie, where he met Ratramnus, and then to the monastery of Orbais in the diocese of Soissons. There he studied St Augustine, with the result that he became an enthusiastic believer in the doctrine of absolute predestination, in one point going beyond his master—Gottschalk believing in a predestination to condemnation as well as in a predestination to salvation, while Augustine had contented himself with the doctrine of preterition as complementary to the doctrine of election. Between 835 and 840 Gottschalk was ordained priest, without the knowledge of his bishop, by Rigbold, chorepiscopus of Reims. Before 840, deserting his monastery, he went to Italy, preached there his doctrine of double predestination, and entered into relations with Notting, bishop of Verona, and Eberhard, count of Friuli. Driven from Italy through the influence of Hrabanus Maurus, now archbishop of Mainz, who wrote two violent letters to Notting and Eberhard, he travelled through Dalmatia, Pannonia and Norica, but continued preaching and writing. In October 848 he presented to the synod at Mainz a profession of faith and a refutation of the ideas expressed by Hrabanus Maurus in his letter to Notting. He was convicted, however, of heresy, beaten, obliged to swear that he would never again enter the territory of Louis the German, and handed over to Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, who sent him back to his monastery at Orbais. The next year at a provincial council at Quierzy, presided over by Charles the Bald, he attempted to justify his ideas, but was again condemned as a heretic and disturber of the public peace, was degraded from the priesthood, whipped, obliged to burn his declaration of faith, and shut up in the monastery of Hautvilliers. There Hincmar tried again to induce him to retract. Gottschalk however continued to defend his doctrine, writing to his friends and to the most eminent theologians of France and Germany. A great controversy resulted. Prudentius, bishop of Troyes, Wenilo of Sens, Ratramnus of Corbie, Loup of Ferrières and Florus of Lyons wrote in his favour. Hincmar wrote De praedestinatione and De una non trina deitate against his views, but gained little aid from Johannes Scotus Erigena, whom he had called in as an authority. The question was discussed at the councils of Kiersy (853), of Valence (855) and of Savonnières (859). Finally the pope Nicolas I. took up the case, and summoned Hincmar to the council of Metz (863). Hincmar either could not or would not appear, but declared that Gottschalk might go to defend himself before the pope. Nothing came of this, however, and when Hincmar learned that Gottschalk had fallen ill, he forbade him the sacraments or burial in consecrated ground unless he would recant. This Gottschalk refused to do. He died on the 30th of October between 866 and 870.

Gottschalk was a vigorous and original thinker, but also of a violent temperament, incapable of discipline or moderation in his ideas as in his conduct. He was less an innovator than a reactionary. Of his many works we have only the two professions of faith (cf. Migne, Patrologia Latina, cxxi. c. 347 et seq.), and some poems, edited by L. Traube in Monumenta Germaniae historica: Poëtae Latini aevi Carolini (t. iii. 707-738). Some fragments of his theological treatises have been preserved in the writings of Hincmar, Erigena, Ratramnus and Loup of Ferrières.

From the 17th century, when the Jansenists exalted Gottschalk, much has been written on him. Mention may be made of two recent studies, F. Picavet, “Les Discussions sur la liberté au temps de Gottschalk, de Raban Maur, d’Hincmar, et de Jean Scot,” in Comptes rendus de l’acad. des sciences morales et politiques (Paris, 1896); and A. Freystedt, “Studien zu Gottschalks Leben und Lehre,” in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (1897), vol. xviii.


GOTTSCHALL, RUDOLF VON (1823-1909), German man of letters, was born at Breslau on the 30th of September 1823, the son of a Prussian artillery officer. He received his early education at the gymnasia in Mainz and Coburg, and subsequently at Rastenburg in East Prussia. In 1841 he entered the university of Königsberg as a student of law, but, in consequence of his pronounced liberal opinions, was expelled. The academic authorities at Breslau and Leipzig were not more tolerant towards the young fire-eater, and it was only in Berlin that he eventually found himself free to prosecute his studies. During this period of unrest he issued Lieder der Gegenwart (1842) and Zensurflüchtlinge (1843)—the poetical fruits of his political enthusiasm. He completed his studies in Berlin, took the degree of doctor juris in Königsberg, and endeavoured to obtain there the venia legendi. His political views again stood in the way, and forsaking the legal career, Gottschall now devoted himself entirely to literature. He met with immediate success, and beginning as dramaturge in Königsberg with Der Blinde von Alcala (1846) and Lord Byron in Italien (1847) proceeded to Hamburg where he occupied a similar position. In 1852 he married Marie, baroness von Seherr-Thoss, and for the next few years lived in Silesia. In 1862 he took over the editorship of a Posen newspaper, but in 1864 removed to Leipzig. Gottschall was raised, in 1877, by the king of Prussia to the hereditary nobility with the prefix “von,” having been previously made a Geheimer Hofrat by the grand duke of Weimar. Down to 1887 Gottschall edited the Brockhaus’sche Blätter für litterarische Unterhaltung and the monthly periodical Unsere Zeit. He died at Leipzig on the 21st of March 1909.

Gottschall’s prolific literary productions cover the fields of poetry, novel-writing and literary criticism. Among his volumes of lyric poetry are Sebastopol (1856), Janus (1873), Bunte Blüten (1891). Among his epics, Carlo Zeno (1854), Maja (1864), dealing with an episode in the Indian Mutiny, and Merlins Wanderungen (1887). The comedy Pitt und Fox (1854), first produced on the stage in Breslau, was never surpassed by the other lighter pieces of the author, among which may be mentioned Die Welt des Schwindels and Der Spion von Rheinsberg. The tragedies, Mazeppa, Catharine Howard, Amy Robsart and Der Götze von Venedig, were very successful; and the historical novels, Im Banne des schwarzen Adlers (1875; 4th ed., 1884), Die Erbschaft des Blutes (1881), Die Tochter Rübezahls (1889), and Verkümmerte Existenzen (1892), enjoyed a high degree of popularity. As a critic and historian of literature Gottschall has also done excellent work. His Die deutsche Nationalliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts (1855; 7th ed., 1901-1902), and Poetik (1858; 6th ed., 1903) command the respect of all students of literature.

Gottschall’s collected Dramatische Werke appeared in 12 vols. in 1880 (2nd ed., 1884); he has also, in recent years, published many volumes of collected essays and criticisms. See his autobiography, Aus meiner Jugend (1898).


GOTTSCHED, JOHANN CHRISTOPH (1700-1766), German author and critic, was born on the 2nd of February 1700, at Judithenkirch near Königsberg, the son of a Lutheran clergyman. He studied philosophy and history at the university of his native town, but immediately on taking the degree of Magister in 1723, fled to Leipzig in order to evade impressment in the Prussian military service. Here he enjoyed the protection of J. B. Mencke (1674-1732), who, under the name of “Philander von der Linde,” was a well-known poet and also president of the Deutschübende poetische Gesellschaft in Leipzig. Of this society Gottsched was elected “Senior” in 1726, and in the next year reorganized it under the title of the Deutsche Gesellschaft. In 1730 he was appointed extraordinary professor of poetry, and, in 1734, ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics in the university. He died at Leipzig on the 12th of December 1766.

Gottsched’s chief work was his Versuch einer kritischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen (1730), the first systematic treatise in German on the art of poetry from the standpoint of Boileau. His Ausführliche Redekunst (1728) and his Grundlegung einer deutschen Sprachkunst (1748) were of importance for the development of German style and the purification of the language. He wrote several plays, of which Der sterbende Cato (1732), an adaptation of Addison’s tragedy and a French play on the same theme, was long popular on the stage. In his Deutsche Schaubühne (6 vols., 1740-1745), which contained mainly translations from the French, he provided the German stage with a classical repertory, and his bibliography of the German drama, Nötiger Vorrat zur Geschichte der deutschen dramatischen Dichtkunst (1757-1765), is still valuable. He was also the editor of several journals devoted to literary criticism. As a critic, Gottsched insisted on German literature being subordinated to the laws of French classicism; he enunciated rules by which the playwright must be bound, and abolished bombast and buffoonery from the serious stage. While such reforms obviously afforded a healthy corrective to the extravagance and want of taste which were rampant in the German literature of the time, Gottsched went too far. In 1740 he came into conflict with the Swiss writers Johann Jakob Bodmer (q.v.) and Johann Jakob Breitinger (1701-1776), who, under the influence of Addison and contemporary Italian critics, demanded that the poetic imagination should not be hampered by artificial rules; they pointed to the great English poets, and especially to Milton. Gottsched, although not blind to the beauties of the English writers, clung the more tenaciously to his principle that poetry must be the product of rules, and, in the fierce controversy which for a time raged between Leipzig and Zürich, he was inevitably defeated. His influence speedily declined, and before his death his name became proverbial for pedantic folly.

His wife, Luise Adelgunde Victorie, née Kulmus (1713-1762), in some respects her husband’s intellectual superior, was an author of some reputation. She wrote several popular comedies, of which Das Testament is the best, and translated the Spectator (9 vols., 1730-1743), Pope’s Rape of the Lock (1744) and other English and French works. After her death her husband edited her Sämtliche kleinere Gedichte with a memoir (1763).

See T. W. Danzel, Gottsched und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1848); J. Crüger, Gottsched, Bodmer, und Breitinger (with selections from their writings) (Stuttgart, 1884); F. Servaes, Die Poetik Gottscheds und der Schweizer (Strassburg, 1887); E. Wolff, Gottscheds Stellung im deutschen Bildungsleben (2 vols., Kiel, 1895-1897), and G. Waniek, Gottsched und die deutsche Literatur seiner Zeit (Leipzig, 1897). On Frau Gottsched, see P. Schlenther, Frau Gottsched und die bürgerliche Komödie (Berlin, 1886).


GÖTZ, JOHANN NIKOLAUS (1721-1781), German poet, was born at Worms on the 9th of July 1721. He studied theology at Halle (1739-1742), where he became intimate with the poets Johann W. L. Gleim and Johann Peter Uz, acted for some years as military chaplain, and afterwards filled various other ecclesiastical offices. He died at Winterburg on the 4th of November 1781. The writings of Götz consist of a number of short lyrics and several translations, of which the best is a rendering of Anacreon. His original compositions are light, lively and sparkling, and are animated rather by French wit than by German depth of sentiment. The best known of his poems is Die Mädcheninsel, an elegy which met with the warm approval of Frederick the Great.

Götz’s Vermischte Gedichte were published with biography by K. W. Ramler (Mannheim, 1785; new ed., 1807), and a collection of his poems, dating from the years 1745-1765, has been edited by C. Schüddekopf in the Deutsche Literaturdenkmale des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (1893). See also Briefe von und an J. N. Götz, edited by C. Schüddekopf (1893).


GOUACHE, a French word adapted from the Ital. guazzo (probably in origin connected with “wash”), meaning literally a “ford,” but used also for a method of painting in opaque water-colour. The colours are mixed with or painted in a vehicle of gum or honey, and whereas in true water-colours the high lights are obtained by leaving blank the surface of the paper or other material used, or by allowing it to show through a translucent wash in “gouache,” these are obtained by white or other light colour. “Gouache” is frequently used in miniature painting.


GOUDA (or Ter Gouwe), a town of Holland, in the province of South Holland, on the north side of the Gouwe at its confluence with the Ysel, and a junction station 12½ m. by rail N.E. of Rotterdam. Pop. (1900) 22,303. Tramways connect it with Bodegraven (5½m. N.) on the old Rhine and with Oudewater (8 m. E.) on the Ysel; and there is a regular steamboat service in various directions, Amsterdam being reached by the canalized Gouwe; Aar, Drecht and Amstel. The town of Gouda is laid out in a fine open manner and, like other Dutch towns, is intersected by numerous canals. On its outskirts pleasant walks and fine trees have replaced the old fortifications. The Groote Markt is the largest market-square in Holland. Among the numerous churches belonging to various denominations, the first place must be given to the Groote Kerk of St John. It was founded in 1485, but rebuilt after a fire in 1552, and is remarkable for its dimensions (345 ft. long and 150 ft. broad), for a large and celebrated organ, and a splendid series of over forty stained-glass windows presented by cities and princes and executed by various well-known artists, including the brothers Dirk (d. c. 1577) and Wouter (d. c. 1590) Crabeth, between the years 1555 and 1603 (see Explanation of the Famous and Renowned Glass Works, &c., Gouda, 1876, reprinted from an older volume, 1718). Other noteworthy buildings are the Gothic town hall, founded in 1449 and rebuilt in 1690, and the weigh-house, built by Pieter Post of Haarlem (1608-1669) and adorned with a fine relief by Barth. Eggers (d. c. 1690). The museum of antiquities (1874) contains an exquisite chalice of the year 1425 and some pictures and portraits by Wouter Crabeth the younger, Corn. Ketel (a native of Gouda, 1548-1616) and Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680). Other buildings are the orphanage, the hospital, a house of correction for women and a music hall.

In the time of the counts the wealth of Gouda was mainly derived from brewing and cloth-weaving; but at a later date the making of clay tobacco pipes became the staple trade, and, although this industry has somewhat declined, the churchwarden pipes of Gouda are still well known and largely manufactured. In winter-time it is considered a feat to skate hither from Rotterdam and elsewhere to buy such a pipe and return with it in one’s mouth without its being broken. The mud from the Ysel furnishes the material for large brick-works and potteries; there are also a celebrated manufactory of stearine candles, a yarn factory, an oil refinery and cigar factories. The transit and shipping trade is considerable, and as one of the principal markets of South Holland, the round, white Gouda cheeses are known throughout Europe. Boskoop, 5 m. N. by W. of Gouda on the Gouwe, is famous for its nursery gardens; and the little old-world town of Oudewater as the birthplace of the famous theologian Arminius in 1560. The town hall (1588) of Oudewater contains a picture by Dirk Stoop (d. 1686), commemorating the capture of the town by the Spaniards in 1575 and the subsequent sack and massacre.


GOUDIMEL, CLAUDE, musical composer of the 16th century, was born about 1510. The French and the Belgians claim him as their countryman. In all probability he was born at Besançon, for in his edition of the songs of Arcadelt, as well as in the mass of 1554, he calls himself “natif de Besançon” and “Claudius Godimellus Vescontinus.” This discountenances the theory of Ambros that he was born at Vaison near Avignon. As to his early education we know little or nothing, but the excellent Latin in which some of his letters were written proves that, in addition to his musical knowledge, he also acquired a good classical training. It is supposed that he was in Rome in 1540 at the head of a music-school, and that besides many other celebrated musicians, Palestrina was amongst his pupils. About the middle of the century he seems to have left Rome for Paris, where, in conjunction with Jean Duchemin, he published, in 1555, a musical setting of Horace’s Odes. Infinitely more important is another collection of vocal pieces, a setting of the celebrated French version of the Psalms by Marot and Beza published in 1565. It is written in four parts, the melody being assigned to the tenor. The invention of the melodies was long ascribed to Goudimel, but they have now definitely been proved to have originated in popular tunes found in the collections of this period. Some of these tunes are still used by the French Protestant Church. Others were adopted by the German Lutherans, a German imitation of the French versions of the Psalms in the same metres having been published at an early date. Although the French version of the Psalms was at first used by Catholics as well as Protestants, there is little doubt that Goudimel had embraced the new faith. In Michel Brenet’s Biographie (Annales franc-cuntoises, Besançon, 1898, P. Jacquin) it is established that in Metz, where he was living in 1565, Goudimel moved in Huguenot circles, and even figured as godfather to the daughter of the president of Senneton. Seven years later he fell a victim to religious fanaticism during the St Bartholomew massacres at Lyons from the 27th to the 28th of August 1572, his death, it is stated, being due to “les ennemis de la gloire de Dieu et quelques méchants envieux de l’honneur qu’il avait acquis.” Masses and motets belonging to his Roman period are found in the Vatican library, and in the archives of various churches in Rome; others were published. Thus the work entitled Missae tres a Claudio Goudimel praestantissimo musico auctore, nunc primum in lucem editae, contains one mass by the learned editor himself, the other two being by Claudius Sermisy and Jean Maillard respectively. Another collection, La Fleur des chansons des deux plus excellens musiciens de nostre temps, consists of part songs by Goudimel and Orlando di Lasso. Burney gives in his history a motet of Goudimel’s Domine quid multiplicati sunt.


GOUFFIER, the name of a great French family, which owned the estate of Bonnivet in Poitou from the 14th century. Guillaume Gouffier, chamberlain to Charles VII., was an inveterate enemy of Jacques Cœur, obtaining his condemnation and afterwards receiving his property (1491). He had a great number of children, several of whom played a part in history. Artus, seigneur de Boisy (c. 1475-1520) was entrusted with the education of the young count of Angoulême (Francis I.), and on the accession of this prince to the throne as Francis I. became grand master of the royal household, playing an important part in the government; to him was given the task of negotiating the treaty of Noyon in 1516; and shortly before his death the king raised the estates of Roanne and Boisy to the rank of a duchy, that of Roannais, in his favour. Adrien Gouffier (d. 1523) was bishop of Coutances and Albi, and grand almoner of France. Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, became admiral. of France (see [Bonnivet]). Claude Gouffier, son of Artus, was created comte de Maulevrier (1542) and marquis de Boisy (1564).

There were many branches of this family, the chief of them being the dukes of Roannais, the counts of Caravas, the lords of Crèvecœur and of Bonnivet, the marquises of Thois, of Brazeux, and of Espagny. The name of Gouffier was adopted in the 18th century by a branch of the house of Choiseul.

(M. P.*)