VOLUME XI SLICE V Gassendi, Pierre to Geocentric (continued 3)
Reading edition
Gateshead (Gateshewed) probably grew up during late Saxon times, the mention of the church there in which Bishop Walcher was murdered in 1080 being the first evidence of settlement. The borough probably obtained its charter during the following century, for Hugh de Puiset, bishop of Durham (1153-1195), confirmed to his burgesses similar rights to those of the burgesses of Newcastle, freedom of toll within the palatinate and other privileges. The bishop had a park here in 1348, and in 1438 Bishop Nevill appointed a keeper of the “tower.” The position of the town led to a struggle with Newcastle over both fishing and trading rights. An inquisition of 1322 declared that the water of the Tyne was divided into three parts: the northern, belonging to Northumberland; the southern to Durham; and the central, common to all. At another inquisition held in 1336 the men of Gateshead claimed liberty of trading and fishing along the coast of Durham, and freedom to sell their fish where they would. In 1552, on the temporary extinction of the diocese of Durham, Gateshead was attached to Newcastle, but in 1554 was regranted to Bishop Tunstall. As compensation the bishop granted to Newcastle, at a nominal rent, the Gateshead salt-meadows, with rights of way to the High Street, thus abolishing the toll previously paid to the bishop. During the next century Bishop Tunstall’s successors incorporated nearly all the various trades of Gateshead, and Cromwell continued this policy. The town government during this period was by the bishop’s bailiff, and the holders of the burgages composed the juries of the bishop’s courts leet and baron. No charter of incorporation is extant, but in 1563 contests were carried on under the name of the bailiffs, burgesses and commonalty, and a list of borough accounts exists for 1696. The bishop appointed the last borough bailiff in 1681, and though the inhabitants in 1772 petitioned for a bailiff the town remained under a steward and grassmen until the 19th century. As part of the palatinate of Durham, Gateshead was not represented in parliament until 1832. At the inquisition of 1336 the burgesses claimed an annual fair on St Peter’s Day, and depositions in 1577 mention a borough market held on Tuesday and Friday, but these were apparently extinct in Camden’s day, and no grant of them is extant. The medieval trade seems to have centred round the fisheries and the neighbouring coal mines which are mentioned in 1364 and also by Leland.
GATH, one of the five chief cities of the Philistines. It is frequently mentioned in the historical books of the Old Testament, and from Amos vi. 2 we conclude that, like Ashdod, it fell to Sargon in 711. Its site appears to have been known in the 4th century, but the name is now lost. Eusebius (in the Onomasticon) places it near the road from Eleutheropolis (Beit Jibrïn) to Diospolis (Ludd) about five Roman miles from the former. The Roman road between these two towns is still traceable, and its milestones remain in places. East of the road at the required distance rises a white cliff, almost isolated, 300 ft. high and full of caves. On the top is the little mud village of Tell eṣ-Ṣāfi (“the shining mound”), and beside the village is the mound which marks the site of the Crusaders’ castle of Blanchegarde (Alba Custodia), built in 1144. Tell eṣ-Ṣāfi was known by its present name as far back as the 12th century; but it appears not improbable that the strong site here existing represents the ancient Gath. The cliff stands on the south side of the mouth of the Valley of Elah, and Gath appears to have been near this valley (1 Sam. xvii. 2, 52). This identification is not certain, but it is at least much more probable than the theory which makes Gath, Eleutheropolis, and Beit Jibrïn one and the same place. The site was partially excavated by the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1899, and remains extending in date back to the early Canaanite period were discovered.
GATLING, RICHARD JORDAN (1818-1903), American inventor, was born in Hertford county, North Carolina, on the 12th of September 1818. He was the son of a well-to-do planter and slave-owner, from whom he inherited a genius for mechanical invention and whom he assisted in the construction and perfecting of machines for sowing cotton seeds, and for thinning the plants. He was well educated and was successively a school teacher and a merchant, spending all his spare time in developing new inventions. In 1839 he perfected a practical screw propeller for steamboats, only to find that a patent had been granted to John Ericsson for a similar invention a few months earlier. He established himself in St Louis, Missouri, and taking the cotton-sowing machine as a basis he adapted it for sowing rice, wheat and other grains, and established factories for its manufacture. The introduction of these machines did much to revolutionize the agricultural system in the country. Becoming interested in the study of medicine through an attack of smallpox, he completed a course at the Ohio Medical College, taking his M.D. degree in 1850. In the same year he invented a hemp-breaking machine, and in 1857 a steam plough. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was living in Indianapolis, and devoted himself at once to the perfecting of fire-arms. In 1861 he conceived the idea of the rapid fire machine-gun which is associated with his name. By 1862 he had succeeded in perfecting a gun that would discharge 350 shots per minute; but the war was practically over before the Federal authorities consented to its official adoption. From that time, however, the success of the invention was assured, and within ten years it had been adopted by almost every civilized nation. Gatling died in New York City on the 26th of February 1903.
GATTY, MARGARET (1809-1873), English writer, daughter of the Rev. Alexander Scott (1768-1840), chaplain to Lord Nelson, was born at Burnham, Essex, in 1809. She early began to draw and to etch on copper, being a regular visitor to the print-room of the British Museum from the age of ten. She also illuminated on vellum, copying the old strawberry borders and designing initials. In 1839 Margaret Scott married the Rev. Alfred Gatty, D.D., vicar of Ecclesfield near Sheffield, subdean of York cathedral, and the author of various works both secular and religious. In 1842 she published in association with her husband a life of her father; but her first independent work was The Fairy Godmother and other Tales, which appeared in 1851. This was followed in 1855 by the first of five volumes of Parables from Nature, the last being published in 1871. It was under the nom de plume of Aunt Judy, as a pleasant and instructive writer for children, that Mrs Gatty was most widely known. Before starting Aunt Judy’s Magazine in May 1866, she had brought out Aunt Judy’s Tales (1858) and Aunt Judy’s Letters (1862), and among the other children’s books which she subsequently published were Aunt Judy’s Song Book for Children and The Mother’s Book of Poetry. “Aunt Judy” was the nickname given by her daughter Juliana Horatia Ewing (q.v.). The editor of the magazine was on the friendliest terms with her young correspondents and subscribers, and her success was largely due to the sympathy which enabled her to look at things from the child’s point of view. Besides other excellences her children’s books are specially characterized by wholesomeness of sentiment and cheerful humour. Her miscellaneous writings include, in addition to several volumes of tales, The Old Folks from Home, an account of a holiday ramble in Ireland; The Travels and Adventures of Dr Wolff the Missionary (1861), an autobiography edited by her; British Sea Weeds (1862); Waifs and Strays of Natural History (1871); A Book of Emblems and The Book of Sun-Dials (1872). She died at Ecclesfield vicarage on the 4th of October 1873.
GAU, JOHN (c. 1495-? 1553), Scottish translator, was born at Perth towards the close of the 15th century. He was educated in St Salvator’s College at St Andrews. He appears to have been in residence at Malmö in 1533, perhaps as chaplain to the Scots community there. In that year John Hochstraten, the exiled Antwerp printer, issued a book by Gau entitled: The Richt vay to the Kingdome of Heuine, of which the chief interest is that it is the first Scottish book written on the side of the Reformers. It is a translation of Christiern Pedersen’s Den rette vey till Hiemmerigis Rige (Antwerp, 1531), for the most part direct, but showing intimate knowledge in places of the German edition of Urbanus Rhegius. Only one copy of Gau’s text is extant, in the library of Britwell Court, Bucks. It has been assumed that all the copies were shipped from Malmö to Scotland, and that the cargo was intercepted by the Scottish officers on the look out for the heretical works which were printed abroad in large numbers. This may explain the silence of all the historians of the Reformed Church—Knox, Calderwood and Spottiswood. Gau married in 1536 a Malmö citizen’s daughter, bearing the Christian name Birgitta. She died in 1551, and he in or about 1553.
The first reference to the Richt Vay appeared in Chalmers’s Caledonia, ii. 616. Chalmers, who was the owner of the unique volume before it passed into the Britwell Court collection, considered it to be an original work. David Laing printed extracts for the Bannatyne Club (Miscellany, iii., 1855). The evidence that the book is a translation was first given by Sonnenstein Wendt in a paper “Om Reformatorerna i Malmö,” in Rördam’s Ny Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, ii. (Copenhagen, 1860). A complete edition was edited by A.F. Mitchell for the Scottish Text Society (1888). See also Lorimer’s Patrick Hamilton.
GAUDEN, JOHN (1605-1662), English bishop and writer, reputed author of the Eikon Basilike, was born in 1605 at Mayland, Essex, where his father was vicar of the parish. Educated at Bury St Edmunds school and at St John’s College, Cambridge, he took his M.A. degree in 1625/6. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Russell of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire, and was tutor at Oxford to two of his wife’s brothers. He seems to have remained at Oxford until 1630, when he became vicar of Chippenham. His sympathies were at first with the parliamentary party. He was chaplain to Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick, and preached before the House of Commons in 1640. In 1641 he was appointed to the rural deanery of Bocking. Apparently his views changed as the revolutionary tendency of the Presbyterian party became more pronounced, for in 1648/9 he addressed to Lord Fairfax A Religious and Loyal Protestation ... against the proceedings of the parliament. Under the Commonwealth he faced both ways, keeping his ecclesiastical preferment, but publishing from time to time pamphlets on behalf of the Church of England. At the Restoration he was made bishop of Exeter. He immediately began to complain to Hyde, earl of Clarendon, of the poverty of the see, and based claims for a better benefice on a certain secret service, which he explained on the 20th of January 1661 to be the sole invention of the Eikon Basilike, The Pourtraicture of his sacred Majestie in his Solitudes and Sufferings put forth within a few hours after the execution of Charles I. as written by the king himself. To which Clarendon replied that he had been before acquainted with the secret and had often wished he had remained ignorant of it. Gauden was advanced in 1662, not as he had wished to the see of Winchester, but to Worcester. He died on the 23rd of May of the same year.
The evidence in favour of Gauden’s authorship rests chiefly on his own assertions and those of his wife (who after his death sent to her son John a narrative of the claim), and on the fact that it was admitted by Clarendon, who should have had means of being acquainted with the truth. Gauden’s letters on the subject are printed in the appendix to vol. iii. of the Clarendon Papers. The argument is that Gauden had prepared the book to inspire sympathy with the king by a representation of his pious and forgiving disposition, and so to rouse public opinion against his execution. In 1693 further correspondence between Gauden, Clarendon, the duke of York, and Sir Edward Nicholas was published by Mr Arthur North, who had found them among the papers of his sister-in-law, a daughter-in-law of Bishop Gauden; but doubt has been thrown on the authenticity of these papers. Gauden stated that he had begun the book in 1647 and was entirely responsible for it. But it is contended that the work was in existence at Naseby,1 and testimony to Charles’s authorship is brought forward from various witnesses who had seen Charles himself occupied with it at various times during his imprisonment. It is stated that the MS. was delivered by one of the king’s agents to Edward Symmons, rector of Raine, near Bocking, and that it was in the handwriting of Oudart, Sir Edward Nicholas’s secretary. The internal evidence has, as is usual in such cases, been brought forward as a conclusive argument in favour of both contentions. Doubt was thrown on Charles’s authorship in Milton’s Eikonoklastes (1649), which was followed almost immediately by a royalist answer, The Princely Pelican. Royall Resolves—Extracted from his Majesty’s Divine Meditations, with satisfactory reasons ... that his Sacred Person was the only Author of them (1649). The history of the whole controversy, which has been several times renewed, was dealt with in Christopher Wordsworth’s tracts in a most exhaustive way. He eloquently advocated Charles’s authorship. Since he wrote in 1829, some further evidence has been forthcoming in favour of the Naseby copy. A correspondence relating to the French translation of the work has also come to light among the papers of Sir Edward Nicholas. None of the letters show any doubt that King Charles was the author. S.R. Gardiner (Hist. of the Great Civil War, iv. 325) regards Mr Doble’s articles in the Academy (May and June 1883) as finally disposing of Charles’s claim to the authorship, but this is by no means the attitude of other recent writers. If Gauden was the author, he may have incorporated papers, &c., by Charles, who may have corrected the work and thus been joint-author. This theory would reconcile the conflicting evidence, that of those who saw Charles writing parts and read the MS. before publication, and the deliberate statements of Gauden.
See also the article by Richard Hooper in the Dict. Nat. Biog.; Christopher Wordsworth, Who wrote Eikon Basilike? two letters addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury (1824), and King Charles the First, the Author of Icon Basilikè (1828); H.J. Todd, A Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning Eikon Basilike (1825); Bishop Gauden, The Author of the Icôn Basilikè (1829); W.G. Broughton, A Letter to a Friend (1826), Additional Reasons ... (1829), supporting the contention in favour of Dr Gauden; Mr E.J.L. Scott’s introduction to his reprint (1880) of the original edition; articles in the Academy, May and June 1883, by Mr C.E. Doble; another reprint edited by Mr Edward Almack for the King’s Classics (1904); and Edward Almack, Bibliography of the King’s Book (1896). This last book contains a summary of the arguments on either side, a full bibliography of works on the subject, and facsimiles of the title pages, with full descriptions of the various extant copies.
1 See a note in Archbishop Tenison’s handwriting in his copy of the Eikon Basilike preserved at Lambeth Palace, and quoted in Almack’s Bibliography, p. 15.
GAUDICHAUD-BEAUPRÉ, CHARLES (1789-1854), French botanist, was born at Angoulême on the 4th of September 1789. He studied pharmacy first in the shop of a brother-in-law at Cognac, and then under P.J. Robiquet at Paris, where from R.L. Desfontaines and L.C. Richard he acquired a knowledge of botany. In April 1810 he was appointed dispenser in the military marine, and from July 1811 to the end of 1814 he served at Antwerp. In 1817 he joined the corvette “Uranie” as pharmaceutical botanist to the circumpolar expedition commanded by D. de Freycinet. The wreck of the vessel on the Falkland Isles, at the close of 1819, deprived him of more than half the botanical collections he had made in various parts of the world. In 1830-1833 he visited Chile, Peru and Brazil, and in 1836-1837 he acted as botanist to “La Bonite” during its circumnavigation of the globe. His theory accounting for the growth of plants by the supposed coalescence of elementary “phytons” involved him, during the latter years of his life, in much controversy with his fellow-botanists, more especially C.F.B. de Mirbel. He died in Paris on the 16th of January 1854.
Besides accounts of his voyages round the world, Gaudichaud-Beaupré wrote “Lettres sur l’organographie et la physiologie,” Arch. de botanique, ii., 1883; “Recherches générales sur l’organographie,” &c. (prize essay, 1835), Mém. de l’Académie des Sciences, t. viii. and kindred treatises, with memoirs on the potato-blight, the multiplication of bulbous plants, the increase in diameter of dicotyledonous plants, and other subjects; and Réfutation de toutes les objections contre les nouveaux principes physiologiques (1852).
GAUDRY, JEAN ALBERT (1827-1908), French geologist and palaeontologist, was born at St Germain-en-Laye on the 16th of September 1827, and was educated at the college, Stanislas. At the age of twenty-five he made explorations in Cyprus and Greece, residing in the latter country from 1855 to 1860. He then investigated the rich deposit of fossil vertebrata at Pikermi and brought to light a remarkable mammalian fauna, Miocene in age, and intermediate in its forms between European, Asiatic and African types. He also published an account of the geology of the island of Cyprus (Mém. Soc. Géol. de France, 1862). In 1853, while still in Cyprus, he was appointed assistant to A. d’Orbigny, who was the first to hold the chair of palaeontology in the museum of natural history at Paris. In 1872 he succeeded to this important post; in 1882 he was elected member of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1900 he presided over the meetings of the eighth International Congress of Geology then held in Paris. He died on the 27th of November 1908. He is distinguished for his researches on fossil mammalia, and for the support which his studies have rendered to the theory of evolution.
Publications.—Animaux fossiles et géologie de l’Attique (2 vols., 1862-1867); Cours de paléontologie (1873); Animaux fossiles du Mont Lebéron (1873); Les Enchaînements du monde animal dans les temps géologiques (Mammifères Tertiaires, 1878; Fossiles primaires, 1883; Fossiles secondaires, 1890); Essai de paléontologie philosophique (1896). Brief memoir with portrait in Geol. Mag. (1903), p. 49.
(H. B. W.)
GAUDY, an adjective meaning showy, very bright, gay, especially with a sense of tasteless or vulgar extravagance, of colour or ornament. The accurate origin of the various senses which this word and the substantive “gaud” have taken are somewhat difficult to trace. They are all ultimately to be referred to the Lat. gaudere, to rejoice, gaudium, joy, some of them directly, others to the French derivative gaudir, to rejoice, and O. Fr. gaudie. As a noun, in the sense of rejoicing or feast, “gaudy” is still used of a commemoration dinner at a college at the university of Oxford. “Gaud,” meaning generally a toy, a gay adornment, a piece of showy jewelry, is more specifically applied to larger and more decorative beads in a rosary.
GAUERMANN, FRIEDRICH (1807-1862), Austrian painter, son of the landscape painter Jacob Gauermann (1773-1843), was born at Wiesenbach near Gutenstein in Lower Austria on the 20th of September 1807. It was the intention of his father that he should devote himself to agriculture, but the example of an elder brother, who, however, died early, fostered his inclination towards art. Under his father’s direction he began studies in landscape, and he also diligently copied the works of the chief masters in animal painting which were contained in the academy and court library of Vienna. In the summer he made art tours in the districts of Styria, Tirol and Salzburg. Two animal pieces which he exhibited at the Vienna Exhibition of 1824 were regarded as remarkable productions for his years, and led to his receiving commissions in 1825 and 1826 from Prince Metternich and Caraman, the French ambassador. His reputation was greatly increased by his picture “The Storm,” exhibited in 1829, and from that time his works were much sought after and obtained correspondingly high prices. His “Field Labourer” was regarded by many as the most noteworthy picture in the Vienna exhibition of 1834, and his numerous animal pieces have entitled him to a place in the first rank of painters of that class of subjects. The peculiarity of his pictures is the representation of human and animal figures in connexion with appropriate landscapes and in characteristic situations so as to manifest nature as a living whole, and he particularly excels in depicting the free life of animals in wild mountain scenery. Along with great mastery of the technicalities of his art, his works exhibit patient and keen observation, free and correct handling of details, and bold and clear colouring. He died at Vienna on the 7th of July 1862.
Many of his pictures have been engraved, and after his death a selection of fifty-three of his works was prepared for this purpose by the Austrian Kunstverein (Art Union).
GAUGE, or Gage (Med. Lat. gauja, jaugia, Fr. jauge, perhaps connected with Fr. jale, a bowl, galon, gallon), a standard of measurement, and also the name given to various instruments and appliances by which measurement is effected. The word seems to have been primarily used in connexion with the process of ascertaining the contents of wine casks; the name gauger is still applied to certain custom-house officials in the United States, and in Scotland it means an exciseman. Thence it was extended to other measurements, and used of the instruments used in making them or of the standards to which they were referred. In the mechanical arts gauges are employed in great variety to enable the workmen to ascertain whether the object he is making is of the proper dimensions (see Tool), and similar gauges of various forms are employed to ascertain and to specify the sizes of manufactured articles such as wire and screws. A rain gauge is an apparatus for measuring the amount of the rainfall at any locality, and a wind gauge indicates the pressure and force of the wind. The boilers of steam engines are provided with a water gauge and a steam or pressure gauge. The purpose of the former is to enable the attendant to see whether or not there is a sufficient quantity of water in the boiler. It consists of two cocks or taps communicating with the interior, one being placed at the lowest point to which it is permissible for the water to fall, and the other at the point above which it should not rise; a glass tube connects the two cocks, and when they are both open the water in this stands at the same level as in the boiler. The steam gauge shows the pressure of the steam in the boiler. One of the commonest forms, known as the Bourdon gauge, depends on the fact that a curved tube tends to straighten itself if the pressure within it is greater than that outside it. This gauge therefore consists of a curved or coiled tube of elastic material, and preferably of elliptic section, connected with the boiler and arranged with a multiplying gear so that its bending or unbending actuates a pointer moving over a graduated scale. If the pressure within the tube is less than that outside it, the tube tends to bend or coil itself up further; with a pointer arranged as before, the gauge then becomes a vacuum gauge, indicating how far the pressure in the vessel to which it is attached is below that of the atmosphere. In railway engineering the gauge of a line is the distance between the two rails (see Railway). In nautical language, a ship is said to have the weather gage when she is to windward of another, and similarly the lee gage when to leeward of another; in this sense the word is usually spelt “gage,” a spelling which prevails in America for all senses.
GAUHATI, a town of British India, in the Kamrup district of Eastern Bengal and Assam, mainly on the left or south, but partly on the right bank of the Brahmaputra. Pop. (1901) 14,244. It is beautifully situated, with an amphitheatre of wooded hills to the south, but is not very healthy. There are many evidences, such as ancient earthworks and tanks, of its historical importance. During the 17th century it was taken and retaken by Mahommedans and Ahoms eight times in fifty years, but in 1681 it became the residence of the Ahom governor of lower Assam, and in 1786 the capital of the Ahom raja. On the cession of Assam to the British in 1826 it was made the seat of the British administration of Assam, and so continued till 1874, when the headquarters were removed to Shillong in the Khasi hills, 67 m. distant, with which Gauhati is connected by an excellent cart-road. Two much-frequented places of Hindu pilgrimage are situated in the immediate vicinity, the temple of Kamakhya on a hill 2 m. west of the town, and the rocky island of Umananda in the mid-channel of the Brahmaputra. Gauhati is still the headquarters of the district and of the Brahmaputra Valley division, though no longer a military cantonment. It is the river terminus of a section of the Assam-Bengal railway. There are a second-grade college, a government high school, a law class and a training school for masters. Gauhati is an important centre of river trade, and the largest seat of commerce in Assam. Cotton-ginning, flour-milling, and an export trade in mustard seed, cotton, silk and forest produce are carried on. Gauhati suffered very severely from the earthquake of the 12th of June 1897.
GAUL, GILBERT WILLIAM (1855- ), American artist, was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on the 31st of March 1855. He was a pupil of J.G. Brown and L.E. Wilmarth, and he became a painter of military pictures, portraying incidents of the American Civil War. He was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1880, and in 1882 a full academician, and in the latter year became a member of the Society of American Artists. His important works include: “Charging the Battery,” “News from Home,” “Cold Comfort on the Outpost,” “Silenced,” “On the Look-out,” and “Guerillas returning from a Raid.”
GAUL, the modern form of the Roman Gallia, the name of the two chief districts known to the Romans as inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, (a) Gallia Cisalpina (or Citerior, “Hither”), i.e. north Italy between Alps and Apennines and (b) the far more important Gallia Transalpina (or Ulterior, “Further”), usually called Gallia (Gaul) simply, the land bounded by the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, the Atlantic, the Rhine, i.e. modern France and Belgium with parts of Holland, Germany and Switzerland. The Greek form of Gallia was Γαλατία, but Galatia in Latin denoted another Celtic region in central Asia Minor, sometimes styled Gallograecia.
(a) Gallia Cisalpina was mainly conquered by Rome by 222 B.C.; later it adopted Roman civilization; about 42 B.C. it was united with Italy and its subsequent history is merged in that of the peninsula. Its chief distinctions are that during the later Republic and earlier Empire it yielded excellent soldiers, and thus much aided the success of Caesar against Pompey and of Octavian against Antony, and that it gave Rome the poet Virgil (by origin a Celt), the historian Livy, the lyrist Catullus, Cornelius Nepos, the elder and the younger Pliny and other distinguished writers.1
(b) Gaul proper first enters ancient history when the Greek colony of Massilia was founded (? 600 B.C.). Roman armies began to enter it about 218 B.C. In 121 B.C. the coast from Montpellier to the Pyrenees (i.e. all that was not Massiliot) with its port of Narbo (mod. Narbonne) and its trade route by Toulouse to the Atlantic, was formed into the province of Gallia Narbonensis and Narbo itself into a Roman municipality. Commercial motives prompted the step, and Roman traders and land speculators speedily flocked in. Gradually the province was extended north of Massilia, up the Rhone, while the Greek town itself became weak and dependent on Rome.
It is not, however, until the middle of the 1st century B.C. that we have any detailed knowledge of pre-Roman Gaul. The earliest account is that contained in the Commentaries of Julius Caesar. According to this authority, Gaul was at that time divided among three peoples, more or less distinct from one another, the Aquitani, the Gauls, who called themselves Celts, and the Belgae. The first of these extended from the Pyrenees to the Garumna (Garonne); the second, from that river to the Sequana (Seine) and its chief tributary the Matrona (Marne), reaching eastward presumably as far as the Rhenus (Rhine); and the third, from this bounding line to the mouth of the last-named river, thus bordering on the Germans. By implication Caesar recognizes as a fourth division the province of Gallia Narbonensis. By far the greater part of the country was a plain watered by numerous rivers, the chief of which have already been mentioned, with the exception of its great central stream, the Liger or Ligeris (Loire). Its principal mountain ranges were Cebenna or Gebenna (Cévennes) in the south, and Jura, with its continuation Vosegus or Vogesus (Vosges), in the east. The tribes inhabiting Gaul in Caesar’s time, and belonging to one or other of the three races distinguished by him, were numerous. Prominent among them, and dwelling in the division occupied by the Celts, were the Helvetii, the Sequani and the Aedui, in the basins of the Rhodanus and its tributary the Arar (Saône), who, he says, were reckoned the three most powerful nations in all Gaul; the Arverni in the mountains of Cebenna; the Senones and Carnutes in the basin of the Liger; the Veneti and other Armorican tribes between the mouths of the Liger and Sequana. The Nervii, Bellovaci, Suessiones, Remi, Morini, Menapii and Aduatuci were Belgic tribes; the Tarbelli and others were Aquitani; while the Allobroges inhabited the north of the Provincia, having been conquered in 121 B.C. The ethnological divisions thus set forth by Caesar have been much discussed (see Celt, and articles on the chief tribes).
The Gallic Wars (58-51) of Caesar (q.v.) added all the rest of Gaul, north-west of the Cévennes, to the Rhine and the Ocean, and in 49 also annexed Massilia. All Gaul was now Roman territory. Now the second period of her history opens; it remained for Roman territory to become romanized.
Caesar had no time to organize his conquest; this work was left to Augustus. As settled by him, and in part perhaps also by his successor Tiberius, it fell into the following five administrative areas.
(i) Narbonensis, that is, the land between Alps, sea and Cévennes, extending up the Rhone to Vienne, was as Augustus found it, distinct in many ways from the rest of Gaul. By nature it is a sun-steeped southern region, the home of the vine and olive, of the minstrelsy of the Provençal and the exuberance of Tartarin, distinct from the colder and more sober north. By history it had already (in the time of Augustus) been Roman for from 80 to 100 years and was familiar with Roman ways. It was ready to be Italianized and it was civilized enough to need no garrison. Accordingly, it was henceforward governed by a proconsul (appointed by the senate) and freed from the burden of troops, while its local government was assimilated to that of Italy. The old Celtic tribes were broken up: instead, municipalities of Roman citizens were founded to rule their territories. Thus the Allobroges now disappear and the colonia of Vienna takes their place: the Volcae vanish and we find Nemausus (Nîmes). Thus thrown into Italian fashion, the province took rapidly to Italian ways. By A.D. 70 it was “Italia verius quam provincia” (Pliny). The Gauls obviously had a natural bias towards the Italian civilization, and there soon became no difference between Italy and southern Gaul. But though education spread, the results were somewhat disappointing. Trade flourished; the corporations of bargemen and the like on the Rhone made money; the many towns grew rich and could afford splendid public buildings. But no great writer and no great administrator came from Narbonensis; itinerant lecturers and journalists alone were produced in plenty, and at times minor poets.
(ii.-iv.) Across the Cévennes lay Caesar’s conquests, Atlantic in climate, new to Roman ways. The whole area, often collectively styled “Gallia Comata,” often “Tres Provinciae,” was divided into three provinces, each under a legatus pro praetore appointed by the emperor, with a common capital at Lugudunum (Lyons). The three provinces were: Aquitania, reaching from the Pyrenees almost to the Loire; Lugudunensis, the land between Loire and Seine, reaching from Brittany in the west to Lyons in the south-east; and Belgica in the north. The boundaries, it will be observed, were wholly artificial. Here also it was found possible to dispense with garrisons, not because the provinces were as peaceful as Narbonensis, but because the Rhine army was close at hand. As befitted an unromanized region, the local government was unlike that of Italy or Narbonensis. Roman municipalities were not indeed unknown, but very few: the local authorities were the magistrates of the old tribal districts. Local autonomy was here carried to an extreme. But the policy succeeded. The Gauls of the Three Provinces, or some of them, revolted in A.D. 21 under Florus and Sacrovir, in 68 under Vindex, and in 70 under Classicus and Tutor (see Civilis, Claudius). But all five leaders were romanized nobles, with Roman names and Roman citizenship, and their risings were directed rather against the Roman government than the Roman empire. In general, the Gauls of these provinces accepted Roman civilization more or less rapidly, and in due course became hardly distinguishable from the Italian. In particular, they eagerly accepted the worship of “Augustus and Rome,” devised by the first emperor as a bond of state religion connecting the provinces with Rome. Each August, despite the heat, representatives from the 60 (or 64) tribes of Gallia Comata met at Lyons, elected a priest, “sacerdos ad aram Augusti et Romae,” and held games. The post of representative, and still more that of priest, was eagerly coveted and provided a scope for the ambitions which despotism usually crushes. It agrees with the vigorous development of this worship that the Three Provinces, though romanized, retained their own local feeling. Even in the 3rd century the cult of Celtic deities (Hercules Magusanus, Deusoniensis, &c.) were revived, the Celtic leuga reintroduced instead of the Roman mile on official milestones, and a brief effort made to establish an independent, though romanized, Gaul under Postumus and his short-lived successors (A.D. 250-273). Not only was the area too large and strong to lose its individuality: it was also too rural and too far from the Mediterranean to be romanized as fully and quickly as Narbonensis. It is even probable that Celtic was spoken in forest districts into the 4th century A.D. Town life, however, grew. The chefs-lieux of the tribes became practically, though not officially, municipalities, and many of these towns reached considerable size and magnificence of public buildings. But they attest their tribal relations by their appellations, which are commonly drawn from the name of the tribe and not of the town itself. Thus the capitals of the Remi and Parisii were actually Durocortorum and Lutetia: the appellations in use were Remis or Remus, Parisiis or Parisius—these forms being indeclinable nouns formed from a sort of locative of the tribe names. Literature also flourished. In the latest empire Ausonius, Symmachus, Apollinaris, Sidonius and other Gaulish writers, chiefly of Gallia Comata, kept alive the classical literary tradition, not only for Gaul but for the world.
(v.) The fifth division of Gaul was the Rhenish military frontier. Augustus had planned the conquest of Germany up to the Elbe. His plans were foiled by the courage of Arminius and the inability of the Roman exchequer to pay a larger army. Instead, his successor Tiberius organized the Rhine frontier in two military districts. The northern one was the valley of the Meuse and that of the Rhine to a point just south of Bonn: the southern was the rest of the Rhine valley to Switzerland. Each district was garrisoned at first by four, later by fewer legions, which were disposed at various times in some of the following fortresses: Vetera (Xanten), Novaesium (Neuss), Bonne (Bonn), Moguntiacum (Mainz), Argentorate (Strassburg) and Vindonissa (Windisch in Switzerland). At first the districts were purely military, were called, after the garrisons, “exercitus Germanicus superior” (south) and “inferior” (north). Later one or two municipalities were founded—Colonia Agrippinensis at Cologne (A.D. 51), Colonia Augusta Treverorum at Trier (date uncertain), Colonia Ulpia Traiana outside Vetera—and about 80-90 A.D. the two “Exercitus” were turned into the two provinces of Upper and Lower Germany. The armies in these districts formed the defence of Gaul against German invaders. They also helped to keep Gaul itself in order and their presence explains why the four provinces of Gaul proper contained no troops.
These provincial divisions were modified by Diocletian but without seriously affecting the life of Gaul. The whole country, indeed, continued Roman and fairly safe from barbarian invasions till after 400. In 407 a multitude of Franks, Vandals, &c., burst over Gaul: Roman rule practically ceased and the three kingdoms of the Visigoths, Burgundians and Franks began to form. There were still a Roman general and Roman troops when Attila was defeated in the campi Catalaunici in A.D. 451, but the general, Aetius, was “the last of the Romans,” and in 486 Clovis the Frank ended the last vestige of Roman rule in Gaul.
For Roman antiquities in Gaul see, beside articles on the modern towns (Arles, Nîmes, Orange &c.), Bibracte, Alesia, Itius Portus, Aqueduct, Architecture, Amphitheatre, &c.; for religion see Druidism; for the famous schools of Autun, Lyons, Toulouse, Nîmes, Vienne, Marseilles and Narbonne, see J.E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (ed. 1906-1908), i. pp. 247-250; for the Roman provinces, Th. Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire (trans. 1886), vol. i. chap. iii. See also Desjardins, Géographie historique et administrative de la Gaule romaine (Paris, 1877); Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France (Paris, 1877); for Caesar’s campaigns, article Caesar, Julius, and works quoted; for coins, art. Numismatics and articles in the Numismatische Zeitschrift and Revue numismatique (e.g. Blanchet, 1907, pp. 461 foll.).
(F. J. H.)
1 When Cisalpine Gaul became completely Romanized, it was often known as “Gallia Togata,” while the Province was distinguished as “Gallia Bracata” (bracae, incorrectly braccae, “trousers”), from the long trousers worn by the inhabitants, and the rest of Gaul as “Gallia Comata,” from the inhabitants wearing their hair long.
GAULT, in geology, one of the members of the Lower Cretaceous System. The name is still employed provincially in parts of England for a stiff blue clay of any kind; by the earlier writers it was sometimes spelt “Galt” or “Golt.”
The formation now known as Gault in England has been variously designated “Blue Marle,” “Brick Earth,” “Golt Brick Earth” and “Oak-tree-soil.” In certain parts of the south of England the Gault appears as a well-marked deposit of clay, lying between two sandy formations; the one above came to be known as the “Upper Greensand,” the one below being the “Lower Greensand” (see Greensand). Since the typical clayey Gault is continually taking on a sandy facies as it is traced both horizontally and vertically; and since the fossils of the Upper Greensand and Gault are inseparably related, it has been proposed by A.J. Jukes-Browne that these two series of beds should be regarded as the arenaceous and argillaceous phases of a single formation, to which he has given the name “Selbornian” (from the village of Selborne where the beds are well developed). Lithologically, then, the Selbornian includes the blue and grey clays and marls of the Gault proper; the glauconitic sands of the Upper Greensand, and their local equivalent, the “malm,” “malm rock” or “firestone,” which in places passes into the micaceous sandstone containing sponge spicules and globules of silica, the counterpart of the rock called “gaize” on the same horizon in northern France. In Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and parts of Norfolk the Selbornian is represented by the Red Chalk. The malm is a ferruginous siliceous rock, the silica being mainly in the colloidal condition in the form of globules and sponge spicules; some quartz grains, mica and glauconite are usually present along with from 2 to 25% of calcareous matter. Chert-bands and nodules are common in the Upper Greensand of certain districts; and calcareous concretions, locally recognized as cowstones (Lyme Regis), doggers or buhrstones, are not infrequent.
The principal divisions of the Selbornian stage with their characteristic zonal fossils are as follows:—
Warminster Beds Pecten asper and Cardiaster fossarius.
Upper Gault Devizes Beds or Merstham Beds with Schloenbachia rostralus.
Lower Gault Hoplites lautus.
H. interruptus.
Acanthoceras mammillatum.
The Gault (with Upper Greensand) crops out all round the Wealden area; it extends beneath the London basin and reappears from beneath the northern scarp of the Chalk along the foot of the Chiltern Hills to near Tring. In the south of England the Gault clay is fairly constant in the lower part, with the Greensand above; the clay, however, passes into sand as it is followed westward and, as already pointed out, the clay and sand appear to pass into a red chalk towards the north-east. The Gault overlaps the Lower Greensand towards the east, where it rests upon the old Paleozoic axis; it also overlaps the same formation towards the west about Frome, and thence passes unconformably across the Portlandian beds, Kimeridge Clay, Corallian beds and Oxford Clay; in south Dorsetshire it rests upon the Wealden Series. The Gault (with Upper Greensand) passes on to the Jurassic and Rhaetic rocks near Axmouth, and oversteps farther westward, in the Haldon Hills, on to the Permian. A large outlier occurs on the Blackdown Hills of Devonshire. Good localities for fossils are Folkestone—where many of the shells are preserved with their original pearly nacre,—Burnham, Merstham, Isle of Wight, the Blackdown and Haldon Hills, Warminster, Hunstanton and Speeton, Black Venn near Lyme Regis, and Devizes (malmstone and gaize). The beds are well developed in the vale of Wardour, and in the Isle of Wight; the Gault forms the so-called “blue slipper” at Ventnor which has been the cause of the landslip or undercliff.
The Gault of north France is very similar to that in the south of England, but the French term Albien includes only a portion of the Selbornian formation. The Gault of north-west Germany embraces beds that would be classed as Albien and Aptien by French authors; it comprises the “Flammenmergel”—a pale siliceous marl shot with flame-shaped darker patches—a clay with Belemnites minimus, and the “Gargasmergel” (Aptian). In the Diester and Teutoberger Wald, and in the region of Halberstadt, the clays and marls are replaced by sandstones, the so-called Gault-Quader. Continental writers usually place the Gault or Albian at the summit of the Lower Cretaceous; while with English geologists the practice is to commence the Upper Cretaceous with this formation. In addition to the fossils already noticed, the following may be mentioned: Acanthoceras Desmoceras Beaudanti, Hoplites splendens, Hamites, Scaphites, Turrilites, Aporrhais retusa, Trigonia aliforme, also Ichthyosaurus and Ornithocheirus (Pterodactyl). From the clays, bricks and tiles are made at Burham, Barnwell, Dunton Green, Arlesey, Hitchin, &c. The cherts in the Greensand portion are used for road metal, and in the Blackdown Hills, for scythe stones; hearthstone is obtained about Merstham; phosphatic nodules occur at several horizons.
See Cretaceous System; Albian; Aptian; also A.J. Jukes-Browne, “The Gault and Upper Greensand of England.” vol. i., Cretaceous Rocks of Britain; Mem. Geol. Survey, 1900.
GAUNTLET (a diminutive of the Fr. gant, glove), a large form of glove, and especially the steel-plated glove of medieval armour. To “run the gauntlet,” i.e. to run between two rows of men who, armed with sticks, rope-ends or other weapons, beat and strike at the person so running, was formerly a punishment for military and naval offences. It was abolished in the Prussian army by Scharnhorst. As a method of torturing prisoners, it was employed among the North American Indians. “Gauntlet” (earlier “gantlet”) in this expression is a corruption of “gantlope,” from a Swedish gatlope, from gata, lane, and lopp, a course (cf. Ger. gassenlaufen, to run the gauntlet). According to the New English Dictionary the word became familiar in England at the time of the Thirty Years’ War.
GAUR, or Lakhnauti, a ruined city of British India, in Malda district of Eastern Bengal and Assam. The ruins are situated about 8 m. to the south of English Bazar, the civil station of the district of Malda, and on the eastern bank of the Bhagirathi, an old channel of the Ganges. It is said to have been founded by Lakshman, and its most ancient name was Lakshmanavati, corrupted into Lakhnauti. Its known history begins with its conquest in A.D. 1198 by the Mahommedans, who retained it as the chief seat of their power in Bengal for more than three centuries. When the Afghan kings of Bengal established their independence, they transferred their seat of government (about 1350) to Pandua (q.v.), also in Malda district, and to build their new capital they plundered Gaur of every monument that could be removed. When Pandua was in its turn deserted (A.D. 1453), Gaur once more became the capital under the name of Jannatabad; it remained so as long as the Mahommedan kings retained their independence. In A.D. 1564 Sulaiman Kirani, a Pathan adventurer, abandoned it for Tanda, a place somewhat nearer the Ganges. Gaur was sacked by Sher Shah in 1539, and was occupied by Akbar’s general in 1575, when Daud Shah, the last of the Afghan dynasty, refused to pay homage to the Mogul emperor. This occupation was followed by an outbreak of the plague, which completed the downfall of the city, and since then it has been little better than a heap of ruins, almost overgrown with jungle.
The city in its prime measured 7½ m. from north to south, with a breadth of 1 to 2 m. With suburbs it covered an area of 20 to 30 sq. m., and in the 16th century the Portuguese historian Faria y Sousa described it as containing 1,200,000 inhabitants. The ramparts of this walled city, which was surrounded by extensive suburbs, still exist; they were works of vast labour, and were on the average about 40 ft. high, and 180 to 200 ft. thick at the base. The facing of masonry and the buildings with which they were covered have now disappeared, and the embankments themselves are overgrown with dense jungle. The western side of the city was washed by the Ganges, and within the space enclosed by these embankments and the river stood the city of Gaur proper, with the fort containing the palace in its south-west corner. Radiating north, south and east from the city, other embankments are to be traced running through the suburbs and extending in certain directions for 30 or 40 m. Surrounding the palace is an inner embankment of similar construction to that which surrounds the city, and even more overgrown with jungle. A deep moat protects it on the outside. To the north of the outer enbankment lies the Sagar Dighi, a great reservoir, 1600 yds. by 800 yds., dating from A.D. 1126.
Fergusson in his History of Eastern Architecture thus describes the general architectural style of Gaur:—“It is neither like that of Delhi nor Jaunpore, nor any other style, but one purely local and not without considerable merit in itself; its principal characteristic being heavy short pillars of stone supporting pointed arches and vaults in brick—whereas at Jaunpore, for instance, light pillars carried horizontal architraves and flat ceilings.” Owing to the lightness of the small, thin bricks, which were chiefly used in the making of Gaur, its buildings have not well withstood the ravages of time and the weather; while much of its enamelled work has been removed for the ornamentation of the surrounding cities of more modern origin. Moreover, the ruins long served as a quarry for the builders of neighbouring towns and villages, till in 1900 steps were taken for their preservation by the government. The finest ruin in Gaur is that of the Great Golden Mosque, also called Bara Darwaza, or twelve-doored (1526). An arched corridor running along the whole front of the original building is the principal portion now standing. There are eleven arches on either side of the corridor and one at each end of it, from which the mosque probably obtained its name. These arches are surmounted by eleven domes in fair preservation; the mosque had originally thirty-three.
The Small Golden or Eunuch’s mosque, in the ancient suburb of Firozpur, has fine carving, and is faced with stone fairly well preserved. The Tantipara mosque (1475-1480) has beautiful moulding in brick, and the Lotan mosque of the same period is unique in retaining its glazed tiles. The citadel, of the Mahommedan period, was strongly fortified with a rampart and entered through a magnificent gateway called the Dakhil Darwaza (? 1459-1474). At the south-east corner was a palace, surrounded by a wall of brick 66 ft. high, of which a part is standing. Near by were the royal tombs. Within the citadel is the Kadam Rasul mosque (1530), which is still used, and close outside is a tall tower called the Firoz Minar (perhaps signifying “tower of victory”). There are a number of Mahommedan buildings on the banks of the Sagar Dighi, including, notably, the tomb of the saint Makhdum Shaikh Akhi Siraj (d. 1357), and in the neighbourhood is a burning ghat, traditionally the only one allowed to the use of the Hindus by their Mahommedan conquerors, and still greatly venerated and frequented by them. Many inscriptions of historical importance have been found in the ruins.
See M. Martin (Buchanan Hamilton), Eastern India, vol. iii. (1831); G.H. Ravenshaw, Gaur (1878); James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (1876); Reports of the Archaeological Surveyor, Bengal Circle (1900-1904).
GAUR, the native name of the wild ox, Bos (Bibos) gaurus, of India, miscalled bison by sportsmen. The gaur, which extends into Burma and the Malay Peninsula, where it is known as seladang, is the typical representative of an Indo-Malay group of wild cattle characterized by the presence of a ridge on the withers, the compressed horns, and the white legs. The gaur, which reaches a height of nearly 6 ft. at the shoulder, is specially characterized by the forward curve and great elevation of the ridge between the horns. The general colour is blackish-grey. Hill-forests are the resort of this species.
GAUSS, KARL FRIEDRICH (1777-1855), German mathematician, was born of humble parents at Brunswick on the 30th of April 1777, and was indebted for a liberal education to the notice which his talents procured him from the reigning duke. His name became widely known by the publication, in his twenty-fifth year (1801), of the Disquisitiones arithmeticae. In 1807 he was appointed director of the Göttingen observatory, an office which he retained to his death: it is said that he never slept away from under the roof of his observatory, except on one occasion, when he accepted an invitation from Baron von Humboldt to attend a meeting of natural philosophers at Berlin. In 1809 he published at Hamburg his Theoria motus corporum coelestium, a work which gave a powerful impulse to the true methods of astronomical observation; and his astronomical workings, observations, calculations of orbits of planets and comets, &c., are very numerous and valuable. He continued his labours in the theory of numbers and other analytical subjects, and communicated a long series of memoirs to the Royal Society of Sciences (Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften) at Göttingen. His first memoir on the theory of magnetism, Intensitas vis magneticae terrestris ad mensuram absolutam revocata, was published in 1833, and he shortly afterwards proceeded, in conjunction with Wilhelm Weber, to invent new apparatus for observing the earth’s magnetism and its changes; the instruments devised by them were the declination instrument and the bifilar magnetometer. With Weber’s assistance he erected in 1833 at Göttingen a magnetic observatory free from iron (as Humboldt and F.J.D. Arago had previously done on a smaller scale), where he made magnetic observations, and from this same observatory he sent telegraphic signals to the neighbouring town, thus showing the practicability of an electromagnetic telegraph. He further instituted an association (Magnetischer Verein), composed at first almost entirely of Germans, whose continuous observations on fixed term-days extended from Holland to Sicily. The volumes of their publication, Resultate am den Beobachtungen des magnetischen Vereins, extend from 1836 to 1839; and in those for 1838 and 1839 are contained the two important memoirs by Gauss, Allgemeine Theorie des Erdmagnetismus, and the Allgemeine Lehrsätze—on the theory of forces attracting according to the inverse square of the distance. The instruments and methods thus due to him are substantially those employed in the magnetic observatories throughout the world. He co-operated in the Danish and Hanoverian measurements of an arc and trigonometrical operations (1821-1848), and wrote (1843, 1846) the two memoirs Über Gegenstände der höheren Geodäsie. Connected with observations in general we have (1812-1826) the memoir Theoria combinationis observationum erroribus minimis obnoxia, with a second part and a supplement. Another memoir of applied mathematics is the Dioptrische Untersuchungen (1840). Gauss was well versed in general literature and the chief languages of modern Europe, and was a member of nearly all the leading scientific societies in Europe. He died at Göttingen on the 23rd of February 1855. The centenary of his birth was celebrated (1877) at his native place, Brunswick.
Gauss’s collected works were published by the Royal Society of Göttingen, in 7 vols. 4to (Gött., 1863-1871), edited by E.J. Schering—(1) the Disquisitiones arithmeticae, (2) Theory of Numbers, (3) Analysis, (4) Geometry and Method of Least Squares, (5) Mathematical Physics, (6) Astronomy, and (7) the Theoria motus corporum coelestium. Additional volumes have since been published, Fundamente der Geometrie usw. (1900), and Geodatische Nachträge zu Band iv. (1903). They include, besides his various works and memoirs, notices by him of many of these, and of works of other authors in the Göttingen gelehrte Anzeigen, and a considerable amount of previously unpublished matter, Nachlass. Of the memoirs in pure mathematics, comprised for the most part in vols, ii., iii. and iv. (but to these must be added those on Attractions in vol. v.), it may be safely said there is not one which has not signally contributed to the progress of the branch of mathematics to which it belongs, or which would not require to be carefully analysed in a history of the subject. Running through these volumes in order, we have in the second the memoir, Summatio quarundam serierum singularium, the memoirs on the theory of biquadratic residues, in which the notion of complex numbers of the form a + bi was first introduced into the theory of numbers; and included in the Nachlass are some valuable tables. That for the conversion of a fraction into decimals (giving the complete period for all the prime numbers up to 997) is a specimen of the extraordinary love which Gauss had for long arithmetical calculations; and the amount of work gone through in the construction of the table of the number of the classes of binary quadratic forms must also have been tremendous. In vol. iii. we have memoirs relating to the proof of the theorem that every numerical equation has a real or imaginary root, the memoir on the Hypergeometric Series, that on Interpolation, and the memoir Determinatio attractionis—in which a planetary mass is considered as distributed over its orbit according to the time in which each portion of the orbit is described, and the question (having an implied reference to the theory of secular perturbations) is to find the attraction of such a ring. In the solution the value of an elliptic function is found by means of the arithmetico-geometrical mean. The Nachlass contains further researches on this subject, and also researches (unfortunately very fragmentary) on the lemniscate-function, &., showing that Gauss was, even before 1800, in possession of many of the discoveries which have made the names of N.H. Abel and K.G.J. Jacobi illustrious. In vol. iv. we have the memoir Allgemeine Auflösung, on the graphical representation of one surface upon another, and the Disquisitiones generales circa superficies curvas. (An account of the treatment of surfaces which he originated in this paper will be found in the article Surface.) And in vol. v. we have a memoir On the Attraction of Homogeneous Ellipsoids, and the already mentioned memoir Allgemeine Lehrsätze, on the theory of forces attracting according to the inverse square of the distance.
(A. Ca.)
GAUSSEN, FRANÇOIS SAMUEL ROBERT LOUIS (1790-1863), Swiss Protestant divine, was born at Geneva on the 25th of August 1790. His father, Georg Markus Gaussen, a member of the council of two hundred, was descended from an old Languedoc family which had been scattered at the time of the religious persecutions in France. At the close of his university career at Geneva, Louis was in 1816 appointed pastor of the Swiss Reformed Church at Satigny near Geneva, where he formed intimate relations with J.E. Cellérier, who had preceded him in the pastorate, and also with the members of the dissenting congregation at Bourg-de-Four, which, together with the Église du témoignage, had been formed under the influence of the preaching of James and Robert Haldane in 1817. The Swiss revival was distasteful to the pastors of Geneva (Vénérable Compagnie des Pasteurs), and on the 7th of May 1817 they passed an ordinance hostile to it. As a protest against this ordinance, in 1819 Gaussen published in conjunction with Cellérier a French translation of the Second Helvetic Confession, with a preface expounding the views he had reached upon the nature, use and necessity of confessions of faith; and in 1830, for having discarded the official catechism of his church as being insufficiently explicit on the divinity of Christ, original sin and the doctrines of grace, he was censured and suspended by his ecclesiastical superiors. In the following year he took part in the formation of a Société Évangélique (Evangelische Gesellschaft). When this society contemplated, among other objects, the establishment of a new theological college, he was finally deprived of his charge. After some time devoted to travel in Italy and England, he returned to Geneva and ministered to an independent congregation until 1834, when he joined Merle d’Aubigné as professor of systematic theology in the college which he had helped to found. This post he continued to occupy until 1857, when he retired from the active duties of the chair. He died at Les Grottes, Geneva, on the 18th of June 1863.
His best-known work, entitled La Théopneustie ou pleine inspiration des saintes écritures, an elaborate defence of the doctrine of “plenary inspiration,” was originally published in Paris in 1840, and rapidly gained a wide popularity in France, as also, through translations, in England and America. It was followed in 1860 by a supplementary treatise on the canon (Le Canon des saintes écritures au double point de vue de la science et de la foi), which, though also popular, has hardly been so widely read.
See the article in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (1899).
GAUTIER, ÉMILE THÉODORE LÉON (1832-1897), French literary historian, was born at Hâvre on the 8th of August 1832. He was educated at the École des Chartes, and became successively keeper of the archives of the department of Haute-Marne and of the imperial archives at Paris under the empire. In 1871 he became professor of palaeography at the École des Chartes. He was elected member of the Academy of Inscriptions in 1887, and became chief of the historical section of the national archives in 1893. Léon Gautier rendered great services to the study of early French literature, the most important of his numerous works on medieval subjects being a critical text (Tours, 1872) with translation and introduction of the Chanson de Roland, and Les Épopées françaises (3 vols., 1866-1867; 2nd ed., 5 vols., 1878-1897, including a Bibliographie des chansons de geste). He died in Paris on the 25th of August 1897.
GAUTIER, THÉOPHILE (1811-1872), French poet and miscellaneous writer, was born at Tarbes on the 31st of August 1811. He was educated at the grammar school of that town, and afterwards at the Collège Charlemagne in Paris, but was almost as much in the studios. He very early devoted himself to the study of the older French literature, especially that of the 16th and the early part of the 17th century. This study qualified him well to take part in the Romantic movement, and enabled him to astonish Sainte-Beuve by the phraseology and style of some literary essays which, when barely eighteen years old, he put into the critic’s hands. In consequence of this introduction he at once came under the influence of the great Romantic cénacle, to which, as to Victor Hugo in particular, he was also introduced by his gifted but ill-starred schoolmate Gérard de Nerval. With Gérard, Petrus Borel, Corot, and many other less known painters and poets whose personalities he has delightfully sketched in the articles collected under the titles of Histoire du Romantisme, &c., he formed a minor romantic clique who were distinguished for a time by the most extravagant eccentricity. A flaming crimson waistcoat and a great mass of waving hair were the outward signs which qualified Gautier for a chief rank among the enthusiastic devotees who attended the rehearsals of Hernani with red tickets marked “Hierro,” performed mocking dances round the bust of Racine, and were at all times ready to exchange word or blow with the perruques and grisâtres of the classical party. In Gautier’s case these freaks were not inconsistent with real genius and real devotion to sound ideals of literature. He began (like Thackeray, to whom he presents in other ways some striking points of resemblance) as an artist, but soon found that his true powers lay in another direction.
His first considerable poem, Albertus (1830), displayed a good deal of the extravagant character which accompanied rather than marked the movement, but also gave evidence of uncommon command both of language and imagery, and in particular of a descriptive power hardly to be excelled. The promise thus given was more than fulfilled in his subsequent poetry, which, in consequence of its small bulk, may well be noticed at once and by anticipation. The Comédie de la mort, which appeared soon after (1832), is one of the most remarkable of French poems, and though never widely read has received the suffrage of every competent reader. Minor poems of various dates, published in 1840, display an almost unequalled command over poetical form, an advance even over Albertus in vigour, wealth and appropriateness of diction, and abundance of the special poetical essence. All these good gifts reached their climax in the Émaux et camées, first published in 1856, and again, with additions, just before the poet’s death in 1872. These poems are in their own way such as cannot be surpassed. Gautier’s poetical work contains in little an expression of his literary peculiarities. There are, in addition to the peculiarities of style and diction already noticed, an extraordinary feeling and affection for beauty in art and nature, and a strange indifference to anything beyond this range, which has doubtless injured the popularity of his work.
But it was not, after all, as a poet that Gautier was to achieve either profit or fame. For the theatre, he had but little gift, and his dramatic efforts (if we except certain masques or ballets in which his exuberant and graceful fancy came into play) are by far his weakest. It was otherwise with his prose fiction. His first novel of any size, and in many respects his most remarkable work, was Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835). Unfortunately this book, while it establishes his literary reputation on an imperishable basis, was unfitted by its subject, and in parts by its treatment, for general perusal, and created, even in France, a prejudice against its author which he was very far from really deserving. During the years from 1833 onwards, his fertility in novels and tales was very great. Les Jeunes-France (1833), which may rank as a sort of prose Albertus in some ways, displays the follies of the youthful Romantics in a vein of humorous and at the same time half-pathetic satire. Fortunio (1838) perhaps belongs to the same class. Jettatura, written somewhat later, is less extravagant and more pathetic. A crowd of minor tales display the highest literary qualities, and rank with Mérimée’s at the head of all contemporary works of the class. First of all must be mentioned the ghost-story of La Morte amoureuse, a gem of the most perfect workmanship. For many years Gautier continued to write novels. La Belle Jenny (1864) is a not very successful attempt to draw on his English experience, but the earlier Militona (1847) is a most charming picture of Spanish life. In Spirite (1866) he endeavoured to enlist the fancy of the day for supernatural manifestations, and a Roman de la momie (1856) is a learned study of ancient Egyptian ways. His most remarkable effort in this kind, towards the end of his life, was Le Capitaine Fracasse (1863), a novel, partly of the picaresque school, partly of that which Dumas was to make popular, projected nearly thirty years earlier, and before Dumas himself had taken to the style. This book contains some of the finest instances of his literary power.
Yet neither in poems nor in novels did the main occupation of Gautier as a literary man consist. He was early drawn to the more lucrative task of feuilleton-writing, and for more than thirty years he was among the most expert and successful practitioners of this art. Soon after the publication of Mademoiselle de Maupin, in which he had not been too polite to journalism, he became irrevocably a journalist. He was actually the editor of L’Artiste for a time: but his chief newspaper connexions were with La Presse from 1836 to 1854 and with the Moniteur later. His work was mainly theatrical and art criticism. The rest of his life was spent either at Paris or in travels of considerable extent to Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, England, Algeria and Russia, all undertaken with a more or less definite purpose of book-making. Having absolutely no political opinions, he had no difficulty in accepting the Second Empire, and received from it considerable favours, in return for which, however, he in no way prostituted his pen, but remained a literary man pure and simple. He died on the 23rd of December 1872.
Accounts of his travels, criticisms of the theatrical and literary works of the day, obituary notices of his contemporaries and, above all, art criticism occupied him in turn. It has sometimes been deplored that this engagement in journalism should have diverted Gautier from the performance of more capital work in literature. Perhaps, however, this regret springs from a certain misconception. Gautier’s power was literary power pure and simple, and it is as evident in his slightest sketches and criticisms as in Émaux et camées or La Morte amoureuse. On the other hand, his weakness, if he had a weakness, lay in his almost total indifference to the matters which usually supply subjects for art and therefore for literature. He has thus been accused of “lack of ideas” by those who have not cleared their own minds of cant; and in the recent set-back of the critical current against form and in favour of “philosophic” treatment, comment upon him has sometimes been unfavourable. But this injustice will, beyond all question, be redressed again. He was neither immoral, irreligious nor unduly subservient to despotism, but morals, religion and politics (to which we may add science and material progress) were matters of no interest to him. He was to all intents a humanist, as the word was understood in the 15th century. But he was a humorist as well, and this combination, joined to his singularly kindly and genial nature, saved him from some dangers and depravations as well as some absurdities to which the humanist temper is exposed. As time goes on it may be predicted that, though Gautier may not be widely read, yet his writings will never cease to be full of indescribable charm and of very definite instruction to men of letters. Besides those of his works which have been already cited, we may notice Une Larme du diable (1839), a charming mixture of humour and tenderness; Les Grotesques (1844), a volume of early criticisms on some oddities of 17th-century literature; Caprices et zigzags (1845), miscellanies dealing in part with English life; Voyage en Espagne (1845), Constantinople (1854), Voyage en Russie (1866), brilliant volumes of travel; Ménagerie intime (1869) and Tableaux de siège (1872), his two latest works, which display his incomparable style in its quietest but not least happy form.
There is no complete edition of Gautier’s works, and the vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul’s Histoire des œuvres de Théophile Gautier (1887) shows how formidable such an undertaking would be. But since his death numerous further collections of articles have been made: Fusains et eaux-fortes and Tableaux à la plume (1880); L’Orient (2 vols., 1881); Les Vacances du lundi (new ed., 1888); La Nature chez elle (new ed., 1891). In 1879 his son-in-law, E. Bergerat, who had married his younger daughter Estelle (the elder, Mme Judith Gautier—herself a writer of distinction—was at one time Mme Catulle Mendès), issued a biography, Théophile Gautier, which has been often reprinted. With it should be compared Maxime du Camp’s volume in the Grands Écrivains français (1890) and the numerous references in the Journal des Goncourt. Critical eulogies, from Sainte-Beuve (repeatedly in the Causeries) and Baudelaire (two articles in L’Art romantique) downwards, are numerous. The chief of the decriers is Émile Faguet in his Études littéraires sur le XIXe siècle. In 1902 and 1903 there appeared two respectable academic éloges by H. Menai and H. Potez.
(G. Sa.)
GAUTIER D’ARRAS, French trouvère, flourished in the second half of the 12th century. Nothing is known of his biography except what may be gleaned from his works. He dedicated his romance of Éracle to Theobald V., count of Blois (d. 1191); among his other patrons were Marie, countess of Champagne, daughter of Louis VII. and Eleanor of Guienne and Baldwin IV., count of Hainaut. Éracle, the hero of which becomes emperor of Constantinople as Heraclius, is purely a roman d’aventures and enjoyed great popularity. His second romance, Ille et Galeron, dedicated to Beatrix, the second wife of Frederick Barbarossa, treats of a similar situation to that outlined in the lay of “Eliduc” by Marie de France.
See the Œuvres de Gautier d’Arras, ed. E. Löseth (2 vols., Paris, 1890); Hist. litt. de la France, vol. xxii. (1852); A. Dinaux, Les Trouvères (1833-1843), vol. iii.
GAUZE, a light, transparent fabric, originally of silk, and now sometimes made of linen or cotton, woven in an open manner with very fine yarn. It is said to have been originally made at Gaza in Palestine, whence the name. Some of the gauzes from eastern Asia were brocaded with flowers of gold or silver. In the weaving of gauze the warp threads, in addition to being crossed as in plain weaving, are twisted in pairs from left to right and from right to left alternately, after each shot of weft, thereby keeping the weft threads at equal distances apart, and retaining them in their parallel position. The textures are woven either plain, striped or figured; and the material receives many designations, according to its appearance and the purposes to which it is devoted. A thin cotton fabric, woven in the same way, is known as leno, to distinguish it from muslin made by plain weaving. Silk gauze was a prominent and extensive industry in the west of Scotland during the second half of the 18th century, but on the introduction of cotton-weaving it greatly declined. In addition to its use for dress purposes silk gauze is much employed for bolting or sifting flour and other finely ground substances. The term gauze is applied generally to transparent fabrics of whatever fibre made, and to the fine-woven wire-cloth used in safety-lamps, sieves, window-blinds, &c.
GAVARNI, the name by which Sulpice Guillaume Chevalier (1801-1866), French caricaturist, is known. He is said to have taken the nom de plume from the place where he made his first published sketch. He was born in Paris of poor parents, and started in life as a workman in an engine-building factory. At the same time he attended the free school of drawing. In his first attempts to turn his abilities to some account he met with many disappointments, but was at last entrusted with the drawing of some illustrations for a journal of fashion. Gavarni was then thirty-four years of age. His sharp and witty pencil gave to these generally commonplace and unartistic figures a life-likeness and an expression which soon won for him a name in fashionable circles. Gradually he gave greater attention to this more congenial work, and finally ceased working as an engineer to become the director of the journal Les Gens du monde. His ambition rising in proportion to his success, Gavarni from this time followed the real bent of his inclination, and began a series of lithographed sketches, in which he portrayed the most striking characteristics, foibles and vices of the various classes of French society. The letterpress explanations attached to his drawings were always short, but were forcible and highly humorous, if sometimes trivial, and were admirably adapted to the particular subjects. The different stages through which Gavarni’s talent passed, always elevating and refining itself, are well worth being noted. At first he confined himself to the study of Parisian manners, more especially those of the Parisian youth. To this vein belong Les Lorettes, Les Actrices, Les Coulisses, Les Fashionables, Les Gentilshommes bourgeois, Les Artistes, Les Débardeurs, Clichy, Les Étudiants de Paris, Les Baliverneries parisiennes, Les Plaisirs champêtres, Les Bals masqués, Le Carnaval, Les Souvenirs du carnaval, Les Souvenirs du bal Chicard, La Vie des jeunes hommes, Les Patois de Paris. He had now ceased to be director of Les Gens du monde; but he was engaged as ordinary caricaturist of Le Charivari, and, whilst making the fortune of the paper, he made his own. His name was exceedingly popular, and his illustrations for books were eagerly sought for by publishers. Le Juif errant, by Eugène Sue (1843, 4 vols. 8vo), the French translation of Hoffman’s tales (1843, 8vo), the first collective edition of Balzac’s works (Paris, Houssiaux, 1850, 20 vols. 8vo), Le Diable à Paris (1844-1846, 2 vols. 4to), Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (1840-1843, 9 vols. 8vo), the collection of Physiologies published by Aubert in 38 vols. 18mo (1840-1842),—all owed a great part of their success at the time, and are still sought for, on account of the clever and telling sketches contributed by Gavarni. A single frontispiece or vignette was sometimes enough to secure the sale of a new book. Always desiring to enlarge the field of his observations, Gavarni soon abandoned his once favourite topics. He no longer limited himself to such types as the lorette and the Parisian student, or to the description of the noisy and popular pleasures of the capital, but turned his mirror to the grotesque sides of family life and of humanity at large. Les Enfants terribles, Les Parents terribles, Les Fourberies des femmes, La Politique des femmes, Les Maris vengés, Les Nuances du sentiment, Les Rêves, Les Petits Jeux de société, Les Petits Malheurs du bonheur, Les Impressions de menage, Les Interjections, Les Traductions en langue vulgaire, Les Propos de Thomas Vireloque, &c., were composed at this time, and are his most elevated productions. But whilst showing the same power of irony as his former works, enhanced by a deeper insight into human nature, they generally bear the stamp of a bitter and even sometimes gloomy philosophy. This tendency was still more strengthened by a visit to England in 1849. He returned from London deeply impressed with the scenes of misery and degradation which he had observed among the lower classes of that city. In the midst of the cheerful atmosphere of Paris he had been struck chiefly by the ridiculous aspects of vulgarity and vice, and he had laughed at them. But the debasement of human nature which he saw in London appears to have affected him so forcibly that from that time the cheerful caricaturist never laughed or made others laugh again. What he had witnessed there became the almost exclusive subject of his drawings, as powerful, as impressive as ever, but better calculated to be appreciated by cultivated minds than by the public, which had in former years granted him so wide a popularity. Most of these last compositions appeared in the weekly paper L’Illustration. In 1857 he published in one volume the series entitled Masques et visages (1 vol. 12mo), and in 1869, about two years after his death, his last artistic work, Les Douze Mois (1 vol. fol.), was given to the world. Gavarni was much engaged, during the last period of his life, in scientific pursuits, and this fact must perhaps be connected with the great change which then took place in his manner as an artist. He sent several communications to the Académie des Sciences, and till his death on the 23rd of November 1866 he was eagerly interested in the question of aerial navigation. It is said that he made experiments on a large scale with a view to find the means of directing balloons; but it seems that he was not so successful in this line as his fellow-artist, the caricaturist and photographer, Nadar.
Gavarni’s Œuvres choisies were edited in 1845 (4 vols. 4to) with letterpress by J. Janin, Th. Gautier and Balzac, followed in 1850 by two other volumes named Perles et parures; and some essays in prose and in verse written by him were collected by one of his biographers, Ch. Yriarte, and published in 1869. See also E. and J. de Goncourt, Gavarni, l’homme et l’œuvre (1873, 8vo). J. Claretie has also devoted to the great French caricaturist a curious and interesting essay. A catalogue raisonné of Gavarni’s works was published by J. Armelhault and E. Bocher (Paris, 1873, 8vo).
GAVAZZI, ALESSANDRO (1809-1889), Italian preacher and patriot, was born at Bologna on the 21st of March 1809. He at first became a monk (1825), and attached himself to the Barnabites at Naples, where he afterwards (1829) acted as professor of rhetoric. In 1840, having already expressed liberal views, he was removed to Rome to fill a subordinate position. Leaving his own country after the capture of Rome by the French, he carried on a vigorous campaign against priests and Jesuits in England, Scotland and North America, partly by means of a periodical, the Gavazzi Free Word. While in England he gradually went over (1855) to the Evangelical church, and became head and organizer of the Italian Protestants in London. Returning to Italy in 1860, he served as army-chaplain with Garibaldi. In 1870 he became head of the Free Church (Chiesa libera) of Italy, united the scattered Congregations into the “Unione delle Chiese libere in Italia,” and in 1875 founded in Rome the theological college of the Free Church, in which he himself taught dogmatics, apologetics and polemics. He died in Rome on the 9th of January 1889.
Amongst his publications are No Union with Rome (1871); The Priest in Absolution (1877); My Recollections of the Last Four Popes, &c., in answer to Cardinal Wiseman (1858); Orations, 2 decades (1851).
GAVELKIND,1 a peculiar system of tenure associated chiefly with the county of Kent, but found also in other parts of England. In Kent all land is presumed to be holden by this tenure until the contrary is proved, but some lands have been disgavelled by particular statutes. It is more correctly described as socage tenure, subject to the custom of gavelkind. The chief peculiarities of the custom are the following. (1) A tenant can alienate his lands by feoffment at fifteen years of age. (2) There is no escheat on attainder for felony, or as it is expressed in the old rhyme—
“The father to the bough, The son to the plough.”
(3) Generally the tenant could always dispose of his lands by will. (4) In case of intestacy the estate descends not to the eldest son but to all the sons (or, in the case of deceased sons, their representatives) in equal shares. “Every son is as great a gentleman as the eldest son is.” It is to this remarkable peculiarity that gavelkind no doubt owes its local popularity. Though females claiming in their own right are postponed to males, yet by representation they may inherit together with them. (5) A wife is dowable of one-half, instead of one-third of the land. (6) A widower may be tenant by courtesy, without having had any issue, of one-half, but only so long as he remains unmarried. An act of 1841, for commuting manorial rights in respect of lands of copyhold and customary tenure, contained a clause specially exempting from the operation of the act “the custom of gavelkind as the same now exists and prevails in the county of Kent.” Gavelkind is one of the most interesting examples of the customary law of England; it was, previous to the Conquest, the general custom of the realm, but was then superseded by the feudal law of primogeniture. Its survival in this instance in one part of the country is regarded as a concession extorted from the Conqueror by the superior bravery of the men of Kent. Irish gavelkind was a species of tribal succession, by which the land, instead of being divided at the death of the holder amongst his sons, was thrown again into the common stock, and redivided among the surviving members of the sept. The equal division amongst children of an inheritance in land is of common occurrence outside the United Kingdom and is discussed under Succession.
See Inheritance; Tenure. Also Robinson, On Gavelkind; Digby, History of the Law of Real Property; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law; Challis, Real Property.
1 This word is generally taken to represent in O. Eng. gafolgecynd, from gafol, payment, tribute, and gecynd, species, kind, and originally to have meant tenure by payment of rent or non-military services, cf. gafol-land, and thence to have been applied to the particular custom attached to such tenure in Kent. Gafol apparently is derived from the Teutonic root seen in “to give”; the Med. Lat. gabulum, gablum gives the Fr. gabelle, tax.
GAVESTON, PIERS (d. 1312), earl of Cornwall, favourite of the English king Edward II., was the son of a Gascon knight, and was brought up at the court of Edward I. as companion to his son, the future king. Strong, talented and ambitious, Gaveston gained great influence over young Edward, and early in 1307 he was banished from England by the king; but he returned after the death of Edward I. a few months later, and at once became the chief adviser of Edward II. Made earl of Cornwall, he received both lands and money from the king, and added to his wealth and position by marrying Edward’s niece, Margaret, daughter of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester (d. 1295). He was regent of the kingdom during the king’s short absence in France in 1308, and took a very prominent part at Edward’s coronation in February of this year. These proceedings aroused the anger and jealousy of the barons, and their wrath was diminished neither by Gaveston’s superior skill at the tournament, nor by his haughty and arrogant behaviour to themselves. They demanded his banishment; and the king, forced to assent, sent his favourite to Ireland as lieutenant, where he remained for about a year. Returning to England in July 1309, Edward persuaded some of the barons to sanction this proceeding; but as Gaveston was more insolent than ever the old jealousies soon broke out afresh. In 1311 the king was forced to agree to the election of the “ordainers,” and the ordinances they drew up provided inter alia for the perpetual banishment of his favourite. Gaveston then retired to Flanders, but returned secretly to England at the end of 1311. Soon he was publicly restored by Edward, and the barons had taken up arms. Deserted by the king he surrendered to Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke (d. 1324), at Scarborough in May 1312, and was taken to Deddington in Oxfordshire, where he was seized by Guy de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (d. 1315). Conveyed to Warwick castle he was beheaded on Blacklow Hill near Warwick on the 19th of June 1312. Gaveston, whose body was buried in 1315 at King’s Langley, left an only daughter.
See W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. ii. (Oxford, 1896); and Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I. and Edward II., edited by W. Stubbs. Rolls series (London, 1882-1883).
GAVOTTE (a French word adopted from the Provençal gavoto), properly the dance of the Gavots or natives of Gap, a district in the Upper Alps, in the old province of Dauphiné. It is a dance of a brisk and lively character, somewhat resembling the minuet, but quicker and less stately (see Dance); hence also the use of this name for a corresponding form of musical composition.
GAWAIN (Fr. Walwain (Brut), Gauvain, Gaugain; Lat. Walganus, Walwanus; Dutch, Walwein, Welsh, Gwalchmei), son of King Loth of Orkney, and nephew to Arthur on his mother’s side, the most famous hero of Arthurian romance. The first mention of his name is in a passage of William of Malmesbury, recording the discovery of his tomb in the province of Ros in Wales. He is there described as “Walwen qui fuit haud degener Arturis ex sorore nepos.” Here he is said to have reigned over Galloway; and there is certainly some connexion, the character of which is now not easy to determine, between the two. In the later Historia of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and its French translation by Wace, Gawain plays an important and “pseudo-historic” rôle. On the receipt by Arthur of the insulting message of the Roman emperor, demanding tribute, it is he who is despatched as ambassador to the enemy’s camp, where his arrogant and insulting behaviour brings about the outbreak of hostilities. On receipt of the tidings of Mordred’s treachery, Gawain accompanies Arthur to England, and is slain in the battle which ensues on their landing. Wace, however, evidently knew more of Gawain than he has included in his translation, for he speaks of him as
Li quens Walwains Qui tant fu preudom de ses mains (11. 9057-58).
and later on says
Prous fu et de mult grant mesure, D’orgoil et de forfait n’ot qure Plus vaut faire qu’il ne dist Et plus doner qu’il ne pramist (10. 106-109).
The English Arthurian poems regard him as the type and model of chivalrous courtesy, “the fine father of nurture,” and as Professor Maynadier has well remarked, “previous to the appearance of Malory’s compilation it was Gawain rather than Arthur, who was the typical English hero.” It is thus rather surprising to find that in the earliest preserved MSS. of Arthurian romance, i.e. in the poems of Chrétien de Troyes, Gawain, though generally placed first in the list of knights, is by no means the hero par excellence. The latter part of the Perceval is indeed devoted to the recital of his adventures at the Chastel Merveilleus, but of none of Chrétien’s poems is he the protagonist. The anonymous author of the Chevalier à l’epée indeed makes this apparent neglect of Gawain a ground of reproach against Chrétien. At the same time the majority of the short episodic poems connected with the cycle have Gawain for their hero. In the earlier form of the prose romances, e.g. in the Merlin proper, Gawain is a dominant personality, his feats rivalling in importance those ascribed to Arthur, but in the later forms such as the Merlin continuations, the Tristan, and the final Lancelot compilation, his character and position have undergone a complete change, he is represented as cruel, cowardly and treacherous, and of indifferent moral character. Most unfortunately our English version of the romances, Malory’s Morte Arthur, being derived from these later forms (though his treatment of Gawain is by no means uniformly consistent), this unfavourable aspect is that under which the hero has become known to the modern reader. Tennyson, who only knew the Arthurian story through the medium of Malory, has, by exaggeration, largely contributed to this misunderstanding. Morris, in The Defence of Guinevere, speaks of “gloomy Gawain”; perhaps the most absurdly misleading epithet which could possibly have been applied to the “gay, gratious, and gude” knight of early English tradition.
The truth appears to be that Gawain, the Celtic and mythic origin of whose character was frankly admitted by the late M. Gaston Paris, belongs to the very earliest stage of Arthurian tradition, long antedating the crystallization of such tradition into literary form. He was certainly known in Italy at a very early date; Professor Rajna has found the names of Arthur and Gawain in charters of the early 12th century, the bearers of those names being then grown to manhood; and Gawain is figured in the architrave of the north doorway of Modena cathedral, a 12th-century building. Recent discoveries have made it practically certain that there existed, prior to the extant romances, a collection of short episodic poems, devoted to the glorification of Arthur’s famous nephew and his immediate kin (his brother Ghaeris, or Gareth, and his son Guinglain), the authorship of which was attributed to a Welshman, Bleheris; fragments of this collection have been preserved to us alike in the first continuation of Chrétien de Troyes Perceval, due to Wauchier de Denain, and in our vernacular Gawain poems. Among these “Bleheris” poems was one dealing with Gawain’s adventures at the Grail castle, where the Grail is represented as non-Christian, and presents features strongly reminiscent of the ancient Nature mysteries. There is good ground for believing that as Grail quester and winner, Gawain preceded alike Perceval and Galahad, and that the solution of the mysterious Grail problem is to be sought rather in the tales connected with the older hero than in those devoted to the glorification of the younger knights. The explanation of the very perplexing changes which the character of Gawain has undergone appears to lie in a misunderstanding of the original sources of that character. Whether or no Gawain was a sun-hero, and he certainly possessed some of the features—we are constantly told how his strength waxed with the waxing of the sun till noontide, and then gradually decreased; he owned a steed known by a definite name le Gringalet; and a light-giving sword, Escalibur (which, as a rule, is represented as belonging to Gawain, not to Arthur)—all traits of a sun-hero—he certainly has much in common with the primitive Irish hero Cuchullin. The famous head-cutting challenge, so admirably told in Syr Gawayne and the Grene Knighte, was originally connected with the Irish champion. Nor was the lady of Gawain’s love a mortal maiden, but the queen of the other-world. In Irish tradition the other-world is often represented as an island, inhabited by women only; and it is this “Isle of Maidens” that Gawain visits in Diu Crone; returning therefrom dowered with the gift of eternal youth. The Chastel Merveilleus adventure, related at length by Chrétien and Wolfram is undoubtedly such an “other-world” story. It seems probable that it was this connexion which won for Gawain the title of the “Maidens’ Knight,” a title for which no satisfactory explanation is ever given. When the source of the name was forgotten its meaning was not unnaturally misinterpreted, and gained for Gawain the reputation of a facile morality, which was exaggerated by the pious compilers of the later Grail romances into persistent and aggravated wrong-doing; at the same time it is to be noted that Gawain is never like Tristan and Lancelot, the hero of an illicit connexion maintained under circumstances of falsehood and treachery. Gawain, however, belonged to the pre-Christian stage of Grail tradition, and it is not surprising that writers, bent on spiritual edification, found him somewhat of a stumbling-block. Chaucer, when he spoke of Gawain coming “again out of faërie,” spoke better than he knew; the home of that very gallant and courteous knight is indeed Fairy-land, and the true Gawain-tradition is informed with fairy glamour and grace.
See Syr Gawayne, the English poems relative to that hero, edited by Sir Frederick Madden for the Bannatyne Club, 1839 (out of print and difficult to procure); Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. xxx.; introduction and summary of episodic “Gawain” poems by Gaston Paris; The Legend of Sir Gawain, by Jessie L. Weston, Grimm Library, vol. vii.; The Legend of Sir Perceval, by Jessie L. Weston, Grimm Library, vol. xvii.; “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” “Sir Gawain at the Grail Castle” and “Sir Gawain and the Lady of Lys,” vols. i., vi and vii. of Arthurian Romances (Nutt).
GAWLER, a town of Gawler county, South Australia, on the Para river, 24¾ m. by rail N.E. of Adelaide. It is one of the most thriving places in the colony, being the centre of a large wheat-growing district; it has also engineering works, foundries, flour-mills, breweries and saw-mills, while gold, silver, copper and lead are found in the neighbouring hills. The inhabitants of the town and its extensive suburbs number about 7000; though the population of the town itself in 1901 was 1996.
GAY, JOHN (1685-1732), English poet, was baptized on the 16th of September 1685 at Barnstaple, where his family had long been settled. He was educated at the grammar school of the town under Robert Luck, who had published some Latin and English poems. On leaving school he was apprenticed to a silk mercer in London, but being weary, according to Dr Johnson, “of either the restraint or the servility of his occupation,” he soon returned to Barnstaple, where he spent some time with his uncle, the Rev. John Hanmer, the Nonconformist minister of the town. He then returned to London, and though no details are available for his biography until the publication of Wine in 1708, the account he gives in Rural Sports (1713), of years wasted in attending on courtiers who were profuse in promises never kept, may account for his occupations. Among his early literary friends were Aaron Hill and Eustace Budgell. In The Present State of Wit (1711) Gay attempted to give an account of “all our periodical papers, whether monthly, weekly or diurnal.” He especially praised the Tatler and the Spectator, and Swift, who knew nothing of the authorship of the pamphlet, suspected it to be inspired by Steele and Addison. To Lintot’s Miscellany (1712) Gay contributed “An Epistle to Bernard Lintot,” containing some lines in praise of Pope, and a version of the story of Arachne from the sixth book of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. In the same year he was received into the household of the duchess of Monmouth as secretary, a connexion which was, however, broken before June 1714.