the death of Henry, the 8th earl, in November 1639. It then devolved
upon Kent's nephew Charles Longueville (1612-1643), through whose
daughter Susan (d. 1676) it came to the family of Yelverton, who were
earls of Sussex from 1717 to 1799. The next holder was Henry Edward
Gould (1780-1810), a grandson of Henry Yelverton, earl of Sussex; and
through Gould's daughter Barbara, marchioness of Hastings (d. 1858),
it passed to the last marquess of Hastings, on whose death in 1868 the
barony fell into abeyance, this being terminated in 1885 in favour of
Hastings's sister Bertha (d. 1887), the wife of Augustus Wykeham
Clifton. Their son, Rawdon George Grey Clifton (b. 1858), succeeded
his mother as 24th holder of the barony.
GREYMOUTH, a seaport of New Zealand, the principal port on the west
coast of South Island, in Grey county. Pop. (1906) 4569. It stands on
the small estuary of the Grey or Mawhera river, has a good harbour, and
railway communication with Hokitika, Reefton, &c., while the
construction of a line to connect with Christchurch and Nelson was begun
in 1887. The district is both auriferous and coal-bearing. Gold-dredging
is a rich industry, and the coal-mines have attendant industries in
coke, bricks and fire-clay. The timber trade is also well developed. The
neighbouring scenery is picturesque, especially among the hills
surrounding Lake Brunner (15 m. S.E.).
GREYTOWN (SAN JUAN DEL NORTE), the principal seaport on the Caribbean
coast of Nicaragua, in the extreme south-eastern corner of the republic,
and at the mouth of the northern channel of the San Juan river delta.
Pop. (1905) about 2500. The town occupies the seaward side of a narrow
peninsula, formed by the windings of the river. Most of its houses are
raised on piles 2 or 3 ft. above the ground. The neighbourhood is
unhealthy and unsuited for agriculture, so that almost all food-stuffs
must be imported, and the cost of living is high. Greytown has suffered
severely from the accumulation of sand in its once fine harbour. Between
1832 and 1848 Point Arenas, the seaward end of the peninsula, was
enlarged by a sandbank more than 1 m. long; between 1850 and 1875 the
depth of water over the bar decreased from about 25 ft. to 5 ft., and
the entrance channel, which had been nearly 1/2 m. wide, was almost
closed. Subsequent attempts to improve the harbour by dredging and
building jetties have only had partial success; but Greytown remains the
headquarters of Nicaraguan commerce with Europe and eastern America. The
village called America, 1 m. N., was built as the eastern terminus of a
proposed interoceanic canal.
The harbour of San Juan, discovered by Columbus, was brought into
further notice by Captain Diego Machuca, who in 1529 sailed down the
river from Lake Nicaragua. The date of the first Spanish settlement on
the spot is not known, but in the 17th century there were fortifications
at the mouth of the river. In 1796 San Juan was made a port of entry by
royal charter, and new defences were erected in 1821. In virtue of the
protectorate claimed by Great Britain over the Mosquito Coast (q.v.),
the Mosquito Indians, aided by a British force, seized the town in 1848
and occupied it until 1860, when Great Britain ceded its protectorate to
Nicaragua by the treaty of Managua. This treaty secured religious
liberty and trial by jury for all civil and criminal charges in
Greytown; its seventh article declared the port free, but was never
enforced.
GREYWACKE, or GRAUWACKE (a German word signifying a grey earthy rock),
the designation, formerly more generally used by English geologists than
at the present day, for impure, highly composite, gritty rocks belonging
to the Palaeozoic systems. They correspond to the sandstones, grits and
fine conglomerates of the later periods. Greywackes are mostly grey,
brown, yellow or black, dull-coloured, sandy rocks which may occur in
thick or thin beds along with slates, limestones, &c., and are abundant
in Wales, the south of Scotland and the Lake district of England. They
contain a very great variety of minerals, of which the principal are
quartz, orthoclase and plagioclase, calcite, iron oxides and graphitic
carbonaceous matters, together with (in the coarser kinds) fragments of
such rocks as felsite, chert, slate, gneiss, various schists, quartzite.
Among other minerals found in them are biotite and chlorite, tourmaline,
epidote, apatite, garnet, hornblende and augite, sphene, pyrites. The
cementing material may be siliceous or argillaceous, and is sometimes
calcareous. As a rule greywackes are not fossiliferous, but organic
remains may be common in the finer beds associated with them. Their
component particles are usually not much rounded by attrition, and the
rocks have often been considerably indurated by pressure and mineral
changes, such as the introduction of interstitial silica. In some
districts the greywackes are cleaved, but they show phenomena of this
kind much less perfectly than the slates. Although the group is so
diverse that it is difficult to characterize mineralogically, it has a
well-established place in petrographical classifications, because these
peculiar composite arenaceous deposits are very frequent among Silurian
and Cambrian rocks, and rarely occur in Secondary or Tertiary systems.
Their essential features are their gritty character and their complex
composition. By increasing metamorphism greywackes frequently pass into
mica-schists, chloride schists and sedimentary gneisses. (J. S. F.)
GRIBEAUVAL, JEAN BAPTISTE DE (1715-1789), French artillery general, was
the son of a magistrate of Amiens and was born there on the 15th of
September 1715. He entered the French royal artillery in 1732 as a
volunteer, and became an officer in 1735. For nearly twenty years
regimental duty and scientific work occupied him, and in 1752 he became
captain of a company of miners. A few years later he was employed in a
military mission in Prussia. In 1757, being then a lieutenant-colonel,
he was lent to the Austrian army on the outbreak of the Seven Years'
War, and served as a general officer of artillery. The siege of Glatz
and the defence of Schweidnitz were his principal exploits. The empress
Maria Theresa rewarded him for his work with the rank of lieutenant
field-marshal and the cross of the Maria Theresa order. On his return to
France he was made _marechal de camp_, in 1764 inspector of artillery,
and in 1765 lieutenant-general and commander of the order of St Louis.
For some years after this he was in disfavour at court, and he became
first inspector of artillery only in 1776, in which year also he
received the grand cross of the St Louis order. He was now able to carry
out the reforms in the artillery arm which are his chief title to fame.
See ARTILLERY; and for full details Gribeauval's own _Table des
constructions des principaux attirails de l'artillerie ... de M. de
Gribeauval_, and the _reglement_ for the French artillery issued in
1776. He died in 1789.
See Puysegur in _Journal de Paris_, supplement of the 8th of July
1789; Chevalier de Passac, _Precis sur M. de Gribeauval_ (Paris,
1816); Veyrines, _Gribeauval_ (Paris, 1889), and Hennebert,
_Gribeauval, lieutenant-general des armees du roy_ (Paris, 1896).
GRIBOYEDOV, ALEXANDER SERGUEEVICH (1795-1829), Russian dramatic author,
was born in 1795 at Moscow, where he studied at the university from 1810
to 1812. He then obtained a commission in a hussar regiment, but
resigned it in 1816. Next year he entered the civil service, and in 1818
was appointed secretary of the Russian legation in Persia, whence he was
transferred to Georgia. He had commenced writing early, and had produced
on the stage at St Petersburg in 1816 a comedy in verse, translated from
the French, called _The Young Spouses_, which was followed by other
pieces of the same kind. But neither these nor the essays and verses
which he wrote would have been long remembered but for the immense
success gained by his comedy in verse, _Gore ot uma_, or "Misfortune
from Intelligence" (Eng. trans. by N. Benardaky, 1857). A satire upon
Russian society, or, as a high official styled it, "A pasquinade on
Moscow," its plot is slight, its merits consisting in its accurate
representation of certain social and official types--such as Famousoff,
the lover of old abuses, the hater of reforms; his secretary, Molchanin,
servile fawner upon all in office; the aristocratic young liberal and
Anglomaniac, Repetiloff; contrasted with whom is the hero of the piece,
Tchatsky, the ironical satirist, just returned from the west of Europe,
who exposes and ridicules the weaknesses of the rest, his words echoing
that outcry of the young generation of 1820 which reached its climax in
the military insurrection of 1825, and was then sternly silenced by
Nicholas. Griboyedov spent the summer of 1823 in Russia, completed his
play and took it to St Petersburg. There it was rejected by the
censorship. Many copies were made and privately circulated, but
Griboyedov never saw it published. The first edition was printed in
1833, four years after his death. Only once did he see it on the stage,
when it was acted by the officers of the garrison at Erivan. Soured by
disappointment he returned to Georgia, made himself useful by his
linguistic knowledge to his relative Count Paskievitch-Erivansky during
a campaign against Persia, and was sent to St Petersburg with the treaty
of 1828. Brilliantly received there, he thought of devoting himself to
literature, and commenced a romantic drama, _A Georgian Night_. But he
was suddenly sent to Persia as minister-plenipotentiary. Soon after his
arrival at Teheran a tumult arose, caused by the anger of the populace
against some Georgian and Armenian captives--Russian subjects--who had
taken refuge in the Russian embassy. It was stormed, Griboyedov was
killed (February 11, 1829), and his body was for three days so
ill-treated by the mob that it was at last recognized only by an old
scar on the hand, due to a wound received in a duel. It was taken to
Tiflis, and buried in the monastery of St David. There a monument was
erected to his memory by his widow, to whom he had been but a few months
married.
GRIEG, EDVARD HAGERUP (1843-1907), Norwegian musical composer, was born
on the 15th of June 1843 in Bergen, where his father, Alexander Grieg
(_sic_), was English consul. The Grieg family were of Scottish origin,
but the composer's grandfather, a supporter of the Pretender, left his
home at Aberdeen after Charles Edward's defeat at Culloden, and went to
Bergen, where he carried on business. The composer's mother, Gesine
Hagerup, belonged to a pure Norwegian peasant family; and it is from the
mother rather than from the father that Edvard Grieg derived his musical
talent. She had been educated as a pianist and began to give her son
lessons on the pianoforte when he was six years of age. His first
composition, "Variations on a German melody," was written at the age of
nine. A summer holiday in Norway with his father in 1858 seems to have
exercised a powerful influence on the child's musical imagination, which
was easily kindled at the sight of mountain and fjord. In the autumn of
the same year, at the recommendation of Ole Bull, young Grieg entered
the Leipzig Conservatorium, where he passed, like all his
contemporaries, under the influence of the Mendelssohn and Schumann
school of romantics. But the curriculum of academic study was too narrow
for him. He dreamed half his time away and overworked during the other
half. In 1862 he completed his Leipzig studies, and appeared as pianist
and composer before his fellow-citizens of Bergen. In 1863 he studied in
Copenhagen for a short time with Gade and Emil Hartmann, both composers
representing a sentimental strain of Scandinavian temperament, from
which Grieg emancipated himself in favour of the harder inspiration of
Richard Nordraak. "The scales fell from my eyes," says Grieg of his
acquaintance with Nordraak. "For the first time I learned through him to
know the northern folk tunes and my own nature. We made a pact to combat
the effeminate Gade-Mendelssohn mixture of Scandinavism, and boldly
entered upon the new path along which the northern school at present
pursues its course." Grieg now made a kind of crusade in favour of
national music. In the winter of 1864-1865 he founded the Copenhagen
concert-society Euterpe, which was intended to produce the works of
young Norwegian composers. During the winters of 1865-1866 and 1869-1870
Grieg was in Rome. In the autumn of 1866 he settled in Christiania,
where from 1867 till 1880 he conducted a musical union. From 1880 to
1882 he directed the concerts of the Harmonic Society in Bergen. In 1872
the Royal Musical Academy of Sweden made Grieg a member; in 1874 the
Norwegian Storthing granted him an annual stipend of 1600 kronen. He had
already been decorated with the Olaf order in 1873. In 1888 he played
his pianoforte concerto and conducted his "two melodies for strings" at
a Philharmonic concert in London, and visited England again in 1891,
1894 and 1896, receiving the degree of Mus.D. from the university of
Cambridge in 1894. He died at Bergen on the 4th of September 1907.
As a composer Grieg's distinguishing quality is lyrical. Whether his
orchestral works or his songs or his best pianoforte works are submitted
to examination, it is almost always the note of song that tells.
Sometimes, as in the music to Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_, or in the suite for
stringed orchestra, _Aus Holbergs Zeit_, this characteristic is combined
with a strong power for raising pictures in the listener's mind, and the
romantic "programme" tendency in Grieg's music becomes clearer the
farther writers like Richard Strauss carry this movement. Grieg's songs
may be said to be generally the more spontaneous the more closely they
conform to the simple model of the _Volkslied_; yet the much sung "Ich
liebe dich" is a song of a different kind, which has hardly ever been
surpassed for the perfection with which it depicts a strong momentary
emotion, and it is difficult to ascribe greater merits to songs of Grieg
even so characteristic as "Solvejg's Lied" and "Ein Schwan." The
pianoforte concerto is brilliant and spontaneous; it has been performed
by most pianists of the first rank, but its essential qualities and the
pure nationality of its themes have been brought out to their perfection
by one player only--the Norwegian pianist Knudsen. The first and second
of Grieg's violin sonatas are agreeable, so free and artless is the flow
of their melody. In his numerous piano pieces and in those of his songs
which are devoid of a definitely national inspiration the impression
made is less permanent. Bulow called Grieg the "Chopin of the North."
The phrase is an exaggeration rather than an expression of the truth,
for the range of the appeal in Chopin is far wider, nor has the
national movement inaugurated by Grieg shown promise of great
development. He is rather to be regarded as the pioneer of a musical
mission which has been perfectly carried out by himself alone.
See La Mara, _Edvard Grieg_ (Leipzig, 1898).
GRIESBACH, JOHANN JAKOB (1745-1812), German biblical critic, was born at
Butzbach, a small town of Hesse-Darmstadt, where his father, Konrad
Kaspar (1705-1777), was pastor, on the 4th of January 1745. He was
educated at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and at the universities of Tubingen,
Leipzig and Halle, where he became one of J. S. Semler's most ardent
disciples. It was Semler who induced him to turn his attention to the
textual criticism of the New Testament. At the close of his
undergraduate career he undertook a literary tour through Germany,
Holland, France and England. On his return to Halle, he acted for some
time as _Privatdozent_, but in 1773 was appointed to a professorial
chair; in 1775 he was translated to Jena, where the rest of his life was
spent (though he received calls to other universities). He died on the
24th of March 1812. Griesbach's fame rests upon his work in New
Testament criticism, in which he inaugurated a new epoch.
His critical edition of the New Testament first appeared at Halle, in
three volumes, in 1774-1775. The first volume contained the first
three Gospels, synoptically arranged; the second, the Epistles and the
book of Revelation. All the historical books were reprinted in one
volume in 1777, the synoptical arrangement of the Gospels having been
abandoned as inconvenient. Of the second edition, considerably
enlarged and improved, the first volume appeared in 1796 and the
second in 1806 (Halle and London). Of a third edition, edited by David
Schulz, only the first volume, containing the four Gospels, appeared
(1827).
For the construction of his critical text Griesbach took as his basis
the Elzevir edition. Where he differed from it he placed the Elzevir
reading on the inner margin along with other readings he thought
worthy of special consideration (these last, however, being printed in
smaller type). To all the readings on this margin he attached special
marks indicating the precise degree of probability in his opinion
attaching to each. In weighing these probabilities he proceeded upon a
particular theory which in its leading features he had derived from J.
A. Bengel and J. S. Semler, dividing all the MSS. into three main
groups--the Alexandrian, the Western and the Byzantine (see BIBLE:
_New Testament_, "Textual Criticism"). A reading supported by only one
recension he considered as having only one witness in its favour;
those readings which were supported by all the three recensions, or
even by two of them, especially if these two were the Alexandrian and
the Western, he unhesitatingly accepted as genuine. Only when each of
the three recensions gives a different reading does he proceed to
discuss the question on other grounds. See his _Symbolae criticae ad
supplendas et corrigendas variarum N.T. lectionum collectiones_
(Halle, 1785, 1793), and his _Commentarius criticus in textum Graecum
N.T._, which extends to the end of Mark, and discusses the more
important various readings with great care and thoroughness (Jena,
1794 ff.). Among the other works of Griesbach (which are comparatively
unimportant) may be mentioned his university thesis _De codicibus
quatuor evangelistarum Origenianis_ (Halle, 1771) and a work upon
systematic theology (_Anleitung zur Kenntniss der popularen Dogmatik_,
Jena, 1779). His _Opuscula_, consisting chiefly of university
"Programs" and addresses, were edited by Gabler (2 vols., Jena, 1824).
See the article in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_, and the
_Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_.
GRIESBACH, a watering-place in the grand duchy of Baden, in the valley
of the Rench, 1550 ft. above the sea, 6 m. W. from Freudenstadt in
Wurttemberg. It is celebrated for its saline chalybeate waters (twelve
springs), which are specific in cases of anaemia, feminine disorders and
diseases of the nervous system, and were used in the 16th century. The
annual number of visitors is nearly 2000. Pop. (1900) 800. From 1665 to
1805 Griesbach was part of the bishopric of Strassburg.
See Haberer, _Die Renchbader Petersthal und Griesbach_ (Wurzburg,
1866).
GRIFFE (French for "claw"), an architectural term for the spur, an
ornament carved at the angle of the square base of columns.
GRIFFENFELDT, PEDER, COUNT (_Peder Schumacher_) (1635-1699), Danish
statesman, was born at Copenhagen on the 24th of August 1635, of a
wealthy trading family connected with the leading civic, clerical and
learned circles in the Danish capital. His tutor, Jens Vorde, who
prepared him in his eleventh year for the university, praises his
extraordinary gifts, his mastery of the classical languages and his
almost disquieting diligence. The brilliant way in which he sustained
his preliminary examination won him the friendship of the examiner,
Bishop Jasper Brokman, at whose palace he first met Frederick III. The
king was struck with the lad's bright grey eyes and pleasant humorous
face; and Brokman, proud of his pupil, made him translate a chapter from
a Hebrew Bible first into Latin and then into Danish, for the
entertainment of the scholarly monarch. In 1654 young Schumacher went
abroad for eight years, to complete his education. From Germany he
proceeded to the Netherlands, staying at Leiden, Utrecht and Amsterdam,
and passing in 1657 to Queen's College, Oxford, where he lived three
years. The epoch-making events which occurred in England, while he was
at Oxford, profoundly interested him, and coinciding with the Revolution
in Denmark, which threw open a career to the middle classes, convinced
him that his proper sphere was politics. In the autumn of 1660
Schumacher visited Paris, shortly after Mazarin's death, when the young
Louis XIV. first seized the reins of power. Schumacher seems to have
been profoundly impressed by the administrative superiority of a strong
centralised monarchy in the hands of an energetic monarch who knew his
own mind; and, in politics, as in manners, France ever afterwards was
his model. The last year of his travels was spent in Spain, where he
obtained a thorough knowledge of the Castilian language and literature.
His travels, however, if they enriched his mind, relaxed his character,
and he brought home easy morals as well as exquisite manners.
On his return to Copenhagen, in 1662, Schumacher found the monarchy
established on the ruins of the aristocracy, and eager to buy the
services of every man of the middle classes who had superior talents to
offer. Determined to make his way in this "new Promised Land," the young
adventurer contrived to secure the protection of Kristoffer Gabel, the
king's confidant, and in 1663 was appointed the royal librarian. A
romantic friendship with the king's bastard, Count Ulric Frederick
Gyldenlove, consolidated his position. In 1665 Schumacher obtained his
first political post as the king's secretary, and the same year composed
the memorable _Kongelov_ (see DENMARK: _History_). He was now a
personage at court, where he won all hearts by his amiability and
gaiety; and in political matters also his influence was beginning to be
felt.
On the death of Frederick III. (February 9th, 1670) Schumacher was the
most trusted of all the royal counsellors. He alone was aware of the
existence of the new throne of walrus ivory embellished with three
silver life-size lions, and of the new regalia, both of which treasures
he had, by the king's command, concealed in a vault beneath the royal
castle. Frederick III. had also confided to him a sealed packet
containing the _Kongelov_, which was to be delivered to his successor
alone. Schumacher had been recommended to his son by Frederick III. on
his death-bed. "Make him a great man, but do it slowly!" said Frederick,
who thoroughly understood the characters of his son and of his minister.
Christian V. was, moreover, deeply impressed by the confidence which his
father had ever shown to Schumacher. When, on the 9th of February 1670,
Schumacher delivered the _Kongelov_ to Christian V., the king bade all
those about him withdraw, and after being closeted a good hour with
Schumacher, appointed him his "Obergeheimesekreter." His promotion was
now almost disquietingly rapid. In May 1670 he received the titles of
excellency and privy councillor; in July of the same year he was
ennobled under the name of Griffenfeldt, deriving his title from the
gold griffin with outspread wings which surmounted his escutcheon; in
November 1673 he was created a count, a knight of the Elephant and,
finally, imperial chancellor. In the course of the next few months he
gathered into his hands every branch of the government: he had reached
the apogee of his short-lived greatness.
But if his offices were manifold, so also were his talents. Seldom has
any man united so many and such various gifts in his own person and
carried them so easily--a playful wit, a vivid imagination, oratorical
and literary eloquence and, above all, a profound knowledge of human
nature both male and female, of every class and rank, from the king to
the meanest citizen. He had captivated the accomplished Frederick III.
by his literary graces and ingenious speculations; he won the obtuse and
ignorant Christian V. by saving him trouble, by acting and thinking for
him, and at the same time making him believe that he was thinking and
acting for himself. Moreover, his commanding qualities were coupled with
an organizing talent which made itself felt in every department of the
state, and with a marvellous adaptability which made him an ideal
diplomatist.
On the 25th of May 1671 the dignities of count and baron were introduced
into Denmark "to give lustre to the court"; a few months later the order
of the Danebrog was instituted as a fresh means of winning adherents by
marks of favour. Griffenfeldt was the originator of these new
institutions. To him monarchy was the ideal form of government. But he
had also a political object. The aristocracy of birth, despite its
reverses, still remained the elite of society; and Griffenfeldt, the son
of a burgess as well as the protagonist of monarchy, was its most
determined enemy. The new baronies and countships, owing their existence
entirely to the crown, introduced a strong solvent into aristocratic
circles. Griffenfeldt saw that, in future, the first at court would be
the first everywhere. Much was also done to promote trade and industry,
notably by the revival of the _Kammer Kollegium_, or board of trade, and
the abolition of some of the most harmful monopolies. Both the higher
and the provincial administrations were thoroughly reformed with the
view of making them more centralized and efficient; and the positions
and duties of the various magistrates, who now also received fixed
salaries, were for the first time exactly defined. But what Griffenfeldt
could create, Griffenfeldt could dispense with, and it was not long
before he began to encroach upon the jurisdiction of the new departments
of state by private conferences with their chiefs. Nevertheless it is
indisputable that, under the single direction of this master-mind, the
Danish state was now able, for a time, to utilize all its resources as
it had never done before.
In the last three years of his administration, Griffenfeldt gave himself
entirely to the conduct of the foreign policy of Denmark. It is
difficult to form a clear idea of this, first, because his influence was
perpetually traversed by opposite tendencies; in the second place,
because the force of circumstances compelled him, again and again, to
shift his standpoint; and finally because personal considerations
largely intermingled with his foreign policy, and made it more elusive
and ambiguous than it need have been. Briefly, Griffenfeldt aimed at
restoring Denmark to the rank of a great power. He proposed to
accomplish this by carefully nursing her resources, and in the meantime
securing and enriching her by alliances, which would bring in large
subsidies while imposing a minimum of obligations. Such a conditional
and tentative policy, on the part of a second-rate power, in a period of
universal tension and turmoil, was most difficult; but Griffenfeldt did
not regard it as impossible. The first postulate of such a policy was
peace, especially peace with Denmark's most dangerous neighbour, Sweden.
The second postulate was a sound financial basis, which he expected the
wealth of France to supply in the shape of subsidies to be spent on
armaments. Above all things Denmark was to beware of making enemies of
France and Sweden at the same time. An alliance, on fairly equal terms,
between the three powers, would, in these circumstances, be the
consummation of Griffenfeldt's "system"; an alliance with France to the
exclusion of Sweden would be the next best policy; but an alliance
between France and Sweden, without the admission of Denmark, was to be
avoided at all hazards. Had Griffenfeldt's policy succeeded, Denmark
might have recovered her ancient possessions to the south and east
comparatively cheaply. But again and again he was overruled. Despite his
open protests and subterraneous counter-mining, war was actually
declared against Sweden in 1675, and his subsequent policy seemed so
obscure and hazardous to those who did not possess the clue to the
perhaps purposely tangled skein, that the numerous enemies whom his
arrogance and superciliousness had raised up against him, resolved to
destroy him.
On the 11th of March 1676, while on his way to the royal apartments,
Griffenfeldt was arrested in the king's name and conducted to the
citadel, a prisoner of state. A minute scrutiny of his papers, lasting
nearly six weeks, revealed nothing treasonable; but it provided the
enemies of the fallen statesman with a deadly weapon against him in the
shape of an entry in his private diary, in which he had imprudently
noted that on one occasion Christian V. in a conversation with a foreign
ambassador had "spoken like a child." On the 3rd of May Griffenfeldt was
tried not by the usual tribunal, in such cases the _Hojesteret_, or
supreme court, but by an extraordinary tribunal of 10 dignitaries, none
of whom was particularly well disposed towards the accused.
Griffenfeldt, who was charged with simony, bribery, oath-breaking,
malversation and _lese-majeste_, conducted his own defence under every
imaginable difficulty. For forty-six days before his trial he had been
closely confined in a dungeon without lights, books or writing
materials. Every legal assistance was illegally denied him. Nevertheless
he proved more than a match for the forensic ability arrayed against
him, and his first plea in defence is in a high degree dignified and
manly. Finally, he was condemned to degradation and decapitation; though
one of the ten judges not only refused to sign the sentence, but
remonstrated in private with the king against its injustice. And indeed
its injustice was flagrant. The primary offence of the ex-chancellor was
the taking of bribes, which no twisting of the law could convert into a
capital offence, while the charge of treason had not been substantiated.
Griffenfeldt was pardoned on the scaffold, at the very moment when the
axe was about to descend. On hearing that the sentence was commuted to
life-long imprisonment, he declared that the pardon was harder than the
punishment, and vainly petitioned for leave to serve his king for the
rest of his life as a common soldier. For the next two and twenty years
Denmark's greatest statesman lingered out his life in a lonely
state-prison, first in the fortress of Copenhagen, and finally at
Munkholm on Trondhjem fiord. He died at Trondhjem on the 12th of March
1699. Griffenfeldt married Kitty Nansen, the granddaughter of the great
Burgomaster Hans Nansen, who brought him half a million rix-dollars. She
died in 1672, after bearing him a daughter.
See _Danmark's Riges Histoire_, vol. v. (Copenhagen, 1897-1905);
Jorgenson, _Peter Schumacher-Griffenfeldt_ (Copenhagen, 1893-1894); O.
Vaupell, _Rigskansler Grev Griffenfeldt_ (Copenhagen, 1880-1882);
Bain, _Scandinavia_, cap. x. (Cambridge, 1905). (R. N. B.)
GRIFFIN [O'GRIOBTA, O'GREEVA], GERALD (1803-1840), Irish novelist and
dramatic writer, was born at Limerick of good family, on the 12th of
December 1803. His parents emigrated in 1820 to America, but he was left
with an elder brother, who was a medical practitioner at Adare. As early
as his eighteenth year he undertook for a short time the editorship of a
newspaper in Limerick. Having written a tragedy, _Aguire_, which was
highly praised by his friends, he set out in 1823 for London with the
purpose of "revolutionizing the dramatic taste of the time by writing
for the stage." In spite of the recommendations of John Banim, he had a
hard struggle with poverty. It was only by degrees that his literary
work obtained any favour. _The Noyades_, an opera entirely in
recitative, was produced at the English Opera House in 1826; and the
success of _Holland Tide Tales_ (1827) led to _Tales of the Munster
Festivals_ (3 vols., 1827), which were still more popular. In 1829
appeared his fine novel, _The Collegians_, afterwards successfully
adapted for the stage by Dion Boucicault under the title of _The Colleen
Bawn_. He followed up this success with _The Invasion_ (1832), _Tales of
my Neighbourhood_ (1835), _The Duke of Monmouth_ (1836), and _Talis
Qualis, or Tales of the Jury-room_ (1842). He also wrote a number of
lyrics touched with his native melancholy. But he became doubtful as to
the moral influence of his writings, and ultimately he came to the
conclusion that his true sphere of duty was to be found within the
Church. He was admitted into a society of the Christian Brothers at
Dublin, in September 1838, under the name of Brother Joseph, and in the
following summer he removed to Cork, where he died of typhus fever on
the 12th of June 1840. Before adopting the monastic habit he burned all
his manuscripts; but _Gisippus_, a tragedy which he had composed before
he was twenty, accidentally escaped destruction, and in 1842 was put on
the Drury Lane stage by Macready with great success.
The collected works of Gerald Griffin were published in 1842-1843 in
eight volumes, with a _Life_ by his brother William Griffin, M.D.; an
edition of his _Poetical and Dramatic Works_ (Dublin, 1895) by C. G.
Duffy; and a selection of his lyrics, with a notice by George
Sigerson, is included in the _Treasury of Irish Poetry_, edited by
Stopford A. Brooke and T. W. Rolleston (London, 1900).
GRIFFIN, a city and the county-seat of Spalding county, Georgia, U.S.A.,
43 m. S. of Atlanta, and about 970 ft. above the sea. Pop. (1890) 4503;
(1900) 6857 (3258 negroes); (1910) 7478. It is served by the Southern
and the Central of Georgia railways, and is the southern terminus of the
Griffin & Chattanooga Division of the latter. The city is situated in a
rich agricultural region, and just outside the corporate limits is an
agricultural experiment station, established by the state but maintained
by the Federal government. Griffin has a large trade in cotton and
fruit. The principal industry is the manufacture of cotton and
cotton-seed oil. Buggies, wagons, chairs and harness are among the other
manufactures. The municipality owns and operates the water and
electric-lighting systems. Griffin was founded in 1840 and was chartered
as a city in 1846.
GRIFFIN, GRIFFON or GRYPHON (from Fr. _griffon_, Lat. _gryphus_, Gr.
[Greek: gryps]), in the natural history of the ancients, the name of an
imaginary rapacious creature of the eagle species, represented with four
legs, wings and a beak,--the fore part resembling an eagle and the
hinder a lion. In addition, some writers describe the tail as a serpent.
This animal, which was supposed to watch over gold mines and hidden
treasures, and to be the enemy of the horse, was consecrated to the Sun;
and the ancient painters represented the chariot of the Sun as drawn by
griffins. According to Spanheim, those of Jupiter and Nemesis were
similarly provided. The griffin of Scripture is probably the osprey, and
the name is now given to a species of vulture. The griffin was said to
inhabit Asiatic Scythia, where gold and precious stones were abundant;
and when strangers approached to gather these the creatures leapt upon
them and tore them in pieces, thus chastising human avarice and greed.
The one-eyed Arimaspi waged constant war with them, according to
Herodotus (iii. 16). Sir John de Mandeville, in his _Travels_, described
a griffin as eight times larger than a lion.
The griffin is frequently seen as a charge in heraldry (see HERALDRY,
fig. 163); and in architectural decoration is usually represented as a
four-footed beast with wings and the head of a leopard or tiger with
horns, or with the head and beak of an eagle; in the latter case, but
very rarely, with two legs. To what extent it owes its origin to Persian
sculpture is not known, the capitals at Persepolis have sometimes
leopard or lion heads with horns, and four-footed beasts with the beaks
of eagles are represented in bas-reliefs. In the temple of Apollo
Branchidae near Miletus in Asia Minor, the winged griffin of the
capitals has leopards' heads with horns. In the capitals of the
so-called lesser propylaea at Eleusis conventional eagles with two feet
support the angles of the abacus. The greater number of those in Rome
have eagles' beaks, as in the frieze of the temple of Antoninus and
Faustina, and their tails develop into conventional foliage. A similar
device was found in the Forum of Trajan. The best decorative employment
of the griffin is found in the vertical supports of tables, of which
there are two or three examples in Pompeii and others in the Vatican and
the museums in Rome. In some of these cases the head is that of a lion
at one end of the support and an eagle at the other end, and there is
only one strongly developed paw; the wings circling round at the top
form conspicuous features on the sides of these supports, the surfaces
below being filled with conventional Greek foliage.
GRIFFITH, SIR RICHARD JOHN (1784-1878), Irish geologist, was born in
Dublin on the 20th of September 1784. He obtained in 1799 a commission
in the Royal Irish Artillery, but a year later, when the corps was
incorporated with that of England, he retired, and devoted his attention
to civil engineering and mining. He studied chemistry, mineralogy and
mining for two years in London under William Nicholson (editor of the
_Journal of Nat. Phil._), and afterwards examined the mining districts
in various parts of England, Wales and Scotland. While in Cornwall he
discovered ores of nickel and cobalt in material that had been rejected
as worthless. He completed his studies under Robert Jameson and others
at Edinburgh, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in
1807, a member of the newly established Geological Society of London in
1808, and in the same year he returned to Ireland. In 1809 he was
appointed by the commissioners to inquire into the nature and extent of
the bogs in Ireland, and the means of improving them. In 1812 he was
elected professor of geology and mining engineer to the Royal Dublin
Society. During subsequent years he made many surveys and issued many
reports on mineral districts in Ireland, and these formed the foundation
of his first geological map of the country (1815). In 1822 Griffith
became engineer of public works in Cork, Kerry and Limerick, and was
occupied until 1830 in repairing old roads and in laying out many miles
of new roads. Meanwhile in 1825 he was appointed to carry out the
perambulation or boundary survey of Ireland, the object of which was to
ascertain and mark the boundaries of every county, barony, parish and
townland in preparation for the ordnance survey. This work was finished
in 1844. He was also called upon to assist in preparing a bill for the
general valuation of Ireland; the act was passed in 1826, and he was
appointed commissioner of valuation, in which capacity he continued to
act until 1868. On "Griffith's valuation" the various local and public
assessments were made. His extensive investigations furnished him with
ample material for improving his geological map, and the second edition
was published in 1835. A third edition on a larger scale (1 in. to 4 m.)
was issued under the Board of Ordnance in 1839, and it was further
revised in 1855. For this great work and his other services to science
he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society in 1854. In
1850 he was made chairman of the Irish Board of Works, and in 1858 he
was created a baronet. He died in Dublin on the 22nd of September 1878.
Among his many geological works the following may be mentioned:
_Outline of the Geology of Ireland_ (1838); _Notice respecting the
Fossils of the Mountain Limestone of Ireland, as compared with those
of Great Britain, and also with the Devonian System_ (1842); _A
Synopsis of the Characters of the Carboniferous Limestone Fossils of
Ireland_ (1844) (with F. McCoy); _A Synopsis of the Silurian Fossils
of Ireland_ (1846) (with F. McCoy). See memoirs in _Quart. Journ.
Geol. Soc._ xxxv. 39; and _Geol. Mag._, 1878, p. 524, with
bibliography.
GRILLE, a French term for an enclosure in either iron or bronze; there
is no equivalent in English, "grating" applying more to a horizontal
frame of bars over a sunk area, and "grate" to the iron bars of an open
fireplace. The finest examples of the grille are those known as the
_rejas_, which in Spanish churches form the enclosures of the chapels,
such as the _reja_ in the Capilla Real at Granada in wrought iron partly
gilt (1522). Similar grilles are employed to protect the ground-floor
windows of mansions not only in Spain but in Italy and Germany. In
England the most beautiful example is that in front of Queen Eleanor's
tomb in Westminster Abbey, in wrought iron. The finest grilles in Italy
are the enclosures of the tombs of the Della Scalas at Verona (end of
13th century), in Germany the grille of the cenotaph of Maximilian at
Innsbruck (early 16th century) and in France those which enclose the
Place Stanislaus, the Place de la Carriere and the churches of Nancy,
which were wrought by Jean Lamour in the middle of the 18th century.
Generally, however, throughout Germany the wrought iron grilles are fine
examples of forging, and they are employed for the enclosures of the
numerous fountains, in the tympana of gateways, and for the protection
of windows. At Danzig in the Marienkirche are some fine examples in
brass.
GRILLPARZER, FRANZ (1791-1872), the greatest dramatic poet of Austria,
was born in Vienna, on the 15th of January 1791. His father, severe,
pedantic, a staunch upholder of the liberal traditions of the reign of
Joseph II., was an advocate of some standing; his mother, a nervous,
finely-strung woman, belonged to the well-known musical family of
Sonnleithner. After a desultory education, Grillparzer entered in 1807
the university of Vienna as a student of jurisprudence; but two years
later his father died, leaving the family in straitened circumstances,
and Franz, the eldest son, was obliged to turn to private tutoring. In
1813 he received an appointment in the court library, but as this was
unpaid, he accepted after some months a clerkship that offered more
solid prospects, in the Lower Austrian revenue administration. Through
the influence of Graf Stadion, the minister of finance, he was in 1818
appointed poet to the Hofburgtheater, and promoted to the _Hofkammer_
(exchequer); in 1832 he became director of the archives of that
department, and in 1856 retired from the civil service with the title of
_Hofrat_. Grillparzer had little capacity for an official career and
regarded his office merely as a means of independence.
In 1817 the first representation of his tragedy _Die Ahnfrau_ made him
famous, but before this he had written a long tragedy in iambics,
_Bianca von Castilien_ (1807-1809), which was obviously modelled on
Schiller's _Don Carlos_; and even more promising were the dramatic
fragments _Spartacus_ and _Alfred der Grosse_ (1809). _Die Ahnfrau_ is a
gruesome "fate-tragedy" in the trochaic measure of the Spanish drama,
already made popular by Adolf Mullner in his _Schuld_; but Grillparzer's
work is a play of real poetic beauties, and reveals an instinct for
dramatic as opposed to merely theatrical effect, which distinguishes it
from other "fate-dramas" of the day. Unfortunately its success led to
the poet's being classed for the best part of his life with playwrights
like Mullner and Houwald. _Die Ahnfrau_ was followed by _Sappho_ (1818),
a drama of a very different type; in the classic spirit of Goethe's
_Tasso_, Grillparzer unrolled the tragedy of poetic genius, the
renunciation of earthly happiness imposed upon the poet by his higher
mission. In 1821 appeared _Das goldene Vliess_, a trilogy which had been
interrupted in 1819 by the death of the poet's mother--in a fit of
depression she had taken her own life--and a subsequent visit to Italy.
Opening with a powerful dramatic prelude in one act, _Der Gastfreund_,
Grillparzer depicts in _Die Argonauten_ Jason's adventures in his quest
for the Fleece; while _Medea_, a tragedy of noble classic proportions,
contains the culminating events of the story which had been so often
dramatized before. The theme is similar to that of _Sappho_, but the
scale on which it is represented is larger; it is again the tragedy of
the heart's desire, the conflict of the simple happy life with that
sinister power--be it genius, or ambition--which upsets the equilibrium
of life. The end is bitter disillusionment, the only consolation
renunciation. Medea, her revenge stilled, her children dead, bears the
fatal Fleece back to Delphi, while Jason is left to realize the
nothingness of human striving and earthly happiness.
For his historical tragedy _Konig Ottokars Gluck und Ende_ (1823, but
owing to difficulties with the censor, not performed until 1825),
Grillparzer chose one of the most picturesque events in Austrian
domestic history, the conflict of Ottokar of Bohemia with Rudolph von
Habsburg. With an almost modern realism he reproduced the motley world
of the old chronicler, at the same time not losing sight of the needs of
the theatre; the fall of Ottokar is but another text from which the poet
preached the futility of endeavour and the vanity of worldly greatness.
A second historical tragedy, _Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn_ (1826,
performed 1828), attempts to embody a more heroic gospel; but the
subject--the superhuman self-effacement of Bankbanus before Duke Otto of
Meran--proved too uncompromising an illustration of Kant's categorical
imperative of duty to be palatable in the theatre. With these historical
tragedies began the darkest ten years in the poet's life. They brought
him into conflict with the Austrian censor--a conflict which grated on
Grillparzer's sensitive soul, and was aggravated by his own position as
a servant of the state; in 1826 he paid a visit to Goethe in Weimar, and
was able to compare the enlightened conditions which prevailed in the
little Saxon duchy with the intellectual thraldom of Vienna. To these
troubles were added more serious personal worries. In the winter of
1820-1821 he had met for the first time Katharina Frohlich (1801-1879),
and the acquaintance rapidly ripened into love on both sides; but
whether owing to a presentiment of mutual incompatibility, or merely
owing to Grillparzer's conviction that life had no happiness in store
for him, he shrank from marriage. Whatever the cause may have been, the
poet was plunged into an abyss of misery and despair to which his diary
bears heart-rending witness; his sufferings found poetic expression in
the fine cycle of poems bearing the significant title _Tristia ex Ponto_
(1835).
Yet to these years we owe the completion of two of Grillparzer's
greatest dramas, _Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen_ (1831) and _Der
Traum, ein Leben_ (1834). In the former tragedy, a dramatization of the
story of Hero and Leander, he returned to the Hellenic world of
_Sappho_, and produced what is perhaps the finest of all German
love-tragedies. His mastery of dramatic technique is here combined with
a ripeness of poetic expression and with an insight into motive which
suggests the modern psychological drama of Hebbel and Ibsen; the old
Greek love-story of Musaeus is, moreover, endowed with something of that
ineffable poetic grace which the poet had borrowed from the great
Spanish poets, Lope de Vega and Calderon. _Der Traum, ein Leben_,
Grillparzer's technical masterpiece, is in form perhaps even more
Spanish; it is also more of what Goethe called a "confession." The
aspirations of Rustan, an ambitious young peasant, are shadowed forth in
the hero's dream, which takes up nearly three acts of the play;
ultimately Rustan awakens from his nightmare to realize the truth of
Grillparzer's own pessimistic doctrine that all earthly ambitions and
aspirations are vanity; the only true happiness is contentment with
one's lot, "des Innern stiller Frieden und die schuldbefreite Brust."
_Der Traum, ein Leben_ was the first of Grillparzer's dramas which did
not end tragically, and in 1838 he produced his only comedy, _Weh' dem,
der lugt_. But _Weh' dem, der lugt_, in spite of its humour of
situation, its sparkling dialogue and the originality of its
idea--namely, that the hero gains his end by invariably telling the
truth, where his enemies as invariably expect him to be lying--was too
strange to meet with approval in its day. Its failure was a blow to the
poet, who turned his back for ever on the German theatre. In 1836
Grillparzer paid a visit to Paris and London, in 1843 to Athens and
Constantinople. Then came the Revolution which struck off the
intellectual fetters under which Grillparzer and his contemporaries had
groaned in Austria, but the liberation came too late for him. Honours
were heaped upon him; he was made a member of the Academy of Sciences;
Heinrich Laube, as director of the Burgtheater, reinstated his plays on
the repertory; he was in 1861 elected to the Austrian _Herrenhaus_; his
eightieth birthday was a national festival, and when he died in Vienna,
on the 21st of January 1872, the mourning of the Austrian people was
universal. With the exception of a beautiful fragment, _Esther_ (1861),
Grillparzer published no more dramatic poetry after the fiasco of _Weh'
dem, der lugt_, but at his death three completed tragedies were found
among his papers. Of these, _Die Judin von Toledo_, an admirable
adaptation from the Spanish, has won a permanent place in the German
classical repertory; _Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg_ is a powerful
historical tragedy and _Libussa_ is perhaps the ripest, as it is
certainly the deepest, of all Grillparzer's dramas; the latter two plays
prove how much was lost by the poet's divorce from the theatre.
Although Grillparzer was essentially a dramatist, his lyric poetry is in
the intensity of its personal note hardly inferior to Lenau's; and the
bitterness of his later years found vent in biting and stinging epigrams
that spared few of his greater contemporaries. As a prose writer, he has
left one powerful short story, _Der arme Spielmann_ (1848), and a volume
of critical studies on the Spanish drama, which shows how completely he
had succeeded in identifying himself with the Spanish point of view.
Grillparzer's brooding, unbalanced temperament, his lack of will-power,
his pessimistic renunciation and the bitterness which his self-imposed
martyrdom produced in him, made him peculiarly adapted to express the
mood of Austria in the epoch of intellectual thraldom that lay between
the Napoleonic wars and the Revolution of 1848; his poetry reflects
exactly the spirit of his people under the Metternich regime, and there
is a deep truth behind the description of _Der Traum, ein Leben_ as the
Austrian _Faust_. His fame was in accordance with the general tenor of
his life; even in Austria a true understanding for his genius was late
in coming, and not until the centenary of 1891 did the German-speaking
world realize that it possessed in him a dramatic poet of the first
rank; in other words, that Grillparzer was no mere "Epigone" of the
classic period, but a poet who, by a rare assimilation of the strength
of the Greeks, the imaginative depth of German classicism and the
delicacy and grace of the Spaniards, had opened up new paths for the
higher dramatic poetry of Europe.
Grillparzer's _Samtliche Werke_ are edited by A. Sauer, in 20 vols.,
5th edition (Stuttgart, 1892-1894); also, since the expiry of the
copyright in 1901, innumerable cheap reprints. _Briefe und
Tagebucher_, edited by C. Glossy and A. Sauer (2 vols., Stuttgart,
1903). _Jahrbuch der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft_, edited by K. Glossy
(the publication of the Grillparzer Society) (Vienna, 1891 ff.). See
also H. Laube, _Franz Grillparzers Lebensgeschichte_ (Stuttgart,
1884); J. Volkelt, _Franz Grillparzer als Dichter des Tragischen_
(Nordlingen, 1888); E. Reich, _Franz Grillparzers Dramen_ (Dresden,
1894); A. Ehrhard, _Franz Grillparzer_ (Paris, 1900) (German
translation by M. Necker, Munich, 1902); H. Sittenberger,
_Grillparzer, sein Leben und Wirken_ (Berlin, 1904); Gustav Pollak,
_F. Grillparzer and the Austrian Drama_ (New York, 1907). Of
Grillparzer's works, translations have appeared in English of _Sappho_
(1820, by J. Bramsen; 1846, by E. B. Lee; 1855, by L. C. Cumming;
1876, by E. Frothingham); and of _Medea_ (1879, by F. W. Thurstan and
J. A. Wittmann). Byron's warm admiration of _Sappho_ (_Letters and
Journals_, v. 171) is well known, while Carlyle's criticism, in his
essay on _German Playwrights_ (1829), is interesting as expressing the
generally accepted estimate of Grillparzer in the first half of the
19th century. See the bibliography in K. Goedeke's _Grundriss zur
Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung_, 2nd ed., vol. viii. (1905).
(J. G. R.)
GRIMALD (or GRIMOALD), NICHOLAS (1519-1562), English poet, was born in
Huntingdonshire, the son probably of Giovanni Baptista Grimaldi, who had
been a clerk in the service of Empson and Dudley in the reign of Henry
VII. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took his
B.A. degree in 1540. He then removed to Oxford, becoming a
probationer-fellow of Merton College in 1541. In 1547 he was lecturing
on rhetoric at Christ Church, and shortly afterwards became chaplain to
Bishop Ridley, who, when he was in prison, desired Grimald to translate
Laurentius Valla's book against the alleged _Donation of Constantine_,
and the _De gestis Basiliensis Concilii_ of Aeneas Sylvius (Pius II.).
His connexion with Ridley brought him under suspicion, and he was
imprisoned in the Marshalsea. It is said that he escaped the penalties
of heresy by recanting his errors, and was despised accordingly by his
Protestant contemporaries. Grimald contributed to the original edition
(June 1557) of _Songes and Sonettes_ (commonly known as _Tottel's
Miscellany_), forty poems, only ten of which are retained in the second
edition published in the next month. He translated (1553) Cicero's _De
officiis as Marcus Tullius Ciceroes thre bokes of duties_ (2nd ed.,
1556); a Latin paraphrase of Virgil's _Georgics_ (printed 1591) is
attributed to him, but most of the works assigned to him by Bale are
lost. Two Latin tragedies are extant; _Archipropheta sive Johannes
Baptista_, printed at Cologne in 1548, probably performed at Oxford the
year before, and _Christus redivivus_ (Cologne, 1543), edited by Prof.
J. M. Hart (for the Modern Language Association of America, 1886,
separately issued 1899). It cannot be determined whether Grimald was
familiar with Buchanan's _Baptistes_ (1543), or with J. Schoeppe's
_Johannes decollatus vel Ectrachelistes_ (1546). Grimald provides a
purely romantic motive for the catastrophe in the passionate attachment
of Herodias to Herod, and constantly resorts to lyrical methods. As a
poet Grimald is memorable as the earliest follower of Surrey in the
production of blank verse. He writes sometimes simply enough, as in the
lines on his own childhood addressed to his mother, but in general his
style is more artificial, and his metaphors more studied than is the
case with the other contributors to the _Miscellany_. His classical
reading shows itself in the comparative terseness and smartness of his
verses. His epitaph was written by Barnabe Googe in May 1562.
See C. H. Herford, _Studies in the Literary Relations of England and
Germany_ (pp. 113-119, 1886). _A Catalogue of printed books ... by
writers bearing the name of Grimaldi_ (ed. A. B. Grimaldi), printed
1883; and Arber's reprint oi _Tottel's Miscellany_.
GRIMALDI, GIOVANNI FRANCESCO (1606-1680), Italian architect and painter,
named Il Bolognese from the place of his birth, was a relative of the
Caracci family, under whom it is presumed he studied first. He was
afterwards a pupil of Albani. He went to Rome, and was appointed
architect to Pope Paul V., and was also patronized by succeeding popes.
Towards 1648 he was invited to France by Cardinal Mazarin, and for about
two years was employed in buildings for that minister and for Louis
XIV., and in fresco-painting in the Louvre. His colour was strong,
somewhat excessive in the use of green; his touch light. He painted
history, portraits and landscapes--the last with predilection,
especially in his advanced years--and executed engravings and etchings
from his own landscapes and from those of Titian and the Caracci.
Returning to Rome, he was made president of the Academy of St Luke; and
in that city he died on the 28th of November 1680, in high repute not
only for his artistic skill but for his upright and charitable deeds.
His son Alessandro assisted him both in painting and in engraving.
Paintings by Grimaldi are preserved in the Quirinal and Vatican palaces,
and in the church of S. Martino a'Monti; there is also a series of his
landscapes in the Colonna Gallery.
GRIMALDI, JOSEPH (1779-1837), the most celebrated of English clowns, was
born in London on the 18th of December 1779, the son of an Italian
actor. When less than two years old he was brought upon the stage at
Drury Lane; at the age of three he began to appear at Sadler's Wells;
and he did not finally retire until 1828. As the clown of pantomime he
was considered without an equal, his greatest success being in _Mother
Goose_, at Covent Garden (1806 and often revived). Grimaldi died on the
31st of May 1837.
His _Memoirs_ in two volumes (1838) were edited by Charles Dickens.
GRIMKE, SARAH MOORE (1792-1873) and ANGELINA EMILY (1805-1879), American
reformers, born in Charleston, South Carolina--Sarah on the 6th of
November 1792, and Angelina on the 20th of February 1805--were daughters
of John Fachereau Grimke (1752-1819), an artillery officer in the
Continental army, a jurist of some distinction, a man of wealth and
culture and a slave-holder.
Their older brother, THOMAS SMITH GRIMKE (1786-1834), was born in
Charleston; graduated at Yale in 1807; was a successful lawyer, and in
1826-1830 was a member of the state Senate, in which he, almost alone of
the prominent lawyers of the state, opposed nullification; he strongly
advocated spelling-reform, temperance and absolute non-resistance, and
published _Addresses on Science, Education and Literature_ (1831). His
early intellectual influence on Sarah was strong.
In her thirteenth year Sarah was godmother to her sister Angelina. Sarah
in 1821 revisited Philadelphia, whither she had accompanied her father
on his last illness, and there, having been already dissatisfied with
the Episcopal Church and with the Presbyterian, she became a Quaker; so,
too, did Angelina, who joined her in 1829. Both sisters (Angelina first)
soon grew into a belief in immediate abolition, strongly censured by
many Quakers, who were even more shocked by a sympathetic letter dated
"8th Month, 30th, 1835" written by Angelina to W. L. Garrison, followed
in 1836 by her _Appeal to the Christian Women of the South_, and at the
end of that year, by an _Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States_,
written by Sarah, who now thoroughly agreed with her younger sister. In
the same year, at the invitation of Elizur Wright (1804-1885),
corresponding secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Angelina,
accompanied by Sarah, began giving talks on slavery, first in private
and then in public, so that in 1837, when they set to work in
Massachusetts, they had to secure the use of large halls. Their speaking
from public platforms resulted in a letter issued by some members of the
General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts,
calling on the clergy to close their churches to women exhorters;
Garrison denounced the attack on the Grimke sisters and Whittier
ridiculed it in his poem "The Pastoral Letter." Angelina pointedly
answered _Miss Beecher on the Slave Question_ (1837) in letters in the
_Liberator_. Sarah, who had never forgotten that her studies had been
curtailed because she was a girl, contributed to the Boston _Spectator_
papers on "The Province of Woman" and published _Letters on the
Condition of Women and the Equality of the Sexes_ (1838)--the real
beginning of the "woman's rights" movement in America, and at the time a
cause of anxiety to Whittier and others, who urged upon the sisters the
prior importance of the anti-slavery cause. In 1838 Angelina married
Theodore Dwight Weld (1803-1895), a reformer and abolition orator and
pamphleteer, who had taken part in the famous Lane Seminary debates in
1834, had left the Seminary for the lecture platform when the
anti-slavery society was broken up by the Lane trustees, but had lost
his voice in 1836 and had become editor of the publications of the
American Anti-Slavery Society.[1] They lived, with Sarah, at Fort Lee,
New Jersey, in 1838-1840, then on a farm at Belleville, New Jersey, and
then conducted a school for black and white alike at Eagleswood, near
Perth Amboy, New Jersey, from 1854 to 1864. Removing to Hyde Park,
Massachusetts, the three were employed in Dr Lewis's school. There Sarah
died on the 23rd of December 1873, and Angelina on the 26th of October
1879. Both sisters indulged in various "fads"--Graham's diet,
bloomer-wearing, absolute non-resistance. Angelina did no public
speaking after her marriage, save at Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia),
destroyed by a mob immediately after her address there; but besides her
domestic and school duties she was full of tender charity. Sarah at the
age of 62 was still eager to study law or medicine, or to do something
to aid her sex; at 75 she translated and abridged Lamartine's life of
Joan of Arc.
See Catherine H. Birney, _The Grimke Sisters_ (Boston, 1885).