[1] The origin of the name is somewhat obscure, and has been
variously interpreted. But the late Col. G. E. Church supplies the
following note, which has the weight of his great authority: "I
cannot confirm the suggestion of Schomburgk that Guayana 'received
its name from a small river, a tributary of the Orinoco', supposed to
be the Waini or Guainia. In South America, east of the Andes, it was
the common custom of any tribe occupying a length of river to call it
simply 'the river'; but the other tribes designated any section of it
by the name of the people living on its banks. Many streams,
therefore, had more than a dozen names. It is probable that no
important river had one name alone throughout its course, prior to
the time of the Conquest. The radical _wini_, _waini_, _wayni_, is
found as a prefix, and very frequently as a termination, to the names
of numerous rivers, not only throughout Guayana but all over the
Orinoco and Amazon valleys. For instance, Paymary Indians called the
portion of the Purus river which they occupied the _Waini_. It simply
means water, or a fountain of water, or a river. The alternative
suggestion that Guayana is an Indian word signifying 'wild coast,' I
also think untenable. This term, applied to the north-east frontage
of South America between the Orinoco and the Amazon, is found on the
old Dutch map of Hartsinck, who calls it 'Guiana Caribania of de
Wilde Kust,' a name which must have well described it when, in 1580,
some Zealanders, of the Netherlands, sent a ship to cruise along it,
from the mouth of the Amazon to that of the Orinoco, and formed the
first settlement near the river Pomeroon. The map of Firnao Vaz
Dourado, 1564, calls the northern part of South America, including
the present British Guiana, 'East Peru.' An anonymous Spanish map,
about 1566, gives Guayana as lying on the east side of the Orinoco
just above its mouth. About 1660, Sebastien de Ruesta, cosmographer
of the _Casa de Contractacion de Seville_, shows Guayana covering the
British, French and Dutch Guayanas. According to the map of Nicolas
de Fer, 1719, a tribe of Guayazis (Guyanas) occupied the south side
of the Amazon river, front of the island of Tupinambara, east of the
mouth of the Madeira. Aristides Rojas, an eminent Venezuelan scholar,
says that the Mariches Indians, near Caracas, inhabited a site called
Guayana long before the discovery of South America by the Spaniards.
Coudreau in his _Chez nos Indiens_ mentions that the _Roucouyennes_
of Guayana take their name from a large tree in their forests, 'which
appears to be the origin of the name Guayane.' According to Michelana
y Rojas, in their report to the Venezuelan government on their
voyages in the basin of the Orinoco, 'Guyana derives its name from
the Indians who live between the Caroni river and the Sierra de
Imataca, called Guayanos.' My own studies of aboriginal South America
lead me to support the statement of Michelana y Rojas, but with the
following enlargement of it: The Portuguese, in the early part of the
16th century, found that the coast and mountain district of Rio de
Janeiro, between Cape Sao Thome and Angra dos Reis, belonged to the
formidable _Tamoyos_. South of these, for a distance of about 300 m.
of the ocean slope of the coast range, were the _Guayana_ tribes,
called by the early writers _Guianas_, _Goyana_, _Guayana_, _Goana_
and, plural, _Goaynazes_, _Goayanazes_ and _Guayanazes_. They were
constantly at feud with the _Tamoyos_ and with their neighbours on
the south, the _Carijos_, as well as with the vast Tapuya hordes of
the Sertao of the interior. Long before the discovery, they had been
forced to abandon their beautiful lands, but had recuperated their
strength, returned and reconquered their ancient habitat. Meanwhile,
however, many of them had migrated northward, some had settled in the
_Sertao_ back of Bahia and Pernambuco, others on the middle Amazon
and in the valley of the Orinoco, but a large number had crossed the
lower Amazon and occupied an extensive area of country to the north
of it, about the size of Belgium, along the Tumuchumac range of
highlands, and the upper Paron and Maroni rivers, as well as a large
district on the northern slope of the above-named range. In their new
home they became known as _Roucouyennes_, because, like the
Mundurucus of the middle Amazon, they rubbed and painted themselves
with _roucou_ or _urucu_ (Bixa Orellana); but other surrounding
tribes called them Ouayanas, that is Guayanas--the Gua, so common to
the Guarani-Tupi tongue, having become corrupted into _Oua_. Porto
Seguro says of the so-called Tupis, 'at other times they gave
themselves the name of _Guaya_ or _Guayana_, which probably means
"brothers," from which comes _Guayazes_ and _Guayanazes_.... The
latter occupied the country just south of Rio de Janeiro.... The
masters of the Capitania of St Vincente called themselves _Guianas_.'
Guinila, referring to north-eastern South America (1745), speaks of
five missions being formed to civilize the '_Nacion Guayana_.' In
view of the above, it may be thought reasonable to assume that the
vast territory now known as _Guayana_ (British, Dutch, French,
Brazilian and Venezuelan) derives its name from its aborigines who
were found there at the time of the discovery, and whose original
home was the region I have indicated."
[2] This is the boundary generally accepted; but it is in dispute.
[3] See C. B. Brown and J. G. Sawkins, _Reports on the Physical,
Descriptive and Economic Geology of British Guiana_ (London, 1875);
C. Velain, "Esquisse geologique de la Guyane francaise et des bassins
du Parou et du Yari (affluents de l'Amazone) d'apres les explorations
du Dr Crevaux," _Bull. Soc. Geogr._ ser. 7, vol. vi. (Paris, 1885),
pp. 453-492 (with geological map); E. Martin, _Geologische Studien
uber Niederlandisch-West-Indien, auf Grund eigener
Untersuchungsreisen_ (Leiden, 1888); W. Bergt, "Zur Geologie des
Coppename- und Nickerietales in Surinam (Hollandisch-Guyana),"
_Samml. d. Geol. Reichsmus._ (Leiden), ser. 2, Bd. ii. Heft 2, pp.
93-163 (with 3 maps); and for British Guiana, the official reports on
the geology of various districts, by J. B. Harrison, C. W. Anderson,
H. I. Perkins, published at Georgetown.
GUIART (or GUIARD), GUILLAUME (d. c. 1316), French chronicler and poet,
was probably born at Orleans, and served in the French army in Flanders
in 1304. Having been disabled by a wound he began to write, lived at
Arras and then in Paris, thus being able to consult the large store of
manuscripts in the abbey of St Denis, including the _Grandes chroniques
de France_. Afterwards he appears as a _menestrel de bouche_. Guiart's
poem _Branche des royaulx lignages_, was written and then rewritten
between 1304 and 1307, in honour of the French king Philip IV., and in
answer to the aspersions of a Flemish poet. Comprising over 21,000
verses it deals with the history of the French kings from the time of
Louis VIII.; but it is only really important for the period after 1296
and for the war in Flanders from 1301 to 1304, of which it gives a
graphic account, and for which it is a high authority. It was first
published by J. A. Buchon (Paris, 1828), and again in tome xxii. of the
_Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France_ (Paris, 1865).
See A. Molinier, _Les Sources de l'histoire de France_, tome iii.
(Paris, 1903).
GUIBERT, or WIBERT (c. 1030-1100), of Ravenna, antipope under the title
of Clement III. from the 25th of June 1080 until September 1100, was
born at Parma between 1020 and 1030 of the noble imperialist family,
Corregio. He entered the priesthood and was appointed by the empress
Agnes, chancellor and, after the death of Pope Victor II. (1057),
imperial vicar in Italy. He strove to uphold the imperial authority
during Henry IV.'s minority, and presided over the synod at Basel (1061)
which annulled the election of Alexander II. and created in the person
of Cadalous, bishop of Parma, the antipope Honorius II. Guibert lost the
chancellorship in 1062. In 1073, through the influence of Empress Agnes
and the support of Cardinal Hildebrand, he obtained the archbishopric of
Ravenna and swore fealty to Alexander II. and his successors. He seems
to have been at first on friendly terms with Gregory VII., but soon
quarrelled with him over the possession of the city of Imola, and
henceforth was recognized as the soul of the imperial faction in the
investiture contest. He allied himself with Cencius, Cardinal Candidus
and other opponents of Gregory at Rome, and, on his refusal to furnish
troops or to attend the Lenten synod of 1075, he was ecclesiastically
suspended by the pope. He was probably excommunicated at the synod of
Worms (1076) with other Lombard bishops who sided with Henry IV., and
at the Lenten synod of 1078 he was banned by name. The emperor, having
been excommunicated for the second time in March 1080, convened nineteen
bishops of his party at Mainz on the 31st of May, who pronounced the
deposition of Gregory; and on the 25th of June he caused Guibert to be
elected pope by thirty bishops assembled at Brixen. Guibert, whilst
retaining possession of his archbishopric, accompanied his imperial
master on most of the latter's military expeditions. Having gained Rome,
he was installed in the Lateran and consecrated as Clement III. on the
24th of March 1084. One week later, on Easter Sunday, he crowned Henry
IV. and Bertha in St Peter's. Clement survived not only Gregory VII. but
also Victor III. and Urban II., maintaining his title to the end and in
great measure his power over Rome and the adjoining regions.
Excommunication was pronounced against him by all his rivals. He was
driven out of Rome finally by crusaders in 1097, and sought refuge in
various fortresses on his own estates. St Angelo, the last Guibertist
stronghold in Rome, fell to Urban II. on the 24th of August 1098.
Clement, on the accession of Paschal II. in 1099, prepared to renew his
struggle but was driven from Albano by Norman troops and died at Civita
Castellana in September 1100. His ashes, which were said by his
followers to have worked miracles, were thrown into the water by Paschal
II.
See J. Langen, _Geschichte der romischen Kirche von Gregor VII. bis
Innocenz III._ (Bonn, 1893); Jaffe-Wattenbach, _Regesta pontif.
Roman_. (2nd ed., 1885-1888); K. J. von Hefele, _Conciliengeschichte_,
vol. v. (2nd ed.); F. Gregorovius, _Rome in the Middle Ages_, vol.
iv., trans. by Mrs G. W. Hamilton (London, 1900-1902); and O. Kohncke,
_Wibert von Ravenna_ (Leipzig, 1888). (C. H. Ha.)
GUIBERT (1053-1124), of Nogent, historian and theologian, was born of
noble parents at Clermont-en-Beauvoisis, and dedicated from infancy to
the church. He received his early education at the Benedictine abbey of
Flavigny (Flaviacum) or St Germer, where he studied with great zeal,
devoting himself at first to the secular poets, an experience which left
its imprint on his works; later changing to theology, through the
influence of Anselm of Bec, afterwards of Canterbury. In 1104, he was
chosen to be head of the abbey of Notre Dame de Nogent and henceforth
took a prominent part in ecclesiastical affairs. His autobiography (_De
vita sua, sive monodiarum_), written towards the close of his life,
gives many picturesque glimpses of his time and the customs of his
country. The description of the commune of Laon is an historical
document of the first order. The same local colour lends charm to his
history of the first crusade (_Gesta Dei per Francos_) written about
1110. But the history is largely a paraphrase, in ornate style, of the
_Gesta Francorum_ of an anonymous Norman author (see CRUSADES); and when
he comes to the end of his authority, he allows his book to degenerate
into an undigested heap of notes and anecdotes. At the same time his
high birth and his position in the church give his work an occasional
value.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Guibert's works, edited by d'Achery, were first
published in 1651, in 1 vol. folio, at Paris (_Venerabilis Guiberti
abbatis B. Mariae de Novigento opera omnia_), and republished in
Migne's _Patrologia Latina_, vols. clvi. and clxxxiv. They include,
besides minor works, a treatise on homiletics ("Liber quo ordine sermo
fieri debeat"); ten books of _Moralia_ on Genesis, begun in 1084, but
not completed until 1116, composed on the model of Gregory the Great's
_Moralia in Jobum_; five books of _Tropologiae_ on Hosea, Amos and the
Lamentations; a treatise on the _Incarnation_, against the Jews; four
books _De pignoribus sanctorum_, a remarkably free criticism on the
abuses of saint and relic worship; three books of autobiography, _De
vita sua, sive monodiarum_; and eight books of the _Historia quae
dicitur Gesta Dei per Francos, sive historia Hierosolymitana_ (the
ninth book is by another author). Separate editions exist of the last
named, in J. Bongars, _Gesta Dei per Francos_, i., and _Recueil des
historiens des croisades, hist. Occid._, iv. 115-263. It has been
translated into French in Guizot's _Collection_, ix. 1-338. See H. von
Sybel, _Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges_ (Leipzig, 1881); B. Monod,
_Le Moine Guibert et son temps_ (Paris, 1905); and _Guibert de Nogent;
histoire de sa vie_, edited by G. Bourgin (Paris, 1907).
GUIBERT, JACQUES ANTOINE HIPPOLYTE, COMTE DE (1743-1790), French general
and military writer, was born at Montauban, and at the age of thirteen
accompanied his father, Charles Benoit, comte de Guibert (1715-1786),
chief of staff to Marshal de Broglie, throughout the war in Germany,
and won the cross of St Louis and the rank of colonel in the expedition
to Corsica (1767). In 1770 he published his _Essai general de tactique_
in London, and this celebrated work appeared in numerous subsequent
editions and in English, German and even Persian translations (extracts
also in Liskenne and Sauvan, _Bibl. historique et militaire_, Paris,
1845). Of this work (for a detailed critique of which see Max Jahns,
_Gesch. d. Kriegswissenschaften_, vol. iii. pp. 2058-2070 and references
therein) it may be said that it was the best essay on war produced by a
soldier during a period in which tactics were discussed even in the
salon and military literature was more abundant than at any time up to
1871. Apart from technical questions, in which Guibert's enlightened
conservatism stands in marked contrast to the doctrinaire
progressiveness of Menil Durand, Folard and others, the book is chiefly
valued for its broad outlook on the state of Europe, especially of
military Europe in the period 1763-1792. One quotation may be given as
being a most remarkable prophecy of the impending revolution in the art
of war, a revolution which the "advanced" tacticians themselves scarcely
foresaw. "The standing armies, while a burden on the people, are
inadequate for the achievement of great and decisive results in war, and
meanwhile the mass of the people, untrained in arms, degenerates.... The
hegemony over Europe will fall to that nation which ... becomes
possessed of manly virtues and _creates a national army_"--a prediction
fulfilled almost to the letter within twenty years of Guibert's death.
In 1773 he visited Germany and was present at the Prussian regimental
drills and army manoeuvres; Frederick the Great, recognizing Guibert's
ability, showed great favour to the young colonel and freely discussed
military questions with him. Guibert's _Journal d'un voyage en
Allemagne_ was published, with a memoir, by Toulongeon (Paris, 1803).
His _Defense du systeme de guerre moderne_, a reply to his many critics
(Neuchatel, 1779) is a reasoned and scientific defence of the Prussian
method of tactics, which formed the basis of his work when in 1775 he
began to co-operate with the count de St Germain in a series of
much-needed and successful reforms in the French army. In 1777, however,
St Germain fell into disgrace, and his fall involved that of Guibert who
was promoted to the rank of _marechal de camp_ and relegated to a
provincial staff appointment. In his semi-retirement he vigorously
defended his old chief St Germain against his detractors. On the eve of
the Revolution he was recalled to the War Office, but in his turn he
became the object of attack and he died, practically of disappointment,
on the 6th of May 1790. Other works of Guibert, besides those mentioned,
are: _Observations sur la constitution politique et militaire des armees
de S. M. Prussienne_ (Amsterdam, 1778), _Eloges_ of Marshal Catinat
(1775), of Michel de l'Hopital (1778), and of Frederick the Great
(1787). Guibert was a member of the Academy from 1786, and he also wrote
a tragedy, _Le Connetable de Bourbon_ (1775) and a journal of travels in
France and Switzerland.
See Toulongeon, _Eloge veridique de Guibert_ (Paris, 1790); Madame de
Stael, _Eloge de Guibert_; Bardin, _Notice historique du general
Guibert_ (Paris, 1836); Flavian d'Aldeguier, _Discours sur la vie et
les ecrits du comte de Guibert_ (Toulouse, 1855); Count Forestie,
_Biographie du comte de Guibert_ (Montauban, 1855); Count zur Lippe,
"Friedr. der Grosse und Oberst Guibert" (_Militar-Wochenblatt_, 1873,
9 and 10).
GUICCIARDINI, FRANCESCO (1483-1540), the celebrated Italian historian
and statesman, was born at Florence in the year 1483, when Marsilio
Ficino held him at the font of baptism. His family was illustrious and
noble; and his ancestors for many generations had held the highest posts
of honour in the state, as may be seen in his own genealogical _Ricordi
autobiografici e di famiglia_ (_Op. ined._ vol. x.). After the usual
education of a boy in grammar and elementary classical studies, his
father, Piero, sent him to the universities of Ferrara and Padua, where
he stayed until the year 1505. The death of an uncle, who had occupied
the see of Cortona with great pomp, induced the young Guicciardini to
hanker after an ecclesiastical career. He already saw the scarlet of a
cardinal awaiting him, and to this eminence he would assuredly have
risen. His father, however, checked this ambition, declaring that,
though he had five sons, he would not suffer one of them to enter the
church in its then state of corruption and debasement. Guicciardini,
whose motives were confessedly ambitious (see _Ricordi, Op. ined._ x.
68), turned his attention to law, and at the age of twenty-three was
appointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the _Institutes_ in
public. Shortly afterwards he engaged himself in marriage to Maria,
daughter of Alamanno Salviati, prompted, as he frankly tells us, by the
political support which an alliance with that great family would bring
him (ib. x. 71). He was then practising at the bar, where he won so much
distinction that the Signoria, in 1512, entrusted him with an embassy to
the court of Ferdinand the Catholic. Thus he entered on the real work of
his life as a diplomatist and statesman. His conduct upon that legation
was afterwards severely criticized; for his political antagonists
accused him of betraying the true interests of the commonwealth, and
using his influence for the restoration of the exiled house of Medici to
power. His Spanish correspondence with the Signoria (_Op. ined._ vol.
vi.) reveals the extraordinary power of observation and analysis which
was a chief quality of his mind; and in Ferdinand, hypocritical and
profoundly dissimulative, he found a proper object for his scientific
study. To suppose that the young statesman learned his frigid statecraft
in Spain would be perhaps too simple a solution of the problem offered
by his character, and scarcely fair to the Italian proficients in
perfidy. It is clear from Guicciardini's autobiographical memoirs that
he was ambitious, calculating, avaricious and power-loving from his
earliest years; and in Spain he had no more than an opportunity of
studying on a large scale those political vices which already ruled the
minor potentates of Italy. Still the school was pregnant with
instructions for so apt a pupil. Guicciardini issued from this first
trial of his skill with an assured reputation for diplomatic ability, as
that was understood in Italy. To unravel plots and weave counterplots;
to meet treachery with fraud; to parry force with sleights of hand; to
credit human nature with the basest motives, while the blackest crimes
were contemplated with cold enthusiasm for their cleverness, was
reckoned then the height of political sagacity. Guicciardini could play
the game to perfection. In 1515 Leo X. took him into service, and made
him governor of Reggio and Modena. In 1521 Parma was added to his rule,
and in 1523 he was appointed viceregent of Romagna by Clement VII. These
high offices rendered Guicciardini the virtual master of the papal
states beyond the Apennines, during a period of great bewilderment and
difficulty. The copious correspondence relating to his administration
has recently been published (_Op. ined._ vols. vii., viii.). In 1526
Clement gave him still higher rank as lieutenant-general of the papal
army. While holding this commission, he had the humiliation of
witnessing from a distance the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of
Clement, without being able to rouse the perfidious duke of Urbino into
activity. The blame of Clement's downfall did not rest with him; for it
was merely his duty to attend the camp, and keep his master informed of
the proceedings of the generals (see the Correspondence, _Op. ined._
vols. iv., v.). Yet Guicciardini's conscience accused him, for he had
previously counselled the pope to declare war, as he notes in a curious
letter to himself written in 1527 (_Op. ined._, x. 104). Clement did
not, however, withdraw his confidence, and in 1531 Guicciardini was
advanced to the governorship of Bologna, the most important of all the
papallord-lieutenancies (Correspondence, _Op. ined._ vol. ix.). This
post he resigned in 1534 on the election of Paul III., preferring to
follow the fortunes of the Medicean princes. It may here be noticed that
though Guicciardini served three popes through a period of twenty years,
or perhaps because of this, he hated the papacy with a deep and frozen
bitterness, attributing the woes of Italy to the ambition of the church,
and declaring he had seen enough of sacerdotal abominations to make him
a Lutheran (see _Op. ined._ i. 27, 104, 96, and _Ist. d' It._, ed. Ros.,
ii. 218). The same discord between his private opinions and his public
actions may be traced in his conduct subsequent to 1534. As a political
theorist, Guicciardini believed that the best form of government was a
commonwealth administered upon the type of the Venetian constitution
(_Op. ined._ i. 6; ii. 130 sq.); and we have ample evidence to prove
that he had judged the tyranny of the Medici at its true worth (_Op.
ined._ i. 171, on the tyrant; the whole _Storia Fiorentina_ and
_Reggimento di Firenze_, ib. i. and iii., on the Medici). Yet he did not
hesitate to place his powers at the disposal of the most vicious members
of that house for the enslavement of Florence. In 1527 he had been
declared a rebel by the Signoria on account of his well-known Medicean
prejudices; and in 1530, deputed by Clement to punish the citizens after
their revolt, he revenged himself with a cruelty and an avarice that
were long and bitterly remembered. When, therefore, he returned to
inhabit Florence in 1534, he did so as the creature of the dissolute
Alessandro de' Medici. Guicciardini pushed his servility so far as to
defend this infamous despot at Naples in 1535, before the bar of Charles
V., from the accusations brought against him by the Florentine exiles
(_Op. ined._ vol. ix.). He won his cause; but in the eyes of all
posterity he justified the reproaches of his contemporaries, who
describe him as a cruel, venal, grasping seeker after power, eager to
support a despotism for the sake of honours, offices and emoluments
secured for himself by a bargain with the oppressors of his country.
Varchi, Nardi, Jacopo Pitti and Bernardo Segni are unanimous upon this
point; but it is only the recent publication of Guicciardini's private
MSS. that has made us understand the force of their invectives. To plead
loyalty or honest political conviction in defence of his Medicean
partianship is now impossible, face to face with the opinions expressed
in the _Ricordi politici_ and the _Storia Fiorentina_. Like Machiavelli,
but on a lower level, Guicciardini was willing to "roll stones," or to
do any dirty work for masters whom, in the depth of his soul, he
detested and despised. After the murder of Duke Alessandro in 1537,
Guicciardini espoused the cause of Cosimo de' Medici, a boy addicted to
field sports, and unused to the game of statecraft. The wily old
diplomatist hoped to rule Florence as grand vizier under this
inexperienced princeling. He was mistaken, however, in his schemes, for
Cosimo displayed the genius of his family for politics, and coldly
dismissed his would-be lord-protector. Guicciardini retired in disgrace
to his villa, where he spent his last years in the composition of the
_Storia d'Italia_. He died in 1540 without male heirs.
Guicciardini was the product of a cynical and selfish age, and his life
illustrated its sordid influences. Of a cold and worldly temperament,
devoid of passion, blameless in his conduct as the father of a family,
faithful as the servant of his papal patrons, severe in the
administration of the provinces committed to his charge, and
indisputably able in his conduct of affairs, he was at the same time,
and in spite of these qualities, a man whose moral nature inspires a
sentiment of liveliest repugnance. It is not merely that he was
ambitious, cruel, revengeful and avaricious, for these vices have
existed in men far less antipathetic than Guicciardini. Over and above
those faults, which made him odious to his fellow-citizens, we trace in
him a meanness that our century is less willing to condone. His
phlegmatic and persistent egotism, his sacrifice of truth and honour to
self-interest, his acquiescence in the worst conditions of the world, if
only he could use them for his own advantage, combined with the glaring
discord between his opinions and his practice, form a character which
would be contemptible in our eyes were it not so sinister. The social
and political decrepitude of Italy, where patriotism was unknown, and
only selfishness survived of all the motives that rouse men to action,
found its representative and exponent in Guicciardini. When we turn from
the man to the author, the decadence of the age and race that could
develop a political philosophy so arid in its cynical despair of any
good in human nature forces itself vividly upon our notice. Guicciardini
seems to glory in his disillusionment, and uses his vast intellectual
ability for the analysis of the corruption he had helped to make
incurable. If one single treatise of that century should be chosen to
represent the spirit of the Italian people in the last phase of the
Renaissance, the historian might hesitate between the _Principe_ of
Machiavelli and the _Ricordi politici_ of Guicciardini. The latter is
perhaps preferable to the former on the score of comprehensiveness. It
is, moreover, more exactly adequate to the actual situation, for the
_Principe_ has a divine spark of patriotism yet lingering in the cinders
of its frigid science, an idealistic enthusiasm surviving in its moral
aberrations; whereas a great Italian critic of this decade has justly
described the _Ricordi_ as "Italian corruption codified and elevated to
a rule of life." Guicciardini is, however, better known as the author of
the _Storia d'Italia_, that vast and detailed picture of his country's
sufferings between the years 1494 and 1532. Judging him by this
masterpiece of scientific history, he deserves less commendation as a
writer than as a thinker and an analyst. The style is wearisome and
prolix, attaining to precision at the expense of circumlocution, and
setting forth the smallest particulars with the same distinctness as the
main features of the narrative. The whole tangled skein of Italian
politics, in that involved and stormy period, is unravelled with a
patience and an insight that are above praise. It is the crowning merit
of the author that he never ceases to be an impartial spectator--a cold
and curious critic. We might compare him to an anatomist, with knife and
scalpel dissecting the dead body of Italy, and pointing out the symptoms
of her manifold diseases with the indifferent analysis of one who has no
moral sensibility. This want of feeling, while it renders Guicciardini a
model for the scientific student, has impaired the interest of his
history. Though he lived through that agony of the Italian people, he
does not seem to be aware that he is writing a great historical tragedy.
He takes as much pains in laying bare the trifling causes of a petty war
with Pisa as in probing the deep-seated ulcer of the papacy. Nor is he
capable of painting the events in which he took a part, in their
totality as a drama. Whatever he touches, lies already dead on the
dissecting table, and his skill is that of the analytical pathologist.
Consequently, he fails to understand the essential magnitude of the
task, or to appreciate the vital vigour of the forces contending in
Europe for mastery. This is very noticeable in what he writes about the
Reformation. Notwithstanding these defects, inevitable in a writer of
Guicciardini's temperament, the _Storia d'Italia_ was undoubtedly the
greatest historical work that had appeared since the beginning of the
modern era. It remains the most solid monument of the Italian reason in
the 16th century, the final triumph of that Florentine school of
philosophical historians which included Machiavelli, Segni, Pitti,
Nardi, Varchi, Francesco Vettori and Donato Giannotti. Up to the year
1857 the fame of Guicciardini as a writer, and the estimation of him as
a man, depended almost entirely upon the _History of Italy_, and on a
few ill-edited extracts from his aphorisms. At that date his
representatives, the counts Piero and Luigi Guicciardini, opened their
family archives, and committed to Signor Giuseppe Canestrini the
publication of his hitherto inedited MSS. in ten important volumes. The
vast mass of documents and finished literary work thus given to the
world has thrown a flood of light upon Guicciardini, whether we consider
him as author or as citizen. It has raised his reputation as a political
philosopher into the first rank, where he now disputes the place of
intellectual supremacy with his friend Machiavelli; but it has coloured
our moral judgment of his character and conduct with darker dyes. From
the stores of valuable materials contained in those ten volumes, it will
be enough here to cite (1) the _Ricordi politici_, already noticed,
consisting of about 400 aphorisms on political and social topics; (2)
the observations on Machiavelli's _Discorsi_, which bring into
remarkable relief the views of Italy's two great theorists on statecraft
in the 16th century, and show that Guicciardini regarded Machiavelli
somewhat as an amiable visionary or political enthusiast; (3) the
_Storia Fiorentina_, an early work of the author, distinguished by its
animation of style, brilliancy of portraiture, and liberality of
judgment; and (4) the _Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze_, also in all
probability an early work, in which the various forms of government
suited to an Italian commonwealth are discussed with infinite subtlety,
contrasted, and illustrated from the vicissitudes of Florence up to the
year 1494. To these may be added a series of short essays, entitled
_Discorsi politici_, composed during Guicciardini's Spanish legation. It
is only after a careful perusal of these minor works that the student of
history may claim to have comprehended Guicciardini, and may feel that
he brings with him to the consideration of the _Storia d' Italia_ the
requisite knowledge of the author's private thoughts and jealously
guarded opinions. Indeed, it may be confidently affirmed that those who
desire to gain an insight into the true principles and feelings of the
men who made and wrote history in the 16th century will find it here far
more than in the work designed for publication by the writer. Taken in
combination with Machiavelli's treatises, the _Opere inedite_ furnish a
comprehensive body of Italian political philosophy anterior to the date
of Fra Paolo Sarpi. (J. A. S.)
See Rosini's edition oi the _Storia d' Italia_ (10 vols., Pisa, 1819),
and the _Opere inedite_, in 10 vols., published at Florence, 1857. A
complete and initial edition of Guicciardini's works is now in
preparation in the hands of Alessandro Gherardi of the Florence
archives. Among the many studies on Guicciardini we may mention
Agostino Rossi's _Francesco Guicciardini e il governo Fiorentino_ (2
vols., Bologna, 1896), based on many new documents; F. de Sanctis's
essay "L'Uomo del Guicciardini," in his _Nuovi Saggi critici_ (Naples,
1879), and many passages in Professor P. Villari's _Machiavelli_ (Eng.
trans., 1892); E. Benoist's _Guichardin, historien et homme d'etat
italien an XVI^e siecle_ (Paris, 1862), and C. Gioda's _Francesco
Guicciardini e le sue opere inedite_ (Bologna, 1880) are not without
value, but the authors had not had access to many important documents
since published. See also Geoffrey's article "Une Autobiographie de
Guichardin d'apres ses oeuvres inedites," in the _Revue des deux
mondes_ (1st of February 1874).
GUICHARD, KARL GOTTLIEB (1724-1775), soldier and military writer, known
as QUINTUS ICILIUS, was born at Magdeburg in 1724, of a family of French
refugees. He was educated for the Church, and at Leiden actually
preached a sermon as a candidate for the pastorate. But he abandoned
theology for more secular studies, especially that of ancient history,
in which his learning attracted the notice of the prince of Orange, who
promised him a vacant professorship at Utrecht. On his arrival, however,
he found that another scholar had been elected by the local authorities,
and he thereupon sought and obtained a commission in the Dutch army. He
made the campaigns of 1747-48 in the Low Countries. In the peace which
followed, his combined military and classical training turned his
thoughts in the direction of ancient military history. His notes on this
subject grew into a treatise, and in 1754 he went over to England in
order to consult various libraries. In 1757 his _Memoires militaires sur
les Grecs et les Romains_ appeared at the Hague, and when Carlyle wrote
his _Frederick the Great_ it had reached its fifth edition. Coming back,
with English introductions, to the Continent, he sought service with
Ferdinand of Brunswick, who sent him on to Frederick the Great, whom he
joined in January 1758 at Breslau. The king was very favourably
impressed with Guichard and his works, and he remained for nearly 18
months in the royal suite. His Prussian official name of Quintus Icilius
was the outcome of a friendly dispute with the king (see Nikolai,
_Anekdoten_, vi. 129-145; Carlyle, _Frederick the Great_, viii.
113-114). Frederick in discussing the battle of Pharsalia spoke of a
centurion Quintus Caecilius as Q. Icilius. Guichard ventured to correct
him, whereupon the king said, "_You_ shall be Quintus Icilius," and as
Major Quintus Icilius he was forthwith gazetted to the command of a free
battalion. This corps he commanded throughout the later stages of the
Seven Years' War, his battalion, as time went on, becoming a regiment of
three battalions, and Quintus himself recruited seven more battalions of
the same kind of troops. His command was almost always with the king's
own army in these campaigns, but for a short time it fought in the
western theatre under Prince Henry. When not on the march he was always
at the royal headquarters, and it was he who brought about the famous
interview between the king and Gellert (see Carlyle, _Frederick the
Great_, ix. 109; Gellert, _Briefwechsel mit Demoiselle Lucius_, ed.
Ebert, Leipzig, 1823, pp. 629-631) on the subject of national German
literature. On 22nd January 1761 Quintus was ordered to sack the castle
of Hubertusburg (a task which Major-General Saldern had point-blank
refused to undertake, from motives of conscience), and carried out his
task, it is said, to his own very considerable profit. The place cannot
have been seriously injured, as it was soon afterwards the meeting-place
of the diplomatists whose work ended in the peace of Hubertusburg, but
the king never ceased to banter Quintus on his supposed depredations.
The very day of Frederick's triumphant return from the war saw the
disbanding of most of the free battalions, including that of Quintus,
but the major to the end of his life remained with the king. He was made
lieutenant-colonel in 1765, and in 1773, in recognition of his work
_Memoires critiques et historiques sur plusieurs points d'antiquites
militaires_, dealing mainly with Caesar's campaigns in Spain (Berlin,
1773), was promoted colonel. He died at Potsdam, 1775.
GUICHEN, LUC URBAIN DE BOUEXIC, COMTE DE (1712-1790), French admiral,
entered the navy in 1730 as "garde de la Marine," the first rank in the
corps of royal officers. His promotion was not rapid. It was not till
1748 that he became "lieutenant de vaisseau," which was, however, a
somewhat higher rank than the lieutenant in the British navy, since it
carried with it the right to command a frigate. He was "capitaine de
vaisseau," or post captain, in 1756. But his reputation must have been
good, for he was made chevalier de Saint Louis in 1748. In 1775 he was
appointed to the frigate "Terpsichore," attached to the training
squadron, in which the duc de Chartres, afterwards notorious as the duc
d'Orleans and as Philippe Egalite, was entered as volunteer. In the next
year he was promoted chef d'escadre, or rear-admiral. When France had
become the ally of the Americans in the War of Independence, he hoisted
his flag in the Channel fleet, and was present at the battle of Ushant
on the 27th of July 1779. In March of the following year he was sent to
the West Indies with a strong squadron and was there opposed to Sir
George Rodney. In the first meeting between them on the 17th of April to
leeward of Martinique, Guichen escaped disaster only through the clumsy
manner in which Sir George's orders were executed by his captains.
Seeing that he had to deal with a formidable opponent, Guichen acted
with extreme caution, and by keeping the weather gauge afforded the
British admiral no chance of bringing him to close action. When the
hurricane months approached (July to September) he left the West Indies,
and his squadron, being in a bad state from want of repairs, returned
home, reaching Brest in September. Throughout all this campaign Guichen
had shown himself very skilful in handling a fleet, and if he had not
gained any marked success, he had prevented the British admiral from
doing any harm to the French islands in the Antilles. In December 1781
the comte de Guichen was chosen to command the force which was entrusted
with the duty of carrying stores and reinforcements to the West Indies.
On the 12th Admiral Kempenfelt, who had been sent out by the British
Government with an unduly weak force to intercept him, sighted the
French admiral in the Bay of Biscay through a temporary clearance in a
fog, at a moment when Guichen's warships were to leeward of the convoy,
and attacked the transports at once. The French admiral could not
prevent his enemy from capturing twenty of the transports, and driving
the others into a panic-stricken flight. They returned to port, and the
mission entrusted to Guichen was entirely defeated. He therefore
returned to port also. He had no opportunity to gain any
counterbalancing success during the short remainder of the war, but he
was present at the final relief of Gibraltar by Lord Howe. His death
occurred on the 13th of January 1790. The comte de Guichen was, by the
testimony of his contemporaries, a most accomplished and high-minded
gentleman. It is probable that he had more scientific knowledge than any
of his English contemporaries and opponents. But as a commander in war
he was notable chiefly for his skill in directing the orderly movements
of a fleet, and seems to have been satisfied with formal operations,
which were possibly elegant but could lead to no substantial result. He
had none of the combative instincts of his countryman Suffren, or of the
average British admiral.
See vicomte de Noailles, _Marins et soldats francais en Amerique_
(1903); and E. Chevalier, _Histoire de la marine francaise pendant la
guerre de l'independence americaine_ (1877). (D. H.)
GUIDE (in Mid. Eng. _gyde_, from the Fr. _guide_; the earlier French
form was _guie_, English "guy," the _d_ was due to the Italian form
_guida_; the ultimate origin is probably Teutonic, the word being
connected with the base seen in O. Eng. _witan_, to know), an agency for
directing or showing the way, specifically a person who leads or directs
a stranger over unknown or unmapped country, or conducts travellers and
tourists through a town, or over buildings of interest. In European wars
up to the time of the French Revolution, the absence of large scale
detailed maps made local guides almost essential to the direction of
military operations, and in the 18th century the general tendency to the
stricter organization of military resources led in various countries to
the special training of guide officers (called _Feldjager_, and
considered as general staff officers in the Prussian army), whose chief
duty it was to find, and if necessary establish, routes across country
for those parts of the army that had to move parallel to the main road
and as nearly as possible at deploying interval from each other, for in
those days armies were rarely spread out so far as to have the use of
two or more made roads. But the necessity for such precautions died away
when adequate surveys (in which guide officers were, at any rate in
Prussia, freely employed) were carried out, and, as a definite term of
military organization to-day, "guide" possesses no more essential
peculiarity than fusilier, grenadier or rifleman. The genesis of the
modern "Guide" regiments is perhaps to be found in a short-lived Corps
of Guides formed by Napoleon in Italy in 1796, which appears to have
been a personal escort or body guard composed of men who knew the
country. In the Belgian army of to-day the Guide regiments correspond
almost to the Guard cavalry of other nations; in the Swiss army the
squadrons of "Guides" act as divisional cavalry, and in this role
doubtless are called upon on occasion to lead columns. The "Queen's own
Corps of Guides" of the Indian army consists of infantry companies and
cavalry squadrons. In drill, a "guide" is an officer or non-commissioned
officer told off to regulate the direction and pace of movements, the
remainder of the unit maintaining their alignment and distances by him.
A particular class of guides are those employed in mountaineering; these
are not merely to show the way but stand in the position of professional
climbers with an expert knowledge of rock and snowcraft, which they
impart to the amateur, at the same time assuring the safety of the
climbing party in dangerous expeditions. This professional class of
guides arose in the middle of the 19th century when Alpine climbing
became recognized as a sport (see MOUNTAINEERING). It is thus natural to
find that the Alpine guides have been requisitioned for mountaineering
expeditions all over the world. In climbing in Switzerland, the central
committee of the Swiss Alpine Club issues a guides' tariff which fixes
the charges for guides and porters; there are three sections, for the
Valais and Vaudois Alps, for the Bernese Oberland, and for central and
eastern Switzerland. The names of many of the great guides have become
historical. In Chamonix a statue has been raised to Jacques Balmat, who
was the first to climb Mont Blanc in 1786. Of the more famous guides
since the beginning of Alpine climbing may be mentioned Auguste Balmat,
Michel Cros, Maquignay, J. A. Carrel, who went with E. Whymper to the
Andes, the brothers Lauener, Christian Almer and Jakob and Melchior
Anderegg.
"Guide" is also applied to a book, in the sense of an elementary primer
on some subject, or of one giving full information for travellers of a
country, district or town. In mechanical usage, the term "guide" is of
wide application, being used of anything which steadies or directs the
motion of an object, as of the "leading" screw of a screw-cutting lathe,
of a loose pulley used to steady a driving-belt, or of the bars or rods
in a steam-engine which keep the sliding blocks moving in a straight
line. The doublet "guy" is thus used of a rope which steadies a sail
when it is being raised or lowered, or of a rope, chain or stay
supporting a funnel, mast, derrick, &c.
GUIDI, CARLO ALESSANDRO (1650-1712), Italian lyric poet, was born at
Pavia in 1650. As chief founder of the well-known Roman academy called
"L'Arcadia," he had a considerable share in the reform of Italian
poetry, corrupted at that time by the extravagance and bad taste of the
poets Marini and Achillini and their school. The poet Guidi and the
critic and jurisconsult Gravina checked this evil by their influence and
example. The genius of Guidi was lyric in the highest degree; his songs
are written with singular force, and charm the reader, in spite of
touches of bombast. His most celebrated song is that entitled _Alla
Fortuna_ (To Fortune), which certainly is one of the most beautiful
pieces of poetry of the 17th century. Guidi was squint-eyed, humpbacked,
and of a delicate constitution, but possessed undoubted literary
ability. His poems were printed at Parma in 1671, and at Rome in 1704.
In 1681 he published at Parma his lyric tragedy _Amalasunta in Italy_,
and two pastoral dramas _Daphne_ and _Endymion_. The last had the honour
of being mentioned as a model by the critic Gravina, in his treatise on
poetry. Less fortunate was Guidi's poetical version of the six homilies
of Pope Clement XI., first as having been severely criticized by the
satirist Settano, and next as having proved to be the indirect cause of
the author's death. A splendid edition of this version had been printed
in 1712, and, the pope being then in San Gandolfo, Guidi went there to
present him with a copy. On the way he found out a serious typographical
error, which he took so much to heart that he was seized with an
apoplectic fit at Frascati and died on the spot. Guidi was honoured with
the special protection of Ranuccio II., duke of Parma, and of Queen
Christina of Sweden.
GUIDICCIONI, GIOVANNI (1480-1541), Italian poet, was born at Lucca in
1480, and died at Macerata in 1541. He occupied a high position, being
bishop of Fossombrone and president of Romagna. The latter office nearly
cost him his life; a murderer attempted to kill him, and had already
touched his breast with his dagger when, conquered by the resolute
calmness of the prelate, he threw away the weapon and fell at his feet,
asking forgiveness. The _Rime_ and _Letters_ of Guidiccioni are models
of elegant and natural Italian style. The best editions are those of
Genoa (1749), Bergamo (1753) and Florence (1878).
GUIDO OF AREZZO (possibly to be identified with Guido de St Maur des
Fosses), a musician who lived in the 11th century. He has by many been
called the father of modern music, and a portrait of him in the
refectory of the monastery of Avellana bears the inscription _Beatus
Guido, inventor musicae_. Of his life little is known, and that little
is chiefly derived from the dedicatory letters prefixed to two of his
treatises and addressed respectively to Bishop Theodald (not Theobald,
as Burney writes the name) of Arezzo, and Michael, a monk of Pomposa and
Guido's pupil and friend. Occasional references to the celebrated
musician in the works of his contemporaries are, however, by no means
rare, and from these it may be conjectured with all but absolute
certainty that Guido was born in the last decade of the 10th century.
The place of his birth is uncertain in spite of some evidence pointing
to Arezzo; on the title-page of all his works he is styled _Guido
Aretinus_, or simply _Aretinus_. At his first appearance in history
Guido was a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Pomposa, and it was
there that he taught singing and invented his educational method, by
means of which, according to his own statement, a pupil might learn
within five months what formerly it would have taken him ten years to
acquire. Envy and jealousy, however, were his only reward, and by these
he was compelled to leave his monastery--"inde est, quod me vides
prolixis finibus exulatum," as he says himself in the second of the
letters above referred to. According to one account, he travelled as far
as Bremen, called there by Archbishop Hermann in order to reform the
musical service. But this statement has been doubted. Certain it is that
not long after his flight from Pomposa Guido was living at Arezzo, and
it was here that, about 1030, he received an invitation to Rome from
Pope John XIV. He obeyed the summons, and the pope himself became his
first and apparently one of his most proficient pupils. But in spite of
his success Guido could not be induced to remain in Rome, the
insalubrious air of which seems to have affected his health. In Rome he
met again his former superior, the abbot of Pomposa, who seems to have
repented of his conduct, and to have induced Guido to return to Pomposa;
and here all authentic records of Guido's life cease. We only know that
he died, on the 17th of May 1050, as prior of Avellana, a monastery of
the Camaldulians; such at least is the statement of the chroniclers of
that order. It ought, however, to be added that the Camaldulians claim
the celebrated musician as wholly their own, and altogether deny his
connexion with the Benedictines.
The documents discovered by Dom Germain Morin, the Belgian Benedictine,
about 1888, point to the conclusion that Guido was a Frenchman and lived
from his youth upwards in the Benedictine monastery of St Maur des
Fosses where he invented his novel system of notation and taught the
brothers to sing by it. In codex 763 of the British Museum the composer
of the "Micrologus" and other works by Guido of Arezzo is always
described as Guido de Sancto Mauro.
There is no doubt that Guido's method shows considerable progress in the
evolution of modern notation. It was he who for the first time
systematically used the lines of the staff, and the intervals or
_spatia_ between them. There is also little doubt that the names of the
first six notes of the scale, _ut_, _re_, _mi_, _fa_, _sol_, _la_, still
in use among Romance nations, were introduced by Guido, although he
seems to have used them in a relative rather than in an absolute sense.
It is well known that these words are the first syllables of six lines
of a hymn addressed to St John the Baptist, which may be given here:--
_Ut_ queant laxis _re_sonare fibris
_Mi_ra gestorum _fa_muli tuorum,
_Sol_ve polluti _la_bii reatum,
Sancte Joannes.
In addition to this Guido is generally credited with the introduction of
the F clef. But more important than all this, perhaps, is the thoroughly
practical tone which Guido assumes in his theoretical writings, and
which differs greatly from the clumsy scholasticism of his
contemporaries and predecessors.
The most important of Guido's treatises, and those which are generally
acknowledged to be authentic, are _Micrologus Guidonis de disciplina
artis musicae_, dedicated to Bishop Theodald of Arezzo, and comprising
a complete theory of music, in 20 chapters; _Musicae Guidonis regulae
rhythmicae in antiphonarii sui prologum prolatae_, written in trochaic
decasyllabics of anything but classical structure; _Aliae Guidonis
regulae de ignoto cantu, identidem in antiphonarii sui prologum
prolatae_; and the _Epistola Guidonis Michaeli monacho de ignoto
cantu_, already referred to. These are published in the second volume
of Gerbert's _Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra_. A very
important manuscript unknown to Gerbert (the _Codex bibliothecae
Uticensis_, in the Paris library) contains, besides minor treatises,
an antiphonarium and gradual undoubtedly belonging to Guido.
See also L. Angeloni, _G. d'Arezzo_ (1811); Kiesewetter, _Guido von
Arezzo_ (1840); Kornmuller, "Leben und Werken Guidos von Arezzo," in
Habert's _Jahrb._ (1876); Antonio Brandi, _G. Aretino_ (1882); G. B.
Ristori, _Biografia di Guido monaco d'Arezzo_ (1868).
GUIDO OF SIENA. The name of this Italian painter is of considerable
interest in the history of art, on the ground that, if certain
assumptions regarding him could be accepted as true, he would be
entitled to share with Cimabue, or rather indeed to supersede him in,
the honour of having given the first onward impulse to the art of
painting. The case stands thus. In the church of S. Domenico in Siena is
a large painting of the "Virgin and Child Enthroned," with six angels
above, and in the Benedictine convent of the same city is a triangular
pinnacle, once a portion of the same composition, representing the
Saviour in benediction, with two angels; the entire work was originally
a triptych, but is not so now. The principal section of this picture has
a rhymed Latin inscription, giving the painter's name as Gu ... o de
Senis, with the date 1221: the genuineness of the inscription is not,
however, free from doubt, and especially it is maintained that the date
really reads as 1281. In the general treatment of the picture there is
nothing to distinguish it particularly from other work of the same early
period; but the heads of the Virgin and Child are indisputably very
superior, in natural character and graceful dignity, to anything to be
found anterior to Cimabue. The question therefore arises, Are these
heads really the work of a man who painted in 1221? Crowe and
Cavalcaselle pronounce in the negative, concluding that the heads are
repainted, and are, as they now stand, due to some artist of the 14th
century, perhaps Ugolino da Siena; thus the claims of Cimabue would
remain undisturbed and in their pristine vigour. Beyond this, little is
known of Guido da Siena. There is in the Academy of Siena a picture
assigned to him, a half-figure of the "Virgin and Child," with two
angels, dating probably between 1250 and 1300; also in the church of S.
Bernardino in the same city a Madonna dated 1262. Milanesi thinks that
the work in S. Domenico is due to Guido Graziani, of whom no other
record remains earlier than 1278, when he is mentioned as the painter of
a banner. Guido da Siena appears always to have painted on panel, not in
fresco on the wall. He has been termed, very dubiously, a pupil of
Pietrolino, and the master of "Diotisalvi," Mino da Turrita and
Berlinghieri da Lucca.
GUIDO RENI (1575-1642), a prime master in the Bolognese school of
painting, and one of the most admired artists of the period of incipient
decadence in Italy, was born at Calvenzano near Bologna on the 4th of
November 1575. His father was a musician of repute, a player on the
flageolet; he wished to bring the lad up to perform on the harpsichord.
At a very childish age, however, Guido displayed a determined bent
towards the art of form, scribbling some attempt at a drawing here,
there and everywhere. He was only nine years of age when Denis Calvart
took notice of him, received him into his academy of design by the
father's permission, and rapidly brought him forward, so that by the age
of thirteen Guido had already attained marked proficiency. Albani and
Domenichino became soon afterwards pupils in the same academy. With
Albani Guido was very intimate up to the earlier period of manhood, but
they afterwards became rivals, both as painters and as heads of
ateliers, with a good deal of asperity on Albani's part; Domenichino was
also pitted against Reni by the policy of Annibale Caracci. Guido was
still in the academy of Calvart when he began frequenting the opposition
school kept by Lodovico Caracci, whose style, far in advance of that of
the Flemish painter, he dallied with. This exasperated Calvart. Him
Guido, not yet twenty years of age, cheerfully quitted, transferring
himself openly to the Caracci academy, in which he soon became
prominent, being equally skilful and ambitious. He had not been a year
with the Caracci when a work of his excited the wonder of Agostino and
the jealousy of Annibale. Lodovico cherished him, and frequently painted
him as an angel, for the youthful Reni was extremely handsome. After a
while, however, Lodovico also felt himself nettled, and he patronized
the competing talents of Giovanni Barbiere. On one occasion Guido had
made a copy of Annibale's "Descent from the Cross"; Annibale was asked
to retouch it, and, finding nothing to do, exclaimed pettishly, "He
knows more than enough" ("Costui ne sa troppo"). On another occasion
Lodovico, consulted as umpire, lowered a price which Reni asked for an
early picture. This slight determined the young man to be a pupil no
more. He left the Caracci, and started on his own account as a
competitor in the race for patronage and fame. A renowned work, the
story of "Callisto and Diana," had been completed before he left.
Guido was faithful to the eclectic principle of the Bolognese school of
painting. He had appropriated something from Calvart, much more from
Lodovico Caracci; he studied with much zest after Albert Durer; he
adopted the massive, sombre and partly uncouth manner of Caravaggio. One
day Annibale Caracci made the remark that a style might be formed
reversing that of Caravaggio in such matters as the ponderous shadows
and the gross common forms; this observation germinated in Guido's mind,
and he endeavoured after some such style, aiming constantly at suavity.
Towards 1602 he went to Rome with Albani, and Rome remained his
headquarters for twenty years. Here, in the pontificate of Paul V.
(Borghese), he was greatly noted and distinguished. In the garden-house
of the Rospigliosi Palace he painted the vast fresco which is justly
regarded as his masterpiece--"Phoebus and the Hours preceded by Aurora."
This exhibits his second manner, in which he had deviated far indeed
from the promptings of Caravaggio. He founded now chiefly upon the
antique, more especially the Niobe group and the "Venus de' Medici,"
modified by suggestions from Raphael, Correggio, Parmigiano and Paul
Veronese. Of this last painter, although on the whole he did not get
much from him, Guido was a particular admirer; he used to say that he
would rather have been Paul Veronese than any other master--Paul was
more nature than art. The "Aurora" is beyond doubt a work of pre-eminent
beauty and attainment; it is stamped with pleasurable dignity, and,
without being effeminate, has a more uniform aim after graceful
selectness than can readily be traced in previous painters, greatly
superior though some of them had been in impulse and personal fervour of
genius. The pontifical chapel of Montecavallo was assigned to Reni to
paint; but, being straitened in payments by the ministers, the artist
made off to Bologna. He was fetched back by Paul V. with ceremonious
eclat, and lodging, living and equipage were supplied to him. At another
time he migrated from Rome to Naples, having received a commission to
paint the chapel of S. Gennaro. The notorious cabal of three painters
resident in Naples--Corenzio, Caracciolo and Ribera--offered, however,
as stiff an opposition to Guido as to some other interlopers who
preceded and succeeded him. They gave his servant a beating by the hands
of two unknown bullies, and sent by him a message to his master to
depart or prepare for death; Guido waited for no second warning, and
departed. He now returned to Rome; but he finally left that city
abruptly, in the pontificate of Urban VIII., in consequence of an
offensive reprimand administered to him by Cardinal Spinola. He had
received an advance of 400 scudi on account of an altarpiece for St
Peter's, but after some lapse of years had made no beginning with the
work. A broad reminder from the cardinal put Reni on his mettle; he
returned the 400 scudi, quitted Rome within a few days, and steadily
resisted all attempts at recall. He now resettled in Bologna. He had
taught as well as painted in Rome, and he left pupils behind him; but on
the whole he did not stamp any great mark upon the Roman school of
painting, apart from his own numerous works in the papal city.
In Bologna Guido lived in great splendour, and established a celebrated
school, numbering more than two hundred scholars. He himself drew in it,
even down to his latest years. On first returning to this city, he
charged about L21 for a full-length figure (mere portraits are not here
in question), half this sum for a half-length, and L5 for a head. These
prices must be regarded as handsome, when we consider that Domenichino
about the same time received only L10, 10s. for his very large and
celebrated picture, the "Last Communion of St Jerome." But Guido's
reputation was still on the increase, and in process of time he
quintupled his prices. He now left Bologna hardly at all; in one
instance, however, he went off to Ravenna, and, along with three pupils,
he painted the chapel in the cathedral with his admired picture of the
"Israelites gathering Manna." His shining prosperity was not to last
till the end. Guido was dissipated, generously but indiscriminately
profuse, and an inveterate gambler. The gambling propensity had been his
from youth, but until he became elderly it did not noticeably damage his
fortunes. It grew upon him, and in a couple of evenings he lost the
enormous sum of 14,400 scudi. The vice told still more ruinously on his
art than on his character. In his decline he sold his time at so much
per hour to certain picture dealers; one of them, the Shylock of his
craft, would stand by, watch in hand, and see him work.
Half-heartedness, half-performance, blighted his product:
self-repetition and mere mannerism, with affectation for sentiment and
vapidity for beauty, became the art of Guido. Some of these trade-works,
heads or half-figures, were turned out in three hours or even less. It
is said that, tardily wise, Reni left off gambling for nearly two
years; at last he relapsed, and his relapse was followed not long
afterwards by his death, caused by malignant fever. This event took
place in Bologna on the 18th of August 1642; he died in debt, but was
buried with great pomp in the church of S. Domenico.
Guido was personally modest, although he valued himself on his
position in the art, and would tolerate no slight in that relation; he
was extremely upright, temperate in diet, nice in his person and his
dress. He was fond of stately houses, but could feel also the charm of
solitude. In his temper there was a large amount of suspiciousness;
and the jealousy which his abilities and his successes excited, now
from the Caracci, now from Albani, now from the monopolizing league of
Neapolitan painters, may naturally have kept this feeling in active
exercise. Of his numerous scholars, Simone Cantarini, named II
Pesarese, counts as the most distinguished; he painted an admirable
head of Reni, now in the Bolognese Gallery. The portrait in the Uffizi
Gallery of Florence is from Reni's own hand. Two other good scholars
were Giacomo Semenza and Francesco Gessi.
The character of Guido's art is so well known as hardly to call for
detailed analysis, beyond what we have already intimated. His most
characteristic style exhibits a prepense ideal, of form rather than
character, with a slight mode of handling, and silvery, somewhat cold,
colour. In working from the nude he aimed at perfection of form,
especially marked in the hands and feet. But he was far from always
going to choice nature for his model; he transmuted _ad libitum_, and
painted, it is averred, a Magdalene of demonstrative charms from a
vulgar-looking colour-grinder. His best works have beauty, great
amenity, artistic feeling and high accomplishment of manner, all
alloyed by a certain core of commonplace; in the worst pictures the
commonplace swamps everything, and Guido has flooded European
galleries with trashy and empty pretentiousness, all the more noxious
in that its apparent grace of sentiment and form misleads the unwary
into approval, and the dilettante dabbler into cheap raptures. Both in
Rome and wherever else he worked he introduced increased softness of
style, which was then designated as the modern method. His pictures
are mostly Scriptural or mythologic in subject, and between two and
three hundred of them are to be found in various European
collections--more than a hundred of these containing life-sized
figures. The portraits which he executed are few--those of Sixtus V.,
Cardinal Spada and the so-called Beatrice Cenci being among the most
noticeable. The identity of the last-named portrait is very dubious;
it certainly cannot have been painted direct from Beatrice, who had
been executed in Rome before Guido ever resided there. Many etchings
are attributed to him--some from his own works, and some after other
masters; they are spirited, but rather negligent.
Of other works not already noticed, the following should be named:--in
Rome (the Vatican), the "Crucifixion of St Peter," an example of the
painter's earlier manner; in S. Lorenzo in Lucina, "Christ Crucified";
in Forli, the "Conception"; in Bologna, the "Alms of St Roch" (early),
the "Massacre of the Innocents," and the "Pieta, or Lament over the
Body of Christ" (in the church of the Mendicanti), which is by many
regarded as Guido's prime executive work; in the Dresden Gallery, an
"Ecce Homo"; in Milan (Brera Gallery), "Saints Peter and Paul"; in
Genoa (church of S. Ambrogio), the "Assumption of the Virgin"; in
Berlin, "St Paul the Hermit and St Anthony in the Wilderness." The
celebrated picture of "Fortune" (in the Capitol) is one of Reni's
finest treatments of female form; as a specimen of male form, the
"Samson Drinking from the Jawbone of an Ass" might be named beside it.
One of his latest works of mark is the "Ariadne," which used to be in
the Gallery of the Capitol. The Louvre contains twenty of his
pictures, the National Gallery of London seven, and others were once
there, now removed to other public collections. The most interesting
of the seven is the small "Coronation of the Virgin," painted on
copper, an elegantly finished work, more pretty than beautiful. It was
probably painted before the master quitted Bologna for Rome.
For the life and works of Guido Reni, see Bolognini, _Vita di Guido
Reni_ (1839); Passeri, _Vite de' pittori_; and Malvasia, _Felsina
Pittrice_; also Lanzi, _Storia pitiorica_. (W. M. R.)
GUIENNE, an old French province which corresponded roughly to the
_Aquitania Secunda_ of the Romans and the archbishopric of Bordeaux. In
the 12th century it formed with Gascony the duchy of Aquitaine, which
passed under the dominion of the kings of England by the marriage of
Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II.; but in the 13th, through the
conquests of Philip Augustus, Louis VIII. and Louis IX., it was confined
within the narrower limits fixed by the treaty of Paris (1259). It is at
this point that Guienne becomes distinct from Aquitaine. It then
comprised the Bordelais (the old countship of Bordeaux), the Bazadais,
part of Perigord, Limousin, Quercy and Rouergue, the Agenais ceded by
Philip III. (the Bold) to Edward I. (1279), and (still united with
Gascony) formed a duchy extending from the Charente to the Pyrenees.
This duchy was held on the terms of homage to the French kings, an
onerous obligation; and both in 1296 and 1324 it was confiscated by the
kings of France on the ground that there had been a failure in the
feudal duties. At the treaty of Bretigny (1360) Edward III. acquired the
full sovereignty of the duchy of Guienne, together with Aunis,
Saintonge, Angoumois and Poitou. The victories of du Guesclin and Gaston
Phoebus, count of Foix, restored the duchy soon after to its
13th-century limits. In 1451 it was conquered and finally united to the
French crown by Charles VII. In 1469 Louis XI. gave it in exchange for
Champagne and Brie to his brother Charles, duke of Berry, after whose
death in 1472 it was again united to the royal dominion. Guienne then
formed a government which from the 17th century onwards was united with
Gascony. The government of Guienne and Gascony, with its capital at
Bordeaux, lasted till the end of the _ancien regime_. Under the
Revolution the departments formed from Guienne proper were those of
Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Dordogne, Lot, Aveyron and the chief part of
Tarn-et-Garonne.
GUIGNES, JOSEPH DE (1721-1800), French orientalist, was born at Pontoise
on the 19th of October 1721. He succeeded Fourmont at the Royal Library
as secretary interpreter of the Eastern languages. A _Memoire historique
sur l'origine des Huns et des Turcs_, published by de Guignes in 1748,
obtained his admission to the Royal Society of London in 1752, and he
became an associate of the French Academy of Inscriptions in 1754. Two
years later he began to publish his learned and laborious _Histoire
generale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares
occidentaux_ (1756-1758); and in 1757 he was appointed to the chair of
Syriac at the College de France. He maintained that the Chinese nation
had originated in Egyptian colonization, an opinion to which, in spite
of every argument, he obstinately clung. He died in Paris in 1800. The
_Histoire_ had been translated into German by Dahnert (1768-1771). De
Guignes left a son, Christian Louis Joseph (1759-1845), who, after
learning Chinese from his father, went as consul to Canton, where he
spent seventeen years. On his return to France he was charged by the
government with the work of preparing a Chinese-French-Latin dictionary
(1813). He was also the author of a work of travels (_Voyages a Pekin,
Manille, et l'ile de France_, 1808).
See Querard, _La France litteraire_, where a list of the memoirs
contributed by de Guignes to the _Journal des savants_ is given.
GUILBERT, YVETTE (1869- ), French _diseuse_, was born in Paris. She
served for two years until 1885 in the Magasin du Printemps, when, on
the advice of the journalist, Edmond Stoullig, she trained for the stage
under Landrol. She made her debut at the Bouffes du Nord, then played at
the Varietes, and in 1890 she received a regular engagement at the
Eldorado to sing a couple of songs at the beginning of the performance.
She also sang at the Ambassadeurs. She soon won an immense vogue by her
rendering of songs drawn from Parisian lower-class life, or from the
humours of the Latin Quarter, "_Quatre z'etudiants_" and the "_Hotel du
numero trois_" being among her early triumphs. Her adoption of an
habitual yellow dress and long black gloves, her studied simplicity of
diction, and her ingenuous delivery of songs charged with _risque_
meaning, made her famous. She owed something to M. Xanrof, who for a
long time composed songs especially for her, and perhaps still more to
Aristide Bruant, who wrote many of her _argot_ songs. She made
successful tours in England, Germany and America, and was in great
request as an entertainer in private houses. In 1895 she married Dr M.
Schiller. In later years she discarded something of her earlier manner,
and sang songs of the "pompadour" and the "crinoline" period in costume.
She published the novels _La Vedette_ and _Les Demi-vieilles_, both in
1902.
GUILDFORD, a market town and municipal borough, and the county town of
Surrey, England, in the Guildford parliamentary division, 29 m. S.W. of
London by the London and South Western railway; served also by the
London, Brighton, and South Coast and the South Eastern and Chatham
railways. Pop. (1901) 15,938. It is beautifully situated on an
acclivity of the northern chalk Downs and on the river Wey. Its older
streets contain a number of picturesque gabled houses, with quaint
lattices and curious doorways. The ruins of a Norman castle stand finely
above the town and are well preserved; while the ground about them is
laid out as a public garden. Beneath the Angel Inn and a house in the
vicinity are extensive vaults, apparently of Early English date, and
traditionally connected with the castle. The church of St Mary is Norman
and Early English, with later additions and considerably restored; its
aisles retain their eastward apses and it contains many interesting
details. The church of St Nicholas is a modern building on an ancient
site, and that of Holy Trinity is a brick structure of 1763, with later
additions, also on the site of an earlier church, from which some of the
monuments are preserved, including that of Archbishop Abbot (1640). The
town hall dates from 1683 and contains a number of interesting pictures.
Other public buildings are the county hall, corn-market and institute
with museum and library. Abbot's Hospital, founded by Archbishop Abbot
in 1619, is a beautiful Tudor brick building. The county hospital (1866)
was erected as a memorial to Albert, Prince Consort. The Royal Free
Grammar School, founded in 1509, and incorporated by Edward VI., is an
important school for boys. At Cranleigh, 6 m. S.E., is a large
middle-class county school. The town has flour mills, iron foundries and
breweries, and a large trade in grain; while fairs are held for live
stock. There is a manufacture of gunpowder in the neighbouring village
of Chilworth. Guildford is a suffragan bishopric in the diocese of
Winchester. The borough is under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors.
Area, 2601 acres.
Guildford (Gyldeford, Geldeford), occurs among the possessions of King
Alfred, and was a royal borough throughout the middle ages. It probably
owed its rise to its position at the junction of trade routes. It is
first mentioned as a borough in 1131. Henry III. granted a charter to
the men of Guildford in 1256, by which they obtained freedom from toll
throughout the kingdom, and the privilege of having the county court
held always in their town. Edward III. granted charters to Guildford in
1340, 1346 and 1367; Henry VI. in 1423; Henry VII. in 1488. Elizabeth in
1580 confirmed earlier charters, and other charters were granted in
1603, 1626 and 1686. The borough was incorporated in 1486 under the
title of the mayor and good men of Guildford. During the middle ages the
government of the town rested with a powerful merchant gild. Two members
for Guildford sat in the parliament of 1295, and the borough continued
to return two representatives until 1867 when the number was reduced to
one. By the Redistribution Act of 1885 Guildford became merged in the
county for electoral purposes. Edward II. granted to the town the right
of having two fairs, at the feast of St Matthew (21st of September) and
at Trinity respectively. Henry VII. granted fairs on the feast of St
Martin (11th of November) and St George (23rd of April). Fairs in May
for the sale of sheep and in November for the sale of cattle are still
held. The market rights date at least from 1276, and three weekly
markets are still held for the sale of corn, cattle and vegetables
respectively. The cloth trade which formed the staple industry at
Guildford in the middle ages is now extinct.
GUILDHALL, the hall of the corporation of the city of London, England.
It faces a courtyard opening out of Gresham Street. The date of its
original foundation is not known. An ancient crypt remains, but the hall
has otherwise undergone much alteration. It was rebuilt in 1411,
beautified by the munificence of successive officials, damaged in the
Great Fire of 1666, and restored in 1789 by George Dance; while the hall
was again restored, with a new roof, in 1870. This fine chamber, 152 ft.
in length, is the scene of the state banquets and entertainments of the
corporation, and of the municipal meetings "in common hall." The
building also contains a council chamber and various court rooms, with a
splendid library, open to the public, a museum and art gallery
adjoining. The hall contains several monuments and two giant figures of
wood, known as Gog and Magog. These were set up in 1708, but the
appearance of giants in city pageants is of much earlier date.
GUILFORD, BARONS AND EARLS OF. FRANCIS NORTH, 1st Baron Guilford
(1637-1685), was the third son of the 4th Baron North (see NORTH,
BARONS), and was created Baron Guilford in 1683, after becoming lord
keeper in succession to Lord Nottingham. He had been an eminent lawyer,
solicitor-general (1671), attorney-general (1673), and chief-justice of
the common pleas (1675), and in 1679 was made a member of the council of
thirty and on its dissolution of the cabinet. He was a man of wide
culture and a stanch royalist. In 1672 he married Lady Frances Pope,
daughter and co-heiress of the earl of Downe, who inherited the Wroxton
estate; and he was succeeded as 2nd baron by his son Francis
(1673-1729), whose eldest son Francis (1704-1790), after inheriting
first his father's title as 3rd baron, and then (in 1734) the barony of
North from his kinsman the 6th Baron North, was in 1752 created 1st earl
of Guilford. His first wife was a daughter of the earl of Halifax, and
his son and successor Frederick was the English prime minister, commonly
known as Lord North, his courtesy title while the 1st earl was alive.
FREDERICK NORTH, 2nd earl of Guilford, but better known by his courtesy
title of Lord North (1732-1792), prime minister of England during the
important years of the American War, was born on the 13th of April 1732,
and after being educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, was sent to
make the grand tour of the continent. On his return he was, though only
twenty-two years of age, at once elected M.P. for Banbury, of which town
his father was high steward; and he sat for the same town in parliament
for nearly forty years. In 1759 he was chosen by the duke of Newcastle
to be a lord of the treasury, and continued in the same office under
Lord Bute and George Grenville till 1765. He had shown himself such a
ready debater that on the fall of the first Rockingham ministry in 1766
he was sworn of the privy council, and made paymaster-general by the
duke of Grafton. His reputation for ability grew so high that in
December 1767, on the death of the brilliant Charles Townshend, he was
made chancellor of the exchequer. His popularity with both the House of
Commons and the people continued to increase, for his temper was never
ruffled, and his quiet humour perpetually displayed; and, when the
retirement of the duke of Grafton was necessitated by the hatred he
inspired and the attacks of Junius, no better successor could be found
for the premiership than the chancellor of the exchequer. Lord North
succeeded the duke in March 1770, and continued in office for twelve of
the most eventful years in English history. George III. had at last
overthrown the ascendancy of the great Whig families, under which he had
so long groaned, and determined to govern as well as rule. He knew that
he could only govern by obtaining a majority in parliament to carry out
his wishes, and this he had at last obtained by a great expenditure of
money in buying seats and by a careful exercise of his patronage. But in
addition to a majority he must have a minister who would consent to act
as his lieutenant, and such a minister he found in Lord North. How a man
of undoubted ability such as Lord North was could allow himself to be
thus used as a mere instrument cannot be explained; but the confidential
tone of the king's letters seems to show that there was an unusual
intimacy between them, which may account for North's compliance. The
path of the minister in parliament was a hard one; he had to defend
measures which he had not designed, and of which he had not approved,
and this too in a House of Commons in which all the oratorical ability
of Burke and Fox was against him, and when he had only the purchased
help of Thurlow and Wedderburne to aid him. The most important events of
his ministry were those of the American War of Independence. He cannot
be accused of causing it, but one of his first acts was the retention of
the tea-duty, and he it was also who introduced the Boston Port Bill in
1774. When the war had broken out he earnestly counselled peace, and it
was only the earnest solicitations of the king not to leave his
sovereign again at the mercy of the Whigs that induced him to defend a
war which from 1779 he knew to be both hopeless and impolitic. At last,
in March 1782, he insisted on resigning after the news of Cornwallis's
surrender at Yorktown, and no man left office more blithely. He had been
well rewarded for his assistance to the king: his children had good
sinecures; his half-brother, Brownlow North (1741-1820), was bishop of
Winchester; he himself was chancellor of the university of Oxford,
lord-lieutenant of the county of Somerset, and had finally been made a
knight of the Garter, an honour which has only been conferred on three
other members of the House of Commons, Sir R. Walpole, Lord Castlereagh
and Lord Palmerston. Lord North did not remain long out of office, but
in April 1783 formed his famous coalition with his old subordinate, C.
J. Fox (q.v.), and became secretary of state with him under the nominal
premiership of the duke of Portland. He was probably urged to this
coalition with his old opponent by a desire to show that he could act
independently of the king, and was not a mere royal mouthpiece. The
coalition ministry went out of office on Fox's India Bill in December
1783, and Lord North, who was losing his sight, then finally gave up
political ambition. He played, when quite blind, a somewhat important
part in the debates on the Regency Bill in 1789, and in the next year
succeeded his father as earl of Guilford. He did not long survive his
elevation, and died peacefully on the 5th of August 1792. It is
impossible to consider Lord North a great statesman, but he was a most
good-tempered and humorous member of the House of Commons. In a time of
unexampled party feeling he won the esteem and almost the love of his
most bitter opponents. Burke finely sums up his character in his _Letter
to a Noble Lord_: "He was a man of admirable parts, of general
knowledge, of a versatile understanding, fitted for every sort of
business; of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and
with a mind most disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself,"
he continues, "by a weak adulation, and not to honour the memory of a
great man, to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and spirit
of command which the times required."
By his wife Anne (d. 1797), daughter of George Speke of White
Lackington, Somerset, Guilford had four sons, the eldest of whom, George
Augustus (1757-1802), became 3rd earl on his father's death. This earl
was a member of parliament from 1778 to 1792 and was a member of his
father's ministry and also of the royal household; he left no sons when
he died on the 20th of April 1802 and was succeeded in the earldom by
his brother Francis (1761-1817), who also left no sons. The youngest
brother, Frederick (1766-1827), who now became 5th earl of Guilford, was
remarkable for his great knowledge and love of Greece and of the Greek
language. He had a good deal to do with the foundation of the Ionian
university at Corfu, of which he was the first chancellor and to which
he was very liberal. Guilford, who was governor of Ceylon from 1798 to
1805, died unmarried on the 14th of October 1827. His cousin, Francis
(1772-1861), a son of Brownlow North, bishop of Winchester from 1781 to
1820, was the 6th earl, and the latter's descendant, Frederick George
(b. 1876), became 8th earl in 1886.
On the death of the 3rd earl of Guilford in 1802 the barony of North
fell into abeyance between his three daughters, the survivor of whom,
Susan (1797-1884). wife of John Sidney Doyle, who took the name of
North, was declared by the House of Lords in 1841 to be Baroness North,
and the title passed to her son, William Henry John North, the 11th
baron (b. 1836) (see NORTH, BARONS).
For the Lord Keeper Guilford see the _Lives_ by the Hon. R. North,
edited by A. Jessopp (1890); and E. Foss, _The Judges of England_,
vol. vii. (1848-1864). For the prime minister, Lord North, see
_Correspondence of George III._ with Lord North, edited by W. B. Donne
(1867); Horace Walpole, _Journal of the Reign of George III._ (1859),
and _Memoirs of the Reign of George III._, edited by G. F. R. Barker
(1894); Lord Brougham, _Historical Sketches of Statesmen_, vol. i.
(1839); Earl Stanhope, _History of England_ (1858); Sir T. E. May,
_Constitutional History of England_ (1863-1865); and W. E. H. Lecky,
_History of England in the 18th century_ (1878-1890).
GUILFORD, a township, including a borough of the same name, in New Haven
county, Connecticut, U.S.A., on Long Island Sound and at the mouth of
the Menunkatuck or West river, about 16 m. E. by S. of New Haven. Pop.
of the township, including the borough (1900), 2785, of whom 387 were
foreign-born; (1910) 3001; pop. of the borough (1910), 1608. The borough
is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. On a plain is
the borough green of nearly 12 acres, which is shaded by some fine old
elms and other trees, and in which there is a soldiers' monument. About
the green are several churches and some of the better residences. On an
eminence commanding a fine view of the Sound is an old stone house,
erected in 1639 for a parsonage, meeting-house and fortification; it was
made a state museum in 1898, when extensive alterations were made to
restore the interior to its original appearance. The Point of Rocks, in
the harbour, is an attractive resort during the summer season. There are
about 12 ft. of water on the harbour bar at high tide. The principal
industries of Guilford are coastwise trade, the manufacture of iron
castings, brass castings, wagon wheels and school furniture, and the
canning of vegetables. Near the coast are quarries of fine granite; the
stone for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe's Island, in
New York Harbour, was taken from them.
Guilford was founded In 1639 as an independent colony by a company of
twenty-five or more families from Kent, Surrey and Sussex, England,
under the leadership of Rev. Henry Whitfield (1597-1657). While still on
shipboard twenty-five members of the company signed a plantation
covenant whereby they agreed not to desert the plantation which they
were about to establish. Arriving at New Haven early in July 1639, they
soon began negotiations with the Indians for the purchase of land, and
on the 29th of September a deed was signed by which the Indians conveyed
to them the territory between East River and Stony Creek for "12 coates,
12 Fathoms of Wampam, 12 glasses (mirrors), 12 payer of shooes, 12
Hatchetts, 12 paire of Stockings, 12 Hooes, 4 kettles, 12 knives, 12
Hatts, 12 Porringers, 12 spoones, and 2 English coates." Other purchases
of land from the Indians were made later. Before the close of the year
the company removed from New Haven and established the new colony; it
was known by the Indian name Menuncatuck for about four years and the
name Guilford (from Guildford, England) was then substituted. As a
provisional arrangement, civil power for the administration of justice
and the preservation of the peace was vested in four persons until such
time as a church should be organized. This was postponed until 1643 when
considerations of safety demanded that the colony should become a member
of the New Haven Jurisdiction, and then only to meet the requirements
for admission to this union were the church and church state modelled
after those of New Haven. Even then, though suffrage was restricted to
church members, Guilford planters who were not church members were
required to attend town meetings and were allowed to offer objections to
any proposed order or law. From 1661 until the absorption of the members
of the New Haven Jurisdiction by Connecticut, in 1664, William Leete
(1611-1683), one of the founders of Guilford, was governor of the
Jurisdiction, and under his leadership Guilford took a prominent part in
furthering the submission to Connecticut, which did away with the church
state and the restriction of suffrage to freemen. Guilford was the
birthplace of Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), the poet; of Samuel
Johnson (1696-1771), the first president of King's College (now Columbia
University); of Abraham Baldwin (1754-1807), prominent as a statesman
and the founder of the University of Georgia; and of Thomas Chittenden,
the first governor of Vermont. The borough was incorporated in 1815.
See B. C. Steiner, _A History of the Plantation of Menunca-Tuck and of
the Original Town of Guilford, Connecticut_ (Baltimore, 1897), and
_Proceedings at the Celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the
Settlement of Guilford, Connecticut_ (New Haven, 1889).
GUILLAUME, JEAN BAPTISTE CLAUDE EUGENE (1822-1905), French sculptor, was
born at Montbard on the 4th of July 1822, and studied under Cavelier,
Millet, and Barrias, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which he entered in
1841, and where he gained the _prix de Rome_ in 1845 with "Theseus
finding on a rock his Father's Sword." He became director of the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts in 1864, and director-general of Fine Arts from 1878 to
1879, when the office was suppressed. Many of his works have been bought
for public galleries, and his monuments are to be found in the public
squares of the chief cities of France. At Rheims there is his bronze
statue of "Colbert," at Dijon his "Rameau" monument. The Luxembourg
Museum has his "Anacreon" (1852), "Les Gracques" (1853), "Faucheur"
(1855), and the marble bust of "Mgr Darboy"; the Versailles Museum the
portrait of "Thiers"; the Sorbonne Library the marble bust of "Victor le
Clerc, doyen de la faculte des lettres." Other works of his are at
Trinity Church, St Germain l'Auxerrois, and the church of St Clotilde,
Paris. Guillaume was a prolific writer, principally on sculpture and
architecture of the Classic period and of the Italian Renaissance. He
was elected member of the Academie Francaise in 1862, and in 1891 was
sent to Rome as director of the Academie de France in that city. He was
also elected an honorary member of the Royal Academy, London, 1869, on
the institution of that class.
GUILLAUME DE LORRIS (fl. 1230), the author of the earlier section of the
_Roman de la rose_, derives his surname from a small town about
equidistant from Montargis and Gien, in the present department of
Loiret. This and the fact of his authorship may be said to be the only
things positively known about him. The rubric of the poem, where his own
part finishes, attributes Jean de Meun's continuation to a period forty
years later than William's death and the consequent interruption of the
romance. Arguing backwards, this death used to be put at about 1260; but
Jean de Meun's own work has recently been dated earlier, and so the
composition of the first part has been thrown back to a period before
1240. The author represents himself as having dreamed the dream which
furnished the substance of the poem in his twentieth year, and as having
set to work to "rhyme it" five years later. The later and longer part of
the _Roman_ shows signs of greater intellectual vigour and wider
knowledge than the earlier and shorter, but Guillaume de Lorris is to
all appearance more original. The great features of his four or five
thousand lines are, in the first place, the extraordinary vividness and
beauty of his word-pictures, in which for colour, freshness and
individuality he has not many rivals except in the greatest masters,
and, secondly, the fashion of allegorical presentation, which, hackneyed
and wearisome as it afterwards became, was evidently in his time new and
striking. There are of course traces of it before, as in some romances,
such as those of Raoul de Houdenc, in the troubadours, and in other
writers; but it was unquestionably Guillaume de Lorris who fixed the
style.
For an attempt to identify Guillaume de Lorris see L. Jarry,
_Guillaume de Lorris et le testament d'Alphonse de Poitiers_ (1881).
Also Paulin Paris in the _Hist. litt. de la France_, vol. xxiii.
GUILLAUME DE PALERME (WILLIAM OF PALERNE), hero of romance. The French
verse romance was written at the desire of a Countess Yolande, generally
identified with Yolande, daughter of Baldwin IV., count of Flanders. The
English poem in alliterative verse was written about 1350 by a poet
called William, at the desire of Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, (d.
1361). Guillaume, a foundling supposed to be of low degree, is brought
up at the court of the emperor of Rome, and loves his daughter Melior
who is destined for a Greek prince. The lovers flee into the woods
disguised in bear-skins. Alfonso, who is Guillaume's cousin and a
Spanish prince, has been changed into a wolf by his step-mother's
enchantments. He provides food and protection for the fugitives, and
Guillaume eventually triumphs over Alfonso's father, and wins back from
him his kingdom. The benevolent werwolf is disenchanted, and marries
Guillaume's sister.
See _Guillaume de Palerne_, ed. H. Michelant (Soc. d. anc. textes fr.,
1876); _Hist. litt. de la France_, xxii. 829; _William of Palerme_,
ed. Sir F. Madden (Roxburghe Club, 1832), and W. W. Skeat (E. E. Text
Soc., extra series No. 1, 1867); M. Kaluza, in _Eng. Studien_
(Heilbronn, iv. 196). The prose version of the French romance, printed
by N. Bonfons, passed through several editions.
GUILLAUME D'ORANGE (d. 812), also known as Guillaume Fierabrace, St
Guillaume de Gellone, and the Marquis au court nez, was the central
figure of the southern cycle of French romance, called by the
_trouveres_ the _geste_ of Garin de Monglane. The cycle of Guillaume has
more unity than the other great cycles of Charlemagne or of Doon de
Mayence, the various poems which compose it forming branches of the main
story rather than independent epic poems. There exist numerous cyclic
MSS. in which there is an attempt at presenting a continuous _histoire
poetique_ of Guillaume and his family. MS. Royal 20 D xi. in the British
Museum contains eighteen _chansons_ of the cycle. Guillaume, son of
Thierry or Theodoric and of Alde, daughter of Charles Martel, was born
in the north of France about the middle of the 8th century. He became
one of the best soldiers and trusted counsellors of Charlemagne, and In
790 was made count of Toulouse, when Charles's son Louis the Pious was
put under his charge. He subdued the Gascons, and defended Narbonne
against the infidels. In 793 Hescham, the successor of Abd-al-Rahman
II., proclaimed a holy war against the Christians, and collected an army
of 100,000 men, half of which was directed against the kingdom of the
Asturias, while the second invaded France, penetrating as far as
Narbonne. Guillaume met the invaders near the river Orbieux, at
Villedaigne, where he was defeated, but only after an obstinate
resistance which so far exhausted the Saracens that they were compelled
to retreat to Spain. He took Barcelona from the Saracens in 803, and in
the next year founded the monastery of Gellone (now Saint Guilhem-le
Desert), of which he became a member in 806. He died there in the odour
of sanctity on the 28th of May 812.
No less than thirteen historical personages bearing the name of William
(Guillaume) have been thought by various critics to have their share in
the formation of the legend. William, count of Provence, son of Boso
II., again delivered southern France from a Saracen invasion by his
victory at Fraxinet in 973, and ended his life in a cloister. William
Tow-head (_Tete d'etoupe_), duke of Aquitaine (d. 983), showed a
fidelity to Louis IV. paralleled by Guillaume d'Orange's service to
Louis the Pious. The cycle of twenty or more _chansons_ which form the
_geste_ of Guillaume reposes on the traditions of the Arab invasions of
the south of France, from the battle of Poitiers (732) under Charles
Martel onwards, and on the French conquest of Catalonia from the
Saracens. In the Norse version of the Carolingian epic Guillaume appears
in his proper historical environment, as a chief under Charlemagne; but
he plays a leading part in the _Couronnement Looys_, describing the
formal associations of Louis the Pious in the empire at Aix (813, the
year after Guillaume's death), and after the battle of Aliscans it is
from the emperor Louis that he seeks reinforcements. This anachronism
arises from the fusion of the epic Guillaume with the champion of Louis
IV., and from the fact that he was the military and civil chief of Louis
the Pious, who was titular king of Aquitaine under his father from the
time when he was three years old. The inconsistencies between the real
and the epic Guillaume are often left standing in the poems. The
personages associated with Guillaume in his Spanish wars belong to
Provence, and have names common in the south. The most famous of these
are Beuves de Comarchis, Ernaud de Girone, Garin d'Anseun, Aimer le
chetif, so called from his long captivity with the Saracens. The
separate existence of Aimer, who refused to sleep under a roof, and
spent his whole life in warring against the infidel, is proved. He was
Hadhemar, count of Narbonne, who in 809 and 810 was one of the leaders
sent by Louis against Tortosa. No doubt the others had historical
prototypes. In the hands of the _trouveres_ they became all brothers of
Guillaume, and sons of Aymeri de Narbonne,[1] the grandson of Garin de
Monglane, and his wife Ermenjart. Nevertheless when Guillaume seeks help
from Louis the emperor he finds all his relations in Laon, in accordance
with his historic Frankish origin.
The central fact of the _geste_ of Guillaume is the battle of the
Archamp or Aliscans, in which perished Guillaume's heroic nephew, Vezian
or Vivien, a second Roland. At the eleventh hour he summoned Guillaume
to his help against the overwhelming forces of the Saracens. Guillaume
arrived too late to help Vivien, was himself defeated, and returned
alone to his wife Guibourc, leaving his knights all dead or prisoners.
This event is related in a Norman-French transcript of an old French
_chanson de geste_, the _Chancun de Willame_--which only was brought to
light in 1901 at the sale of the books of Sir Henry Hope Edwardes--in
the _Covenant Vivien_, a recension of an older French chanson and in
_Aliscans_. _Aliscans_ continues the story, telling how Guillaume
obtained reinforcements from Laon, and how, with the help of the comic
hero, the scullion Rainouart or Rennewart, he avenged the defeat of
Aliscans and his nephew's death. Rainouart turns out to be the brother
of Guillaume's wife Guibourc, who was before her marriage the Saracen
princess and enchantress Orable. Two other poems are consecrated to his
later exploits, _La Bataille Loquifer_, the work of a French Sicilian
poet, Jendeu de Brie (fl. 1170), and _Le Moniage Rainouart_. The
staring-point of Herbert le duc of Dammartin (fl. 1170) in _Foucon de
Candie_ (Candie=Gandia in Spain?) is the return of Guillaume from the
battle; and the Italian compilation _I Nerbonesi_, based on these and
other _chansons_, seems in some cases to represent an earlier tradition
than the later of the French _chansons_, although its author Andrea di
Barberino wrote towards the end of the 14th century. The minnesinger
Wolfram von Eschenbach based his _Willehalm_ on a French original which
must have differed from the versions we have. The variations in the
story of the defeat of Aliscans or the Archant, and the numerous
inconsistencies of the narratives even when considered separately have
occupied many critics. Aliscans (Aleschans, Alyscamps, Elysii Campi)
was, however, generally taken to represent the battle of Villedaigne,
and to take its name from the famous cemetery outside Arles. Wolfram von
Eschenbach even mentions the tombs which studded the field of battle.
Indications that this tradition was not unassailable were not lacking
before the discovery of the _Chancun de Willame_, which, although
preserved in a very corrupt form, represents the earliest recension we
have of the story, dating at least from the beginning of the 12th
century. It seems probable that the Archant was situated in Spain near
Vivien's headquarters at Tortosa, and that Guillaume started from
Barcelona, not from Orange, to his nephew's help. The account of the
disaster was modified by successive _trouveres_, and the uncertainty of
their methods may be judged by the fact that in the _Chancun de Willame_
two consecutive accounts (11. 450-1326 and 11. 1326-2420) of the fight
appear to be set side by side as if they were separate episodes. _Le
Couronnement Looys_, already mentioned, _Le Charroi de Nimes_ (12th
century) in which Guillaume, who had been forgotten in the distribution
of fiefs, enumerates his services to the terrified Louis, and _Aliscans_
(12th century), with the earlier _Chancun_, are among the finest of the
French epic poems. The figure of Vivien is among the most heroic
elaborated by the _trouveres_, and the giant Rainouart has more than a
touch of Rabelaisian humour.
The _chansons de geste_ of the cycle of Guillaume are: _Enfances Garin
de Monglane_ (15th century) and _Garin de Monglane_ (13th century), on
which is founded the prose romance of _Guerin de Monglane_, printed in
the 15th century by Jehan Trepperel and often later; _Girars de Viane_
(13th century, by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube), ed. P. Tarbe (Reims,
1850); _Hernaut de Beaulande_ (fragment 14th century); _Renier de
Gennes_, which only survives in its prose form; _Aymeri de Narbonne_
(c. 1210) by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, ed. L. Demaison (Soc. des anc.
textes fr., Paris, 2 vols., 1887); _Les Enfances Guillaume_ (13th
century); _Les Narbonnais_, ed. H. Suchier (Soc. des anc. textes fr.,
2 vols., 1898), with a Latin fragment dating from the 11th century,
preserved at the Hague; _Le Couronnement Looys_ (ed. E. Langlois,
1888), _Le Charroi de Nimes_, _La Prise d'Orange_, _Le Covenant
Vivien_, _Aliscans_, which were edited by W. J. A. Jonckbloet in vol.
i. of his _Guillaume d'Orange_ (The Hague, 1854); a critical text of
_Aliscans_ (Halle, 1903, vol. i.) is edited by E. Wienbeck, W.
Hartnacke and P. Rasch; _Loquifer_ and _Le Moniage Rainouart_ (12th
century); _Bovon de Commarchis_ (13th century), recension of the
earlier Siege de Barbastre, by Adenes li Rois, ed. A. Scheler
(Brussels, 1874); _Guibert d'Andrenas_ (13th century); _La Prise de
Cordres_ (13th century); _La Mort Aimeri de Narbonne_, ed. J. Couraye
de Parc (Soc. des Anciens Textes francais, Paris, 1884); _Foulque de
Candie_ (ed. P. Tarbe, Reims, 1860); _Le Moniage Guillaume_ (12th
century); _Les Enfances Vivien_ (ed. C. Wahlund and H. v. Feilitzen,
Upsala and Paris, 1895); _Chancun de Willame_ (Chiswick Press, 1903),
described by P. Meyer in _Romania_ (xxxiii. 597-618). The ninth branch
of the _Karlamagnus Saga_ (ed. C. R. Unger, Christiania, 1860) deals
with the _geste_ of Guillaume. _I Nerbonesi_ is edited by J. G. Isola
(Bologna, 1877, &c.).
See C. Revillout, _Etude hist. et litt. sur la vita sancti Willelmi_
(Montpellier, 1876); W. J. A. Jonckbloet, _Guillaume d'Orange_ (2
vols., 1854, The Hague); L. Clarus (ps. for W. Volk), _Herzog Wilhelm
von Aquitanien_ (Munster, 1865); P. Paris, _in Hist. litt. de la
France_ (vol. xxii., 1852); L. Gautier, _Epopees francaises_ (vol.
iv., 2nd ed., 1882); R. Weeks, _The newly discovered Chancun de
Willame_ (Chicago, 1904); A. Thomas, _Etudes romanes_ (Paris, 1891),
on Vivien; L. Saltet, "S. Vidian de Martres-Tolosanes" in _Bull. de
litt. eccles._ (Toulouse, 1902); P. Becker, _Die altfrz. Wilhelmsage
u. ihre Beziehung zu Wilhelm dem Heiligen_ (Halle, 1896), and _Der
sudfranzosische Sagenkreis und seine Probleme_ (Halle, 1898); A.
Jeanroy, "Etudes sur le cycle de Guillaume au court nez" (in
_Romania_, vols. 25 and 26, 1896-1897); H. Suchier, "Recherches sur
... Guillaume d'Orange" (in _Romania_, vol. 32, 1903). The conclusions
arrived at by earlier writers are combated by Joseph Bedier in the
first volume, "Le Cycle de Guillaume d'Orange" (1908), of his
_Legendes epiques_, in which he constructs a theory that the cycle of
Guillaume d'Orange grew up round the various shrines on the pilgrim
route to Saint Gilles of Provence and Saint James of Compostella--that
the _chansons de geste_ were, in fact, the product of 11th and 12th
century trouveres, exploiting local ecclesiastical traditions, and
were not developed from earlier poems dating back perhaps to the
lifetime of Guillaume of Toulouse, the saint of Gellone.