54 



GAIRDNER 



GAIUS 



to art in every form. Fond of company, he loved 

 to associate with players and musicians ; he was 

 himself a performer on various instruments, and 

 for him Garrick was ' the greatest creature living, 

 in every respect, worth studying in every action.' 

 Quick of temper, he was also right generous both 

 of hand and heart ; and when the long-estranged 

 Reynolds visited him on his death-bed, Gains- 

 borough parted from him with the often-quoted 

 words of perfect brotherhood : ' We are all going to 

 heaven, and Van Dyck is of the company.' 



The art of Gainsborough, compared with that of 

 his great contemporary Reynolds, is less scholarly 

 and more instinctive ; his portraits show less deep 

 insight into character than those of his rival, but 

 they have perhaps even more of grace, give perhaps 

 even more vivid glimpses of the shifting gesture 

 and expression of the moment. Gainsborough 

 never studied abroad, never left his native country ; 

 and though, at various times, he copied from 

 Rubens, Teniers, Vandyke, and Rembrandt, he 

 did so with no merely imitative aim. Nature her- 

 self was always before his eye, and nature he 

 interpreted in a manner most individual. His 

 earlier works are firmly and directly handled, 

 with definite combinations of positive colouring ; 

 but as his art gained in power he sought more 

 and more for harmony of total effect, for gradation 

 and play of subtly interwoven hues ; painting his 

 flesh thinly, but with great certainty of touch, 

 with exquisite refinement of modelling, and with 

 the most delicate transparency in the shadows ; 

 and relieving it by the shifting sheen of his 

 draperies, and by backgrounds of swiftly struck, 

 loosely touched foliage, and of softly blending 

 tints of sky. While his landscapes were unduly 

 preferred to his portraits by the perhaps not un- 

 prejudiced judgment of Reynolds, they too 

 possess admirable artistic qualities, in their free- 

 dom of handling and harmony of colour and effect. 

 Though, as Mr Ruskin has truly noted, they are 

 ' rather motives of feeling and colour than earnest 

 studies,' they have still value as faithful records of 

 a distinctly personal impression of nature ; and 

 while Richard Wilson developed with delicate skill 

 the traditions of Claude, Gainsborough may, in 

 some sense, be regarded as the forerunner of 

 Constable, as the founder of the freer and more 

 individual landscape art of our own time. 



Gainsborough is excellently represented in the 

 National Gallery, London, by fourteen works, in- 

 cluding portraits of 'Mrs Siddons,' of 'Orpin the 

 Parish Clerk,' and of ' Ralph Schomberg, M.P.,' 

 and 'The Market Cart,' and 'The Watering- 

 place ; ' in the National Portrait Gallery, London, 

 by five works ; in the Dulwich Gallery by six 

 works, including the portraits of ' Mrs Sheridan ' 

 and ' Mrs Tickell ; ' and in the National Gallery 

 of Scotland by the portrait of the ' Hon. Mrs 

 Graham.' An exhibition of over 200 of his 

 works was held in London in 1885. ' The Market 

 Cart ' fetched 4500 guineas in 1894. ' The Countess 

 of Mulgrave,' sold in 1880 for 1000, brought 

 10,000 in 1895. 



See Life by Fulcher (1856), Wedmore's Studies (1876), 

 Brock-Arnold's Gainsborouc/k and Constable (1881), the 

 CcitaloptU by Home (1891), Armstrong's Portfolio mono- 

 graph '(1896), and the book by Mrs Bell (1897 ). 



Gairdner, SIR WILLIAM TENNANT, K.C.B., 

 was born in 1824, son of Dr John Gairdner ( 1790- 

 1876), and nephew of William Gairdner (1793- 

 1867 ), both of whom were born near Ayr and 

 studied in Edinburgh the latter (who wrote on 

 gout) settling in London. He graduated M.D. at 

 Edinburgh in 1845, becoming F.R.C. P. in 1850, and 

 afterwards LL.D. of Edinburgh, and in 1898 

 K.C.B. From 1862 till his retirement in 1900 

 he occupied the chair of Practice of Medicine in 



Glasgow University, was President of the Medical 

 Association there in 1888, and is physician in 

 ordinary to the Queen for Scotland. He has con- 

 tributed many valuable papers to the special 

 medical journals, arid was an esteemed contributor 

 to the first edition of this Encyclopedia. Among 

 his books are Pathological Anatomy of Bronchitis 

 and Diseases of the Lungs ( 1850 ), Notes on Pericar- 

 d#(1861 ), Clinical Medicine ( 1862), Public Health 

 in relation to Air and Water (1862), On some 

 Modern Aspects of Insanity, Lectures to Prac- 

 titioners (in conjunction with Dr J. Coa.ts, 1888), 

 The Physician as Naturalist (1889). JAMES 

 GAIRDNER, historian, a brother of the foregoing, 

 was born at Edinburgh, March 22, 1828, attended 

 lectures in the university there, and at eighteen as 

 a clerk entered the Public Record office in London, 

 where he became assistant-keeper in 1859. He has 

 distinguished himself by the rare combination of 

 profound erudition, patient accuracy, and judicial 

 temper which he has shown in the editing of 

 a long series of historical documents : Memorials 

 of Henry the Seventh (1858); Letters and Papers 

 illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III. and 

 Henry VII. (2 vols. 1861-63). in the Rolls series; 

 the continuation from vol. v. onwards of the late 

 Professor Brewer's Calendaf of Letters and Papers, 

 Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry 

 VIII. (9 vols. 1862-86); and Historical Collec- 

 tions of a London Citizen (1876), and Three Fif- 

 teenth-Century Chronicles (1880), for the Camden 

 Society series. Equally valuable are the books 

 addressed to a wider audience : an edition of the 

 Paston Letters in Prqfessor A rber's series (3 vols. 

 1872-75) ; The Houses of Lancaster and York, in 

 ' Epochs of Modern History ' (1874) ; the Life and 

 Reign of Richard III. ( 1878) ; England in ' Early 

 Chroniclers of Europe' (1879); Studies in English 

 History (1881), a series of essays written in con- 

 junction with Spedding ; and Henry VII. ( ' States- 

 men' series, 1889). He was made C.B. in 1900. 



Gairlocll, an inlet of the sea on the west coast 

 of Ross-shire, 6 miles in length, which gives name 

 to a parish and village. See J. H. Dixon, The 

 Gairloch (1888). 



Gaisford, THOMAS, D.D., a distinguished 

 classical scholar, was born in 1780 at Ilford, Wilts. 

 He graduated at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1804. 

 He published an elaborate edition of the Enchiridion 

 of Hephfpstion, was public examiner 1809-10, and 

 in 1811 was appointed regius professor of Greek 

 at Oxford. From 1819 to 1847 he was rector of 

 Westwell, Oxfordshire. In 1831 he became dean 

 of Christ Church. He died in 1855, and in his 

 memory a Greek prize was founded at Oxford. 

 Among his classical publications are an edition of 

 the Lexicon of Suidas ( 1834), and the Etymologicon 

 Magnum (1848). 



Gains, a Roman jurist, who nourished between 

 130 and 180 A.D. Of his personal history next to 

 nothing is known. ' Before the revision of the 

 Roman laws, and the reform of legal studies by 

 Justinian, the Institutes of Gaius, as well as four 

 other of his treatises, were the received text-books 

 of the schools of law. His Institutes, moreover, 

 formed the groundwork of the Institutes of Jus- 

 tinian. The other works of Gaius, of which we 

 have little more than the titles, were largely used 

 in the compilation of the Digest, which contains no 

 fewer than 535 extracts from his writings. The 

 Institutes was, like the others, almost completely 

 lost, until in 1816 Niebuhr discovered it at Verona, 

 under a palimpsest of the Epistles of Jerome. This 

 discovery threw a flood of light upon the history 

 of the early development of Roman law, especially 

 upon the forms of procedure in civil actions. The 

 first book treated of status and family relations ; 



