GILHKRT 



GILBK11T ISLANDS 



209 



law for a r.u.-.-i of arm*, he did Mich good service 

 against the Irish n-U-ls as earned him knight- 



I I urn! the government "' Mimster (1570), 



.iiii-r svliicli lie saw five years' campaigning in tin- 

 Netherlands. In 1570 appeared his DMOOMTM on 

 'i .\ ril, ! lii /in/in, which was puhlMn-d 



by George Gascoigne, without his knowledge; two 

 n later he obtained u royal patent 'to discover 

 uiiil occupy remote heathen lands not actually 

 possessed of any <'lnMiari piinr.- or people.' \Vitli 

 liis younger half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, he 

 sailed in ipiest of the 'Unknown Goal;' hut this 

 expedition ( l.'tTs 7!>), which had cost all his own 

 and liis wife's estates. \\a- frustrated by internal 

 dimensions, tempests, and a smart brush with the 

 Spaniards. Nothing daunted, he once more set 

 -ail from Plymouth in June 1583, and in August 

 landed in Newfound land, of which he took formal 

 possession for Queen Elizabeth. But, sailing south- 

 wards, he lost off Cape Breton the largest of the 

 three vessels left out of five, so was forced to steer 

 homewards with the Golden Hind and the Squirrel, 

 the latter a ' frigate ' of only ten' tons burden. ' On 

 Monday the 9th September,' writes the Golden 

 H/iiiCs captain, ' the Squirrel was near cast away, 

 yet at that time recovered ; and giving forth signs 

 of joy, the general, sitting abaft with a book in his 

 hand, cried out unto us in the Hind, "We are as 

 near to heaven by sea as by land." The same 

 Monday night the frigate's lights went suddenly 

 out, and it was devoured and swallowed up by the 

 sea. ' So died Sir Humphrey Gilbert. See Hakluyt's 

 Collection, vol. iii., and Lives of Raleigh by Tytler, 

 St John, and Edwards. 



Gilbert* SIR JOHN, English painter, was born 

 in 1817 at Blackheath, near London. School-days 

 over, he was placed at a mercantile house in the 

 City, but after two weary years was pronounced to 

 \te wholly unfit for business, and allowed to follow 

 liis true vocation art. Save for some lessons 

 from Lance, the fruit-painter, he taught himself ; 

 his masters, the old masters Rubens, Rembrandt, 

 Velasquez. In 1836 he began to exhibit both in 

 oil and water-colours ; and in 1852 he was elected 

 an associate, in 1853 a member, in 1871 the presi- 

 dent of the Society of Painters in Water-colours, 

 receiving soon after the honour of knighthood. He 

 also became an A.R.A. in 1872, an R.A. in 1876, 

 and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. 'The 

 Scott of painting' liked historical, chivalric, anti- 

 quarian subjects ; and liis style is familiar through 

 countless wood-engravings in the Illustrated London 

 News, and in editions of Shakespeare, Scott's 

 Poems, Don Quixote, &c. His oil-paintings include 

 'Don Quixote,' 'Gil Bias,' 'Murder of Becket,' 

 'Joan of Arc,' 'Crusaders,' ' Wolsey at Leicester,' 

 and ' Morning of Agincourt.' He died 5th October 

 1897, leaving 250,000. He had in 1893 made over 

 to the nation his fine collection of paintings, to be 

 distributed amongst London and other corporations. 



Gilbert, WILLIAM, author of a celebrated 

 treatise on magnetism, was born in 1540 at Col- 

 chester. A member, and subsequently fellow of 

 St John's College, Cambridge, he graduated in 

 1560, and in 1573 settled in London to practise as 

 a physician. Eventually Elizabeth made him her 

 court physician, and the same office was confirmed 

 to him by James I. on his accession to the throne 

 of England. After holding various offices in the 

 College of Physicians, he was finally elected ite 

 president in 1600. He died a bachelor, 30th 

 November 1603, either at Colchester or at London ; 

 he was buried at Colchester in the church of the 

 Holy Trinity. His leisure time was largely given 

 to the study of magnetism and chemistry. In the 

 former subject he carried on some notable re- 

 searches, principally contained in De Magnete, 

 222 



Mn>iit. fi,-,\,f,i,- Corporibut, ct Magno Magnets 

 '/'/'/are (1600), and the posthumously published 

 De Mundo nostro Sublumtri I'liilonojfhiii A'ova 

 ( 1 1 '''! ). In the former In- e-tahluthed tin- magnetic 

 nature of the earth, which he regarded a* one great 

 magnet ; and he conjectured that terrestrial mag 

 net ism and electricity were two allied emanationK 

 of a single force a view which wan only demon- 

 strated with scientific strict newt more than two 

 centuries afterwards by Oersted and Faraday. 

 Gilliert was the first to use the terms 'electricity,' 

 'electric force,' and 'electric attraction,' and to 

 point out that amber in not the only sulwtaii"- 

 which when rubln-d attracts light objects, but that, 

 the same faculty Itelong* to the resins, Healing- 

 wax, sulphur, glass, &<. ; and he describes how t< 

 measure the excited electricity by means of an iron 

 needle moving freely on a point. He also invented 

 two instruments for finding latitude with the help 

 of astronomical observations. See memoir prefixed 

 to P. F. Mottelay's translation of De Magnete ( 1893). 

 Gilbert, WILLIAM SCHWENCK, dramatist, was 

 born in London, 18th November 1836, the son of 

 William Gilbert (1804-89), who published thirty 

 novels, tales, &c. He took the degree of B.A. a't 

 London university, was a clerk in the Privy-council 

 Office from 1857 to 1862, and in 1864 was called to 

 the bar. He contributed to the magazines, and 

 was on the staff of Fun, in whose columns his Bub 

 1'xilltids first appeared. His burlesque, Dulcamara 

 (1866), was followed by other burlesques, dramas, 

 comedies, fairy comedies, and operas. The fairy 

 comedies include The Palace of Truth (1870), Pyg- 

 malion and Galatea (1871), The Wicked World 

 (1873), and Broken Hectrts (1876). Amoii" the 

 comedies are the charming 'contrast,' Sweetheart* 

 (1874), and Enaaged (1877), more cynical and 

 hopeless; his otner plays include C'hariti/ (1874), 

 Gretchen (1879), Comedy and Tragedy (1884), and 

 an unsuccessful drama, Brant inghame Hall (1888). 

 In conjunction with Sullivan (q.v.), besides Thespu 

 and Trial by Jury, he has produced The Sorcerer 

 (1877), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of 

 Penzance (1880), Patience (1881 ), Jolati the (1882), 

 Princess Ida (1883), The Mikado ( 1885), Buddigore 

 (1887), The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), The 

 Gondoliers (1889), Utopia Limited (1893), and The 

 Grand Dnke ( 1896). In nearly all his better-known 

 works Gilbert displays fantastic humour that is 

 often subtle, nearly always healthy in tone, and 

 none the worse for a slight flavour of cynicism. 

 His is the hand of a master, though his touch is 

 light ; his quaint conceits, and the absurd earnest- 

 ness with which they are worked out, appear to be 

 inimitable by his contemporaries. In The Yromen 

 of the Guard, however, he has left the grotesque 

 vein, and presents some characters that are human 

 and pathetic. The operas have been exceedingly 

 popular in America. For a time Gilbert and 

 Sullivan worked apart; and with DrCarr (.ill.ert 

 produced His Excellency (1894). See P. Fitzgerald, 

 The Savoy Opera and the Savoyards (1894). 



Gilbertines, a religious order in the Roman 

 Catholic Church, one of the few of English founda- 

 tion. Its founder in 1148 was St Gilbert, a native 

 of Sempringham, in Lincolnshire. The rule of the 

 order was mainly derived from that of the Canons 

 Regular of St Augustine. St Gilbert also founded 

 an order of nuns after the Benedictine institute. 

 Both orders were approved, and had numerous con- 

 vents in England at the time of the Reformation, 

 when they snared in the general suppression. 



Gilbert Islands, an archipelago in the 

 Pacific, lying on the equator between 172 and 177* 

 E. long/ Area, 166 sq. in. ; population about 

 36,800. The group consists of sixteen atolls, 

 several of them triangular in shape, with two out' 



