101 



GILBERT, GABRIEL. 



GILDAS. 



102 



it is certain that bin daughter Paula (lady of honour to a royal 

 princess) was the first dramatic performer of her time in Portugal, 

 and equally distinguished as a poetess and a musician. Gil Vicente 

 preceded by almost a century Lope de Vega and Shakspere, and 

 being then the only dramatic author of his time, gained a European 

 reputation. Erasmus, who was probably informed of his fame by the 

 Portuguese Jews who sought refuge in Holland, learned Portuguese in 

 order to read his works. 



Gil Vicente may be considered as the creator of the Spanish theatre, 

 having written in the Castilian language his religious drama, which 

 was performed in 1504, on the occasion of the birth of the prince, 

 who was afterwards King John III., and which is anterior in date to 

 all the dramatic productions of Spain. He is also the model that 

 Lope de Vega and Calderon imitated, and on which they improved. 

 His works however are full of the extravagancies which frequently 

 disfigure the productions of Vega and Calderon, without possessing 

 their beauties. These faults are however excusable in the works of 

 one who, like himself, was creating a new kind of literature ; and his 

 poetry is distinguished by richness of invention, brilliancy of imagina- 

 tion, and great harmony of versification. 



Gil Vicente's works were published by his son in 1562, at Lisbon, 

 in one volume folio, and republished at the same place in 4 to in 1586. 

 The editor hag divided the dramatic productions of his father into 

 four classes, viz., 1st, the autos; 2nd, the comedies; 3rd, the tragi- 

 comedies; and 4th, the farces. The autos, or religious plays, of 

 which there are sixteen, were chiefly intended for the celebration of 

 Christmas, and the shepherds perform in them a most important 

 part. The comedies are the worst productions of Gil Vicente, and 

 are, like those of Spain, nothing but dramatised novels, which embrace 

 all the life of an individual, the events of which are ill-connected and 

 devoid of plot and catastrophe. The tragi-comedies may be con- 

 sidered as rough sketches of the tragi-comedies which were afterwards 

 written in Spain ; they contain some touching scenes : none of them 

 are founded on historical subjects. The farces, eleven in number, 

 are the best part of Gil Vicente's productions, aud may be regarded 

 as specimens of the true comedy. They contain a great deal of merri- 

 ment, and some well-drawn character.-!, but they are generally devoid 

 of plot. It is remarkable that the plot, which is the soul of Spanish 

 plays, is generally neglected in the Portuguese productions of a similar 



GILBERT, GABRIEL, lived in the 17th century, but the periods 

 of liia birth aud death are alike unknown. His works are chiefly 

 dramatic, and are sometimes referred to as specimens of badness ; yet 

 it ia supposed that Racine baa occasionally borrowed his thoughts, and 

 clothed them in more elegant language. The fact of his having pro- 

 duced a tragedy called ' Rodogune,' iu the year that Corneille brought 

 oat one with the same title, ami the remarkable coincidence that the 

 first four acts of both were nearly alike, occasioned a literary contro- 

 versy as to whether Gilbert had committed a plagiarism or not. 

 Queen Uhrutina of Sweden entertained a high opinion of Gilbert's 

 genius, aud appointed him resident of the court of Stockholm in 

 France. On her death be fell into poverty, when M. d'Hervart, a 

 Hxcenas of the time, received him into his own house, where 

 probably he died. 



GILBERT, NICOLAS-JOSEPH-LAURENT, was bora in 1751, at 

 Foutenoi-le Chateau in Lorraine. HU parents, who were poor, nearly 

 exhausted their trifling means in giving him an education. He went 

 to Paris, and endeavoured to raise himself into notice by writing 

 laudatory verses to great persons. This expedient failed, and he 

 became, in consequence, tinged with mUanthrophy. He joined the 

 anti-philosophic party of the times and wrote against the infidel 

 philosophers a satire called ' Le Uix-huitiome Siecle,' and another 

 styled ' lion Apologie,' as well as several odes and religious poems. 

 He dial, at the early age of twenty-nine, at the Hotel Dieu, whither 

 he had been removed on account of insanity, his death being occasioned 

 by a small key, which in one of his fits he swallowed. His satires are 

 reckoned superior to his odes, but both are severely reprehended by 

 La Harpe as well for the thoughts they embody as for their gram- 

 matical defects. 



(JII.UKUT, or GILBERD, WILLIAM, was born in 1540 at Col- 

 Chester, Essex, of which borough his father was recorder. After 

 passing through the grammar school of his native place, he proceeded 

 to Cambridge, and thence, according to Anthony a Wood, to Oxford. 

 : decided on adopting medicine as a profession, he went to a 

 a university to prosecute his medical studies, and whilst abroad 

 received the degree of Doctor of Physic. He was elected a fellow of 

 the College of Physicians, London, in 1573. As a pliyxicun, he 

 attained great celebrity, and the eminence he bad acquired by his 

 scientific pursuits, both in England and on the Continent, appears to 

 have rather assisted than hindered his professional progress. Queen 

 Kli/abeth appointed him her physician in ordinary, conferred on him 

 many marks of her favour, aud gave him an annual pension to 

 encourage his studies. (Fuller, from the information "of his near 

 kinsman, Mr. William Gilbert of Brental-Ely.") 



His early scieutitic studies had been chiefly in chemistry; but 

 eventually hi* attention was devoted principally to the subj ct of 

 magnetism, and in ItiOU he published his great work, on which he had 

 been for eighteen years engaged a folio volume of 240 pages, entitled 



'De Magnete, Magneticisque corporibus, et de magno maguete tellure; 

 physiologia nova, plurimis et argumentis et experiments demon- 

 strata.' In this work, after giving an account of all that had been 

 previously written on the subject, he propounds his own views, which 

 not only were full of novelty and of remarkable comprehensiveness, 

 but in fact served as the basis of most subsequent investigations on 

 the important subject of telluric magnetism, and forestalled many of 

 the discoveries of comparatively recent experimenters and theorists. 

 Whewell, indeed, in the last edition of his ' History of the Inductive 

 Sciences,' vol. iii. p. 49, says that Gilbert's "work contains all the 

 fundamental facts of the science, so fnlly examined, indeed, that even 

 at this day we have little to add to them." He establishes as his 

 fundamental principle the magnetic nature of the earth ; demon- 

 strates the affinity of magnetism and electricity, while he clearly dis- 

 tinguishes between them : aud recognising electric action as the 

 operation of a natural force or power allied to magnetism, he regards 

 magnetism and electricity aa two emanations of one fundamental 

 force pervading all matter. He treats at length of the attraction, 

 direction, and variation of the magnetic force. He pointed out too 

 the cardinal fact on which all our generalisations rest- that the 

 magnet has poles, which, he says, we may call north and south poles, 

 and that in two magnets the north pole of each attracts the south 

 pole and repels the north pol>s of the other. He proposed to deter- 

 mine latitudes by means of the inclination of the magnetic needle, 

 and invented two instruments for the purpose ; but he did not per- 

 ceive that the method is not generally applicable. The work created 

 a powerful impression at the time, especially among the learned in 

 other parts of Europe. Galileo expressed the highest admiration of 

 the work and its author, and Erasmus pronounced him to be " great 

 to a degree that is enviable." In his own country he was scarcely 

 so highly appreciated ; even Bacon, though he praises Gilbert as a 

 philosopher, speaks with little respect of his theory. After awhile 

 his speculations came to be more esteemed, though perhaps not fully 

 understood ; but the great superiority of Gilbert over all who had 

 previously treated of magnetism, and " the extent to which he had 

 anticipated by his conjectures much of our present knowledge," has 

 only been perceived since the study of magnetism has u-suuieil some- 

 thing like its present systematic and comprehensive character. 

 " William Gilbert," says Humboldt, " regarded the earth itself as a 

 magnet, and the lines of equal declination and inclination as having 

 their inflections determined by distribution of mass, or by the form 

 of continents and the extent of the deep intervening oceanic basins. 

 It is difficult to reconcile the periodic variation which characterises 

 the three elementary forms of the magnetic phenomena (the isoclinal, 

 isoginic, and isodyuamic lines) witli this rigid distribution of force and 

 mass, unless we imagine the attractive force of the material particles 

 modified by similar periodical variations in the interior of the globe. 

 In Gilbert's theory, as in gravitation, the quantity of material particles 

 only is estimated, without regard to the specific heterogeneity of sub- 

 stances. This circumstance gave to his work, in the period of Galileo 

 and Kepler, a character of cosuiical grandeur. By the unexpected 

 discovery of ' rotation magnetism ' by Arago (1825), it has been 

 practically proved that all kinds of matter are susceptible of mag- 

 netism ; and Faraday's researches on diamagnetic substances have, 

 under particular conditions of ' axial or equatorial direction,' and of 

 solid, fluid, or gaseous inactive conditions of the bodies, confirmed this 

 important result. Gilbert had so clear an idea of the imparting of the 

 telluric magnetic force, that he already ascribed the magnetic state of 

 iron bars in the crosses on old church towers or steeples to this cir- 

 cumstance." (' Kosmos,' ii. 332, Sabiue's translation.) It is deserving 

 of remark that Gilbert, in this work, was the first to use the terms 

 "electric force," "electric emanations," aud "electric attraction;" 

 also to point out that amber was not the only sulistauce which had 

 the faculty, when rubbed, of attracting light objects of any kind, but 

 that it was common to all the resins, to sealing-wax, sulphur, glass, rock- 

 crystal, the precious stones, &c. ; and he describes how, by means of an 

 iron needle moving freely on a point, to measure the excited electricity. 



After the death of Elizabeth, Gilbert was continued iu his office of 

 physician in ordinary by James, but he survived his royal mistress 

 only a few months. He died on the 30th of November lb'03, aud waa 

 buried in the church of the parish in which he was born, Trinity's, 

 Colchester. Gilbert was never married, and he bequeathed his books, 

 philosophical instruments, globes, and collection of minerals to the 

 College of Physicians. Gilbert left in manuscript another treatise, 

 which waa not printed till forty-eight years after his death : ' De 

 Mundo nostro subluuari Philosopbia Nova,' 4 to, Amsterdam, 1651. 



GILDAS (surnamed Sapiens, or ' the wise '), if the period when he 

 is said to have flourished the first half of the 6th century be correct, 

 the most ancient British historian now extaut, according to Leland, 

 was born in Wales, but according to the received account at Alcluyd 

 (Dumbarton), where the Britons still held a limited sway, towards the 

 close of the 5th or beginning of the 6th century : Lelaud says in 511, 

 other accounts in 493. He was early noted for his piety and learning, 

 and to improve himself in the latter went to France, where he remained 

 Heven years. On his return he established a school and church on 

 the coast of Pembrokeshire, to which scholars flocked from all parti 

 of the country, and on Sundays crowds of devout persons to hear him 

 preach. Invited to Ireland by St. Brigit, who had heard the fame of 



