Part 200

=Gargery= (_gar´jer-i_), =Mrs. Joe.=--_Great Expectations_, Dickens. Pip’s sister. A virago, who kept her husband and Pip in constant awe. Joe Gargery, a blacksmith, married to Pip’s sister. A noble-hearted, simple-minded young man, who loved Pip sincerely. Joe Gargery was one of nature’s gentlemen.

=Gaspar=, or =Caspar.=--(The white one), one of the three magi or kings of Cologne. His offering to the infant Jesus was frankincense, in token of divinity.

=Gaunt, Griffith.=--Hero of a novel by Charles Reade, of same title.

=Gavotte.=--Name given to a certain dance common among people in the upper Alps.

=Gawain=, or =Gawayne= (_gä´wān_), =Sir=.--A nephew of King Arthur, and one of the most celebrated knights of the Round Table; noted for his sagacity and wonderful strength. He was surnamed “the courteous.” His brothers were Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth.

=Gebir= (_gā´bēr_).--A legendary eastern prince, said to have invaded Africa and to have given his name to Gibraltar. He is the subject of a poem of the same name by Walter Savage Landor.

=Gellatley= (_gel´at-li_), =Davie=.--The name of a poor fool in Sir Walter Scott’s novel of _Waverley_.

=Geneviève= (_zhen-vyāv´_).--(1) The heroine of a ballad by Coleridge. (2) Under the form _Genovefa_, the name occurs in a German myth as that of the wife of the Count Palatine Siegfried, in the time of Charles Martel. Upon false accusations her husband gave orders to put her to death, but the servant intrusted with the commission suffered her to escape into the forests of Ardennes, where she lay concealed, until by accident his husband discovered her retreat, and recognized her innocence.

=Genevra.=--A lady in Aristo’s _Orlandos’ Furioso_. Her honor is impeached, and she is condemned to die unless a champion appears to do combat for her. Her lover, Ariodantes, answers the challenge, kills the false accuser, and weds the dame. Spenser has a similar story in the _Faërie Queene_, and Shakespeare availed himself of the main incident in his comedy of _Much Ado About Nothing_.

=Geraint= (_ge-rānt_), =Sir=.--One of the knights of the Round Table. His story is told in Tennyson’s _Idylls of the King_ under _Geraint and Enid_.

=Geraldine.=--A name frequently found in romantic poetry, especially Scott’s _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. The name is said to have been adopted from the heroine connected with Surrey, whose praises are celebrated in a famous sonnet.

=Gertrude of Wyoming.=--Heroine of a poem by Thomas Campbell.

=Gesta Romanorum= (_jes´tä rō-ma-nō´rum_).--A collection of old romances compiled by Pierre Bercheure, prior of the Benedictine convent of St. Eloi, Paris. Shakespeare, Spenser, Gower, and many later writers have gone to this source. It took its present form in England about the beginning of the fourteenth century, the foundation coming from Roman writers, to which were added religious and mystical tales.

=Giaour= (_jour_), =The=.--Byron’s tale called _The Giaour_ is represented as told by a fisherman, a Turk, who had committed a crime which haunted him all his life. See _Hassan_.

=Gibbie, Goose.=--A half-witted boy in Scott’s _Old Mortality_.

=Gibbie, Sir.=--A simple-hearted, fine character in George Macdonald’s novel by the same name.

=Giant Despair.=--_Pilgrim’s Progress_, Bunyan. A giant who is the owner of Doubting Castle, and who, finding Christian and Hopeful asleep upon his grounds, takes them prisoners, and thrusts them into a dungeon.

=Giant Grim.=--_Pilgrim’s Progress_, Bunyan. A giant who seeks to stop the march of the pilgrims to the Celestial City, but is slain in a duel by Mr. Great-heart, their guide.

=Giant Slay-good.=--_Pilgrim’s Progress_, Bunyan. A giant slain in a duel by Mr. Great-heart.

=Gil Blas= (_zhēl bläs_).--A romance by Le Sage. The hero is the son of Blas of Santillanê squire or “escudero” to a lady, and brought up by his uncle, Canon Gil Perês. Gil Blas went to Dr. Godinez’s school of Oviedo and obtained the reputation of being a great scholar. He had fair abilities, a kind heart, and good inclinations, but was easily led astray by his vanity. Full of wit and humor, he was lax in his morals. Duped by others at first, he afterward played the same devices on those less experienced. As he grew in years, however, his conduct improved, and when his fortune was made, he became an honest, steady man.

=Glaucus= (_glâ´kus_).--A fisherman of Bœotia who has become the fisherman’s patron deity.

=Glaucus.=--Son of Hippolytus. Being smothered in a tub of honey, he was restored to life by Æsculapius.

=Gloriana.=--In Spenser’s _Faërie Queene_, the “greatest glorious queen of Faëry land.”

=Glumdalca= (_glum-dal´kä_).--_Tom Thumb_, Fielding. Queen of the giants, captive in the court of King Arthur.

=Glumdalclitch= (_glum-dal´klich_).--_Gulliver’s Travels_, Swift. A girl nine years old “and only forty feet high.” Being such a “little thing,” the charge of Gulliver was committed to her during his sojourn in Brobdingnag.

=Glumms.=--_Peter Wilkins_, Robert Pullock. The male population of the imaginary country Nosmubdsgrsutt, visited by Peter Wilkins. Both males and females had wings which served both for flying and for clothes.

=Godiva= (_gō-dī´vä_).--A poem by Alfred Tennyson. The story of the lady and _Peeping Tom of Coventry_ is told in full by Dugdale. Godiva was the wife of Leofric, earl of Mercia, and undertook to ride naked through the town if he would remit a tax under which the people groaned. The earl consented and the lady kept her word.

=Golden Ass, The.=--A romance in Latin by Apuleius. It is the adventures of Lucian, a young man who had been transformed into an ass, but still retained his human consciousness. It tells us the miseries which he suffered at the hands of robbers, eunuchs, magistrates, and so on, till the time came for him to resume his proper form. It is full of wit, racy humor, and rich fancy, and contains the exquisite episode of Cupid and Psyche.

=Golden Legend, The.=--The title of an ecclesiastical work in one hundred and seventy-seven sections, dating from the thirteenth century, written by one James de Voragine, a Dominican monk, and descriptive of the various saints’ days in the Roman calendar. It is deserving of study as a literary monument of the period, and as illustrating the religious habits and views of the Christians of that time.

=Goneril= (_gon´er-il_).--The oldest of the three daughters to King Lear, in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Having received her moiety of Lear’s kingdom, the unnatural daughter first abridged the old man’s retinue, then gave him to understand that his company was not wanted and sent him out a despairing old man to seek refuge where he could find it. Her name is proverbial for filial ingratitude.

=Gonzalo= (_gon-zä´lō_).--An honest old counselor in Shakespeare’s _Tempest_, a true friend to Prospero.

=Goody Blake.=--A character in Wordsworth’s poem entitled _Goody Blake and Harry Gill_. A farmer forbids old Goody Blake to carry home a few sticks, which she had picked up from his land, and in revenge she invokes upon him the curse that he may “never more be warm;” and ever after “his teeth they chatter, chatter still.”

=Goody Two-Shoes.=--The name of a well-known character in a nursery tale by Oliver Goldsmith. Goody Two-Shoes was a very poor child, whose delight at having a pair of shoes was unbounded. She called constant attention to her “two-shoes” which gave her the name.

=Gradgrind= (_grad´grīnd_).--A hardware merchant in Dickens’ _Hard Times_. He is a man of hard facts and cultivates the practical. His constant demand in conversation is for “facts.” He allows nothing for the weakness of human nature, and deals with men and women as a mathematician with his figures.

=Gradgrind, Mrs.=--Wife of Thomas Gradgrind. A little, thin woman, always taking physic, without receiving from it any benefit.

=Gradgrind, Tom.=--Son of the above, a sullen young man, much loved by his sister.

=Gradgrind, Louise.=--A faithful daughter and sister.

=Grandison, Sir Charles.=--The hero of Richardson’s novel _The History of Sir Charles Grandison_. Designed to represent his ideal of a perfect hero--a union of the good Christian and the perfect English gentleman.

=Gratiano= (_grä-tē-ä´no_).--(1) A friend to Antonio and Bassanio in Shakespeare’s _Merchant of Venice_. He “talks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in Venice.” (2) Brother to Brabantio, in Shakespeare’s tragedy of _Othello_. (3) A character in the Italian popular theater called _Commedia dell’ Arte_. He is represented as a Bolognese doctor, and has a mask with a black nose and forehead and red cheeks.

=Great-Heart, Mr.=--In Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_, the guide of Christian’s wife and children upon their journey to the Celestial City.

=Gremio= (_grē´mi-ō_).--In Shakespeare’s _Taming of the Shrew_, an old man who wishes to wed Bianca.

=Griffin-feet.=--_Fairy Tales_, Comtesse d’Aulnoy. The mark by which the Desert Fairy was known in all her metamorphoses.

=Grimalkin.=--A cat, the spirit of a witch. Any witch was permitted to assume the body of a cat nine times.

=Grimwig.=--_Oliver Twist_, Dickens. An irascible old gentleman, who hid a very kind heart under a rough exterior. He was always declaring himself ready to “eat his head” if he was mistaken on any point on which he passed an opinion.

=Griselda= (_gri-zel´dä_), =The Patient=.--A lady in Chaucer’s _Clerk of Oxenford’s Tales_, immortalized by her virtue and her patience. The model of womanly and wifely obedience, she comes victoriously out of cruel and repeated ordeals. The story of Griselda is first told in the Decameron. Boccaccio derived the incidents from Petrarch, who seems to have communicated them also to Chaucer, as the latter refers to Petrarch as his authority.

=Grub Street=, London, is thus described in Dr. Johnson’s dictionary: “Originally the name of a street near Moorfields, in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any production is called Grub street.” The name was freely used by Pope, Swift, and others.

=Grundy.=--“What will Mrs. Grundy say?” (What will our rivals or neighbors say?) The phrase is from Tom Morton’s _Speed the Plough_, but “Mrs. Grundy” is not introduced into the comedy as one of the _dramatis personæ_. The solicitude of Dame Ashfield, in this play, as to “what will Mrs. Grundy say?” has given the latter great celebrity, the interrogatory having acquired a proverbial currency.

=Gudrun= (_gö-drön´_).--_Edda_, Sämund Sigfusson. A lady, married to Sigurd by the magical arts of her mother and on the death of Sigurd to Atli (Attila), whom she hated for his cruelty, and murdered. She then cast herself into the sea, and the waves bore her to the castle of King Jonakun, who became her third husband.

=Gudrun.=--North-Saxon poem. A model of heroic fortitude and pious resignation. She was the daughter of King Hettel (Attila), and the betrothed of Herwig, king of Heligoland.

=Guendolen= (_gwen´dō-len_).--A fairy whose mother was a human being.

=Guildenstern.=--The name of a courtier in Shakespeare’s tragedy _Hamlet_.

=Guinevere= (_gwin´e-ver_), or =Guenever=.--A corrupt form of =Guanhumara=, daughter of King Leodegrance of the land of Camelyard. She was the most beautiful of women, was the wife of King Arthur, but entertained a _liaison_ with Sir Launcelot du Lac. Arthur, when informed of the conduct of Launcelot, went with an army to Brittany to punish him. Mordred, left as regent, usurped the crown, proclaimed that Arthur was dead, and tried to marry Guinevere; but she shut herself up in the Tower of London, resolved to die rather than marry the usurper. When she heard of the death of Arthur, she stole away to Almesbury, and became a nun.

=Gulliver, Lemuel.=--The imaginary hero of Swift’s celebrated satirical romance known as _Gulliver’s Travels_. He is represented as being first a surgeon in London, and then a captain of several ships. After having followed the sea for some years he makes in succession four extraordinary voyages.

=Gummidge= (_gum´ij_), =Mrs.=--In Dickens’ novel of _David Copperfield_, described herself as a “lone, lorn, creetur, and everythink that reminds me of creeturs that ain’t lone and lorn goes contrairy with me.”

=Gurton, Gammer.=--The heroine of an old English comedy, long supposed to be the earliest in the language.

=Guy Mannering.=--The second of Scott’s historical novels, published in 1815, just seven months after _Waverley_. The interest of the tale is well sustained; but the love scenes, female characters, and Guy Mannering himself are quite worthless. Not so the character of Dandy Dinmont, the shrewd and witty counselor Pleydell, the desperate, sea-beaten villainy of Hatteraick, the uncouth devotion of that gentlest of all pedants, poor Dominie Sampson, and the savage, crazed superstition of the gypsy-dweller in Derncleugh.

=Guyon= (_gī´on_).--The impersonation of Temperance or Self-government in Spenser’s _Faërie Queene_. He destroyed the witch Acrasia, and her bower, called the “Bower of Bliss.” His companion was Prudence. Sir Guyon represents the quality of temperance in the largest sense; meaning the virtuous self-government which holds in check not only the inferior sensual appetites but also the impulses of passion and revenge.

=Guy, Sir, Earl of Warwick.=--The hero of a famous English legend, which celebrates the wonderful achievements by which he obtained the hand of his ladylove, the fair Felice, as well as the adventures he subsequently met with in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He is reputed to have lived in the reign of the Saxon King Athelstan. The romance of Sir Guy, mentioned by Chaucer in the _Canterbury Tales_, cannot be traced further back than the earlier part of the fourteenth century. His existence at any period is very doubtful.

=H=

=Hadad.=--One of the six wise men led by the guiding star to Jesus.

=Hagen.=--The murderer of Siegfried, in the German epic, the _Nibelungenlied_. He is a pale-faced dwarf, who knows everything and whose sole desire is mischief. After the death of Siegfried he seized the “Nibelung hoard,” and buried it in the Rhine, intending to appropriate it. Kriemhild invited him to the court and had him slain.

=Haidee= (_hī-dē´_).--A beautiful young Greek girl in Byron’s poem, _Don Juan_. She is called the “beauty of the Cyclades.”

=Hakim.=--_The Talisman_, Scott. Saladin, in the disguise of a physician, visited Richard Cœur de Lion in sickness; gave him a medicine in which the “talisman” had been dipped, and the sick king recovered.

=Hamlet.=--A tragedy by Shakespeare. The chief character is Hamlet, prince of Denmark. The ghost of his father appears to him, and urges him to avenge his murder upon his uncle. But the prince feigns madness, and puts off his revenge from day to day by “thinking too precisely on the event.” Hamlet’s mother had married Claudius, king of Denmark, after the death of her former husband. Claudius prepared poisoned wine, which he intended for Hamlet; but the queen, not knowing it, drank it, was poisoned and died. Hamlet, seeing his mother fall dead, rushed on the king and killed him almost by accident, and is killed himself by a poisoned rapier in the hands of Laertes.

=Hanswurst= (_häns´vŏrst_).--A pantomimic character formerly introduced into German comedies. It corresponds to the Italian _Macaroni_, the French _Jean Potage_, and the English _Jack Pudding_.

=Hardcastle, Mr.=--A character in Goldsmith’s comedy of _She Stoops to Conquer_, represented as prosy and hospitable.

=Hardcastle, Mrs.=--A very “genteel” lady indeed. Tony Lumpkin is her son by a former husband.

=Hard Times.=--A novel by Dickens. Bounderby, a street Arab, raised himself to banker and cotton prince. When past fifty years of age he married Louisa, daughter of Thomas Gradgrind. The bank was robbed, and Bounderby believed Stephen Blackpool to be the thief, because he had dismissed him from his employ. The culprit was Tom Gradgrind, the banker’s brother-in-law, who escaped out of the country. In the dramatized version, the bank was not robbed, but Tom removed the money to another drawer for safety.

=Harlequin= (_här´le-kin_, or _-´kwin_).--The name of a well-known character in the popular extemporized Italian comedy.

=Harlowe, Clarissa.=--The heroine of Richardson’s novel entitled _The History of Clarissa Harlowe_. In order to avoid a marriage urged upon her by her parents, she casts herself on the protection of Lovelace, who grossly abuses the confidence thus reposed in him. He subsequently proposes to marry her, but Clarissa rejects the offer.

=Haroun-al-Raschid= (_hä-rŏn´äl-rash´id_).--Caliph of the Abbasside race, contemporary with Charlemagne, and, like him, a patron of literature and the arts. Many of the tales in the _Arabian Nights_ are placed in the caliphate of Haroun-al-Raschid.

=Harpagon= (_är-pä-gôn´_).--The hero of Molière’s comedy of _L’Avare_, represented as a wretched miser.

=Harpier=, or _Harper_.--Some mysterious personage referred to by the witches in Shakespeare’s tragedy _Macbeth_.

=Hassan= (_häs´sän_).--_The Giaour_, Byron. Caliph of the Ottoman empire, noted for his hospitality and splendor. In his seraglio was a beautiful young slave named Leila, who loved a Christian called the Giaour. Leila is put to death by an emir, and Hassan is slain by the Giaour. Caliph Hassan has become the subject of popular romance.

=Hassan, Al.=--The Arabian emir of Persia, father of Hinda, in Moore’s _Fire Worshipers_.

=Hatto= (_hät´tō_).--In German legend, an archbishop of Mentz in the tenth century, who, for his hardheartedness to the poor in time of famine, was eaten by mice in the “Mouse Tower” on an island in the Rhine near Bingen. Robert Browning has made this legend the subject of a poem.

=Havelock the Dane= (_hav´e-lok_).--A fisherman, known as Grim, rescued an infant named Havelock, whom he adopted. This infant was the son of the king of Denmark, and when the boy was restored to his royal sire Grim was laden with gifts. He built the town which he called after his own name. This is the foundation of the mediæval tales about _Havelock the Dane_.

=Hazlewood, Sir Robert.=--The old baronet of Hazlewood.

=Hazlewood, Charles.=--_Guy Mannering_, Scott. Son of Sir Robert. In love with Lucy Bertram, whom he marries.

=Heart of Midlothian, The.=--A novel by Sir Walter Scott, published in 1818. It has for heroines Jeanie and Effie Deans. Among the other characters are Dumbiedykes and Madge Wildfire. It has often been dramatized. “The Heart of Midlothian” was the popular name for the tollbooth at Edinburgh, the capital of the county of Midlothian.

=Heep, Uriah.=--_David Copperfield_, Dickens. A detestable character, who, under the garb of the most abject humility, conceals a diabolic malignity. Mrs. Heep, Uriah’s mother, was a character equally to be despised for her hypocritical assumption of humility.

=Helena.=--(1) A lady in Shakespeare’s _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, in love with Demetrius. (2) The heroine of Shakespeare’s _All’s Well That Ends Well_, in love with Bertram, who marries her against his will and leaves her, but is finally won by the strength of her affection. (3) A character in an old popular tale, reproduced in Germany by Tieck.

=Hermann and Dorothea.=--The hero and heroine of Goethe’s poem of the same name.

=Hermengyld= (_her´men-gild_).--_Canterbury Tales_, Chaucer. The wife of the lord-constable of Northumberland. She was converted by Constance, but was murdered by a knight. Hermengyld at the bidding of Constance restored sight to a blind Briton.

=Hermia= (_her´mi-ä_).--A lady in Shakespeare’s _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, in love with Lysander.

=Hermione.=--The heroine of the first three acts of Shakespeare’s _Winter’s Tale_.

=Hernani=, or =Ernani=.--The hero of Victor Hugo’s tragedy of the same name, and of Verdi’s opera, founded on the play. He was a Spanish noble in revolt against the Emperor Charles V. and killed himself from a high sense of honor.

=Hiawatha= (_hi-a-wâ´tä_, or _hī-a-wâ´thä_), =The Song of.=--A poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written in the following peculiar measure:

Should you ask me, “Whence these stories?” ..... I should answer, I should tell you, ..... “I repeat them as I heard them From the lips of Nawadaha, The musician, the sweet singer.”

The poem is entirely devoted to a description of life among the aboriginal tribes of America. It was published in 1855. Hiawatha is a mythical person believed by some of the North American Indians to have been sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. When the white man came, then Hiawatha knew that the time of his departure was at hand, when he must go

To the kingdom of Ponemah, The land of the Hereafter.

=Highland Mary.=--A song by Robert Burns, which Burns himself thought was in his happiest manner, and which refers, he says, to one of the most interesting passages of his youthful days. By this he means his attachment to Mary, a servant in the family of Mr. Hamilton, “who will be remembered,” says Alexander Smith, “with Dante’s Beatrice and Petrarch’s Laura.” It was arranged that the lovers should become man and wife, and that Mary should go to her friends to prepare for the wedding. But before her departure came the farewell scene so touchingly described in the poem:

Our parting was fu’ tender; And, pledging aft to meet again, We tore oursels asunder: But oh! fell death’s untimely frost That nipt my flower sae early! Now green’s the sod, and cauld’s the clay, That wraps my Highland Mary!

=Hilda.=--A New England girl of the most sensitive delicacy and purity of mind, in Hawthorne’s romance, _The Marble Faun_. She is an artist, living in Rome, and typifies, perhaps, the conscience.

=Hildebrand= (_hil´de-brand_).--The Nestor of German romance, a magician and champion.

=Hildesheim= (_hil´des-hīm_).--In an old German legend, the monk of Hildesheim, doubting how a thousand years with God could be “only one day,” listened to the melody of a bird, as he supposed, for only three minutes, but found that he had been listening to it for a hundred years.

=Hobbididance.=--The name of one of the fiends mentioned by Shakespeare in _Lear_, and taken from the history of the Jesuits’ impostures.

=Hohenlinden= (_hō[´]en-lin´den_).--A poem by Thomas Campbell, published in 1802, celebrating the battle of Hohenlinden, gained by Moreau and the French over the Austrians. The poet visited the battle field on December 3, 1800.

=Holofernes= (_hol-ō-fer´nēz_).--(1) A pedant living in Paris, under whose care Gargantua is placed for instruction. (2) A pedantic schoolmaster in Shakespeare’s _Love’s Labor’s Lost_.

=Holt, Felix.=--The hero of George Eliot’s novel by the same name.

=Home, Sweet Home.=--A popular lyric contained in the drama of _Clari, the Maid of Milan_, by John Howard Payne. The beautiful melody to which it has been wedded is said to be of Italian or Sicilian origin, though by some it is attributed to Sir Henry Rowley Bishop. Perhaps the latter merely arranged and harmonized it.

=Homilies.=--The latter entries in the Peterborough _Chronicle_ and a few homilies are almost all that we have left of the literature of the twelfth century. Some of these homilies are copied or imitated from those of Ælfric.

=Honeycomb= (_hun´i-kōm_), =Will.=--One of the members of the imaginary club by whom the _Spectator_ was professedly edited. He is distinguished for his graceful affectation, courtly pretension, and knowledge of the gay world.

=Honeyman, Charles.=--A fashionable preacher in Thackeray’s novel, _The Newcomes_.

=Hopeful.=--A pilgrim in Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_, who accompanies Christian to the end of his journey.