Chapter X: Part 10

Her principal published works are as follows:--_Thoughts on the
Education of Daughters, ..._ (1787); _The Female Reader_ (selections)
(1789); _Original Stories from Real Life_ (1791); _An Historical and
Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and
the effects it has produced in Europe_, vol. i. (no more published)
(1790); _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ (1792); _Vindication of
the Rights of Man_ (1793); _Mary, a Fiction_ (1788); _Letters written
during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark_ (1796);
_Posthumous Works_ (4 vols., 1798). It is impossible to trace the many
articles contributed by her to periodical literature.

A memoir of her life was published by Godwin in 1798. A large portion
of C. Kegan Paul's work, _William Godwin, his Friends and
Contemporaries_, was devoted to her, and an edition of the _Letters to
Imlay_ (1879), of which the first edition was published by Godwin, is
prefaced by a somewhat fuller memoir. See also E. Dowden, _The French
Revolution and English Literature_ (1897) pp. 82 et seq.; E. R.
Pennell, _Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin_ (1885), in the Eminent Women
Series; E. R. Clough, _A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights
of Woman_ (1898); an edition of her _Original Stories_ (1906), with
William Blake's illustrations and an introduction by E. V. Lucas; and
the _Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay_ (1908),
with an introduction by Roger Ingpen.

GODWIN, WILLIAM, (1756-1836), English political and miscellaneous writer, son of a Nonconformist minister, was born on the 3rd of March 1756, at Wisbeach in Cambridgeshire. His family came on both sides of middle-class people, and it was probably only as a joke that Godwin, a stern political reformer and philosophical radical, attempted to trace his pedigree to a time before the Norman conquest and the great earl Godwine. Both parents were strict Calvinists. The father died young, and never inspired love or much regret in his son; but in spite of wide differences of opinion, tender affection always subsisted between William Godwin and his mother, until her death at an advanced age.

William Godwin was educated for his father's profession at Hoxton Academy, where he was under Andrew Kippis the biographer and Dr Abraham Rees of the _Cyclopaedia_, and was at first more Calvinistic than his teachers, becoming a Sandemanian, or follower of John Glas (q.v.), whom he describes as "a celebrated north-country apostle who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, has contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin." He then acted as a minister at Ware, Stowmarket and Beaconsfield. At Stowmarket the teachings of the French philosophers were brought before him by a friend, Joseph Fawcet, who held strong republican opinions. He came to London in 1782, still nominally a minister, to regenerate society with his pen--a real enthusiast, who shrank theoretically from no conclusions from the premises which he laid down. He adopted the principles of the Encyclopaedists, and his own aim was the complete overthrow of all existing institutions, political, social and religious. He believed, however, that calm discussion was the only thing needful to carry every change, and from the beginning to the end of his career he deprecated every approach to violence. He was a philosophic radical in the strictest sense of the term.

His first published work was an anonymous _Life of Lord Chatham_ (1783). Under the inappropriate title _Sketches of History_ (1784) he published under his own name six sermons on the characters of Aaron, Hazael and Jesus, in which, though writing in the character of an orthodox Calvinist, he enunciates the proposition "God Himself has no right to be a tyrant." Introduced by Andrew Kippis, he began to write in 1785 for the _Annual Register_ and other periodicals, producing also three novels now forgotten. The "Sketches of English History" written for the _Annual Register_ from 1785 onward still deserve study. He joined a club called the "Revolutionists," and associated much with Lord Stanhope, Horne Tooke and Holcroft. His clerical character was now completely dropped.

In 1793 Godwin published his great work on political science, _The Inquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness_. Although this work is little known and less read now, it marks a phase in English thought. Godwin could never have been himself a worker on the active stage of life. But he was none the less a power behind the workers, and for its political effect, _Political Justice_ takes its place with Milton's _Areopagitica_, with Locke's _Essay on Education_ and with Rousseau's _Emile_. By the words "political justice" the author meant "the adoption of any principle of morality and truth into the practice of a community," and the work was therefore an inquiry into the principles of society, of government and of morals. For many years Godwin had been "satisfied that monarchy was a species of government unavoidably corrupt," and from desiring a government of the simplest construction, he gradually came to consider that "government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind." Believing in the perfectibility of the race, that there are no innate principles, and therefore no original propensity to evil, he considered that "our virtues and our vices may be traced to the incidents which make the history of our lives, and if these incidents could be divested of every improper tendency, vice would be extirpated from the world." All control of man by man was more or less intolerable, and the day would come when each man, doing what seems right in his own eyes, would also be doing what is in fact best for the community, because all will be guided by principles of pure reason. But all was to be done by discussion, and matured change resulting from discussion. Hence, while Godwin thoroughly approved of the philosophic schemes of the precursors of the Revolution, he was as far removed as Burke himself from agreeing with the way in which they were carried out. So logical and uncompromising a thinker as Godwin could not go far in the discussion of abstract questions without exciting the most lively opposition in matters of detailed opinion. An affectionate son, and ever ready to give of his hard-earned income to more than one ne'er-do-well brother, he maintained that natural relationship had no claim on man, nor was gratitude to parents or benefactors any part of justice or virtue. In a day when the penal code was still extremely severe, he argued gravely against all punishments, not only that of death. Property was to belong to him who most wanted it; accumulated property was a monstrous injustice. Hence marriage, which is law, is the worst of all laws, and as property the worst of all properties. A man so passionless as Godwin could venture thus to argue without suspicion that he did so only to gratify his wayward desires. Portions of this treatise, and only portions, found ready acceptance in those minds which were prepared to receive them. Perhaps no one received the whole teaching of the book. But it gave cohesion and voice to philosophic radicalism; it was the manifesto of a school without which liberalism of the present day had not been. Godwin himself in after days modified his communistic views, but his strong feeling for individualism, his hatred of all restrictions on liberty, his trust in man, his faith in the power of reason remained; it was a manifesto which enunciated principles modifying action, even when not wholly ruling it.

In May 1794 Godwin published the novel of _Caleb Williams, or Things as they are_, a book of which the political object is overlooked by many readers in the strong interest of the story. The book was dramatized by the younger Colman as _The Iron Chest_. It is one of the few novels of that time which may be said still to live.[1] A theorist who lived mainly in his study, Godwin yet came forward boldly to stand by prisoners arraigned of high treason in that same year--1794. The danger to persons so charged was then great, and he deliberately put himself into this same danger for his friends. But when his own trial was discussed in the privy council, Pitt sensibly held that _Political Justice_, the work on which the charge could best have been founded, was priced at three guineas, and could never do much harm among those who had not three shillings to spare.

From this time Godwin became a notable figure in London society, and there was scarcely an important person in politics, on the Liberal side, in literature, art or science, who does not appear familiarly in the pages of Godwin's singular diary. For forty-eight years, beginning in 1788, and continuing to the very end of his life, Godwin kept a record of every day, of the work he did, the books he read, the friends he saw. Condensed in the highest degree, the diary is yet easy to read when the style is once mastered, and it is a great help to the understanding of his cold, methodical, unimpassioned character. He carried his method into every detail of life, and lived on his earnings with extreme frugality. Until he made a large sum by the publication of _Political Justice_, he lived on an average of L120 a year.

In 1797, the intervening years having been spent in strenuous literary labour, Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft (see GODWIN, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT). Since both held the same views regarding the slavery of marriage, and since they only married at all for the sake of possible offspring, the marriage was concealed for some time, and the happiness of the avowed married life was very brief; his wife's death on the 10th of September left Godwin prostrated by affliction, and with a charge for which he was wholly unfit--his infant daughter Mary, and her stepsister, Fanny Imlay, who from that time bore the name of Godwin. His unfitness for the cares of a family, far more than love, led him to contract a second marriage with Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801. She was a widow with two children, one of whom, Clara Mary Jane Clairmont, became the mistress of Lord Byron. The second Mrs Godwin was energetic and painstaking, but a harsh stepmother; and it may be doubted whether the children were not worse off under her care than they would have been under Godwin's neglect.

The second novel which proceeded from Godwin's pen was called _St Leon_, and published in 1799. It is chiefly remarkable for the beautiful portrait of Marguerite, the heroine, drawn from the character of his own wife. His opinions underwent a change in the direction of theism, influenced, he says, by his acquaintance with Coleridge. He also became known to Wordsworth and Lamb. Study of the Elizabethan dramatists led to the production in 1800 of the _Tragedy of Antonio_. Kemble brought it out at Drury Lane, but the failure of this attempt made him refuse _Abbas, King of Persia_, which Godwin offered him in the next year. He was more successful with his _Life of Chaucer_, for which he received L600.

The events of Godwin's life were few. Under the advice of the second Mrs Godwin, and with her active co-operation, he carried on business as a bookseller under the pseudonym of Edward Baldwin, publishing several useful school books and books for children, among them Charles and Mary Lamb's _Tales from Shakespeare_. But the speculation was unsuccessful, and for many years Godwin struggled with constant pecuniary difficulties, for which more than one subscription was raised by the leaders of the Liberal party and by literary men. He became bankrupt in 1822, but during the following years he accomplished one of his best pieces of work, _The History of the Commonwealth_, founded on pamphlets and original documents, which still retains considerable value. In 1833 the government of Earl Grey conferred upon him the office known as yeoman usher of the exchequer, to which were attached apartments in Palace Yard, where he died on the 7th of April 1836.

In his own time, by his writings and by his conversation, Godwin had a great power of influencing men, and especially young men. Though his character would seem, from much which is found in his writings, and from anecdotes told by those who still remember him, to have been unsympathetic, it was not so understood by enthusiastic young people, who hung on his words as those of a prophet. The most remarkable of these was Percy Bysshe Shelley, who in the glowing dawn of his genius turned to Godwin as his teacher and guide. The last of the long series of young men who sat at Godwin's feet was Edward Lytton Bulwer, afterwards Lord Lytton, whose early romances were formed after those of Godwin, and who, in _Eugene Aram_, succeeded to the story as arranged, and the plan to a considerable extent sketched out, by Godwin, whose age and failing health prevented him from completing it. Godwin's character appears in the worst light in connexion with Shelley. His early correspondence with Shelley, which began in 1811, is remarkable for its genuine good sense and kindness; but when Shelley carried out the principles of the author of _Political Justice_ in eloping with Mary Godwin, Godwin assumed a hostile attitude that would have been unjustifiable in a man of ordinary views, and was ridiculous in the light of his professions. He was not, moreover, too proud to accept L1000 from his son-in-law, and after the reconciliation following on Shelley's marriage in 1816, he continued to demand money until Shelley's death. His character had no doubt suffered under his long embarrassments and his unhappy marriage.

Godwin's more important works are--_The Inquiry concerning Political
Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness_ (1793);
_Things as they are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams_ (1794); _The
Inquirer, a series of Essays_ (1797); _Memoirs of the Author of the
Rights of Woman_ (1798); _St Leon, a Tale of the Sixteenth Century_
(1799); _Antonio, a Tragedy_ (1800); _The Life of Chaucer_ (1803);
_Fleetwood, a Novel_ (1805); _Faulkner, a Tragedy_ (1807); _Essay on
Sepulchres_ (1809); _Lives of Edward and John Philips, the Nephews of
Milton_ (1815); _Mandeville, a Tale of the Times of Cromwell_ (1817);
_Of Population, an answer to Malthus_ (1820); _History of the
Commonwealth_ (1824-1828); _Cloudesley, a Novel_ (1830); _Thoughts on
Man, a series of Essays_ (1831); _Lives of the Necromancers_ (1834). A
volume of essays was also collected from his papers and published in
1873, as left for publication by his daughter Mrs Shelley. Many other
short and anonymous works proceeded from his ever busy pen, but many
are irrecoverable, and all are forgotten. Godwin's life was published
in 1876 in two volumes, under the title _William Godwin, his Friends
and Contemporaries_, by C. Kegan Paul. The best estimate of his
literary position is that given by Sir Leslie Stephen in his _English
Thought in the 18th Century_ (ii. 264-281; ed., 1902). See also the
article on William Godwin in W. Hazlitt's _The Spirit of the Age_
(1825), and "Godwin and Shelley" in Sir L. Stephen's _Hours in a
Library_ (vol. iii., ed. 1892).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] For an analysis of _Caleb Williams_ see the chapter on "Theorists
of Revolution" in Professor E. Dowden's _The French Revolution and
English Literature_ (1897).

GODWIN-AUSTEN, ROBERT ALFRED CLOYNE (1808-1884), English geologist, the eldest son of Sir Henry E. Austen, was born on the 17th of March 1808. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1830. He afterwards entered Lincoln's Inn. In 1833 he married the only daughter and heiress of General Sir Henry T. Godwin, K.C.B., and he took the additional name of Godwin by Royal licence in 1854. At Oxford as a pupil of William Buckland he became deeply interested in geology, and soon afterwards becoming acquainted with De la Beche, he was inspired by that great master, and assisted him by making a geological map of the neighbourhood of Newton Abbot, which was embodied in the Geological Survey map. He also published an elaborate memoir "On the Geology of the South-East of Devonshire" (_Trans. Geol. Soc._ ser. 2, vol. viii.). His attention was next directed to the Cretaceous rocks of Surrey, his home-county, his estates being situated at Chilworth and Shalford near Guildford. Later he dealt with the superficial accumulations bordering the English Channel, and with the erratic boulders of Selsea. In 1855 he brought before the Geological Society of London his celebrated paper "On the possible Extension of the Coal-Measures beneath the South-Eastern part of England," in which he pointed out on well-considered theoretical grounds the likelihood of coal-measures being some day reached in that area. In this article he also advocated the freshwater origin of the Old Red Sandstone, and discussed the relations of that formation, and of the Devonian, to the Silurian and Carboniferous. He was elected F.R.S. in 1849, and in 1862 he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London, on which occasion he was styled by Sir R. I. Murchison "pre-eminently the physical geographer of bygone periods." He died at Shalford House near Guildford on the 25th of November 1884.

His son, Lieut-Colonel HENRY HAVERSHAM GODWIN-AUSTEN (b. 1834), entered the army in 1851, and served for many years on the Trigonometrical Survey of India, retiring in 1877. He gave much attention to geology, but is more especially distinguished for his researches on the natural history of India and as the author of _The Land and Freshwater Mollusca of India_ (1882-1887).

GODWINE (d. 1053), son of Wulfnoth, earl of the West-Saxons, the leading Englishman in the first half of the 11th century. His birth and origin are utterly uncertain; but he rose to power early in Canute's reign and was an earl in 1018. He received in marriage Gytha, a connexion of the king's, and in 1020 became earl of the West-Saxons. On the death of Canute in 1035 he joined with Queen Emma in supporting the claim of Hardicanute, the son of Canute and Emma, to the crown of his father, in opposition to Leofric and the northern party who supported Harold Harefoot (see HARDICANUTE). While together they held Wessex for Hardicanute, the aetheling Aelfred, son of Emma by her former husband Aethelred II., landed in England in the hope of winning back his father's crown; but falling into the hands of Godwine, he and his followers were cruelly done to death. On the death of Hardicanute in 1042 Godwine was foremost in promoting the election of Edward (the Confessor) to the vacant throne. He was now the first man in the kingdom, though his power was still balanced by that of the other great earls, Leofric of Mercia and Siward of Northumberland. His sons Sweyn and Harold were promoted to earldoms; and his daughter Eadgyth was married to the king (1045). His policy was strongly national in opposition to the marked Normanizing tendencies of the king. Between him and Edward's foreign favourites, particularly Robert of Jumieges, there was deadly feud. The appointment of Robert to the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1051 marks the decline of Godwine's power; and in the same year a series of outrages committed by one of the king's foreign favourites led to a breach between the king and the earl, which culminated in the exile of the latter with all his family (see EDWARD THE CONFESSOR). But next year Godwine returned in triumph; and at a great meeting held outside London he and his family were restored to all their offices and possessions, and the archbishop and many other Normans were banished. In the following year Godwine was smitten with a fit at the king's table, and died three days later on the 15th of April 1053.

Godwine appears to have had seven sons, three of whom--King Harold, Gyrth and Leofwine--were killed at Hastings; two others, Wulfnoth and Aelfgar, are of little importance; another was Earl Tostig (q.v.). The eldest son was Sweyn, or Swegen (d. 1052), who was outlawed for seducing Eadgifu abbess of Leominster. After fighting for the king of Denmark he returned to England in 1049, when his murder of his cousin Beorn compelled him to leave England for the second time. In 1050, however, he regained his earldom, and in 1051 he shared his father's exile. To atone for the murder of Beorn, Sweyn went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and on the return journey he died on the 29th of September 1052, meeting his death, according to one account, at the hands of the Saracens.

GODWIT, a word of unknown origin, the name commonly applied to a marsh-bird in great repute, when fattened, for the table, and formerly abundant in the fens of Norfolk, the Isle of Ely and Lincolnshire. In Turner's days (1544) it was worth three times as much as a snipe, and at the same period Belon said of it--"C'est vn Oyseau es delices des Francoys." Casaubon, who Latinized its name "_Dei ingenium_" (_Ephemerides_, 19th September 1611), was told by the "_ornithotrophaeus_" he visited at Wisbech that in London it fetched twenty pence. Its fame as a delicacy is perpetuated by many later writers, Ben Jonson among them, and Pennant says that in his time (1766) it sold for half-a-crown or five shillings. Under the name godwit two perfectly distinct species of British birds were included, but that which seems to have been especially prized is known to modern ornithologists as the black-tailed godwit, _Limosa aegocephala_, formerly called, from its loud cry, a yarwhelp,[1] shrieker or barker, in the districts it inhabited. The practice of netting this bird in large numbers during the spring and summer, coupled with the gradual reclamation of the fens, to which it resorted, has now rendered it but a visitor in England; and it probably ceased from breeding regularly in England in 1824 or thereabouts, though under favourable conditions it may have occasionally laid its eggs for some thirty years later or more (Stevenson, _Birds of Norfolk_, ii. 250). This godwit is a species of wide range, reaching Iceland, where it is called _Jardraeka_ (= earth-raker), in summer, and occurring numerously in India in winter. Its chief breeding-quarters seem to extend from Holland eastwards to the south of Russia. The second British species is that which is known as the bar-tailed godwit, _L. lapponica_, and this seems to have never been more than a bird of double passage in the United Kingdom, arriving in large flocks on the south coast about the 12th of May, and, after staying a few days, proceeding to the north-eastward. It is known to breed in Lapland, but its eggs are of great rarity. Towards autumn the young visit the English coasts, and a few of them remain, together with some of the other species, in favourable situations throughout the winter. One of the local names by which the bar-tailed godwit is known to the Norfolk gunners is scamell, a word which, in the mouth of Caliban (_Tempest_, II. ii.), has been the cause of much perplexity to Shakespearian critics.

The godwits belong to the group _Limicolae_, and are about as big as a tame pigeon, but possess long legs, and a long bill with a slight upward turn. It is believed that in the genus _Limosa_ the female is larger than the male. While the winter plumage is of a sober greyish-brown, the breeding-dress is marked by a predominance of bright bay or chestnut, rendering the wearer a very beautiful object. The black-tailed godwit, though varying a good deal in size, is constantly larger than the bar-tailed, and especially longer in the legs. The species may be further distinguished by the former having the proximal third of the tail-quills pure white, and the distal two-thirds black, with a narrow white margin, while the latter has the same feathers barred with black and white alternately for nearly their whole length.

America possesses two species of the genus, the very large marbled godwit or marlin, _L. fedoa_, easily recognized by its size and the buff colour of its axillaries, and the smaller Hudsonian godwit, _L. hudsonica_, which has its axillaries of a deep black. This last, though less numerous than its congener, seems to range over the whole of the continent, breeding in the extreme north, while it has been obtained also in the Strait of Magellan and the Falkland Islands. The first seems not to go farther southward than the Antilles and the Isthmus of Panama.

From Asia, or at least its eastern part, two species have been described. One of them, _L. melanuroides_, differs only from _L. aegocephala_ in its smaller size, and is believed to breed in Amurland, wintering in the islands of the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia. The other, _L. uropygialis_, is closely allied to and often mistaken for _L. lapponica_, from which it chiefly differs by having the rump barred like the tail. This was found breeding in the extreme north of Siberia by Dr von Middendorff, and ranges to Australia, whence it was, like the last, first described by Gould. (A. N.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This name seems to have survived in Whelp Moor, near Brandon, in
Suffolk.

GOEBEN, AUGUST KARL VON (1816-1880), Prussian general of infantry, came of old Hanoverian stock. Born at Stade on the 10th of December 1816, he aspired from his earliest years to the Prussian service rather than that of his own country, and at the age of seventeen obtained a commission in the 24th regiment of Prussian infantry. But there was little scope there for the activities of a young and energetic subaltern, and, leaving the service in 1836, he entered the Carlist army campaigning in Spain. In the five campaigns which he made in the service of Don Carlos he had many and various vicissitudes of fortune. He had not fought for two months when he fell, severely wounded, into the hands of the Spanish Royal troops. After eight months' detention he escaped, but it was not long before he was captured again. This time his imprisonment was long and painful, and on two occasions he was compelled to draw lots for his life with his fellow-captives. When released, he served till 1840 with distinction. In that year he made his way back, a beggar without means or clothing, to Prussia. The Carlist lieutenant-colonel was glad to be re-admitted into the Prussian service as a second lieutenant, but he was still young, and few subalterns could at the age of twenty-four claim five years' meritorious war service. In a few years we find him serving as captain on the Great General Staff, and in 1848 he had the good fortune to be transferred to the staff of the IV. army corps, his immediate superior being Major von Moltke. The two "coming men" became fast friends, and their mutual esteem was never disturbed. In the Baden insurrection Goeben served with distinction on the staff of Prince William, the future emperor. Staff and regimental duty (as usual in the Prussian service) alternated for some years after this, till in 1863 he became major-general commanding the 26th infantry brigade. In 1860, it should be mentioned, he was present with the Spanish troops in Morocco, and took part in the battle of Tetuan.

In the first of Prussia's great wars (1864) he distinguished himself at the head of his brigade at Rackebull and Sonderburg. In the war of 1866 Lieutenant-General von Goeben commanded the 13th division, of which his old brigade formed part, and, in this higher sphere, once more displayed the qualities of a born leader and skilful tactician. He held almost independent command with conspicuous success in the actions of Dermbach, Laufach, Kissingen, Aschaffenburg, Gerchsheim, Tauber-Bischofsheim and Wurzburg. The mobilization of 1870 placed him at the head of the VIII. (Rhineland) army corps, forming part of the First Army under Steinmetz. It was his resolute and energetic leading that contributed mainly to the victory of Spicheren (6th August), and won the only laurels gained on the Prussian right wing at Gravelotte (18th August). Under Manteuffel the VIII. corps took part in the operations about Amiens and Bapaume, and on the 8th of January 1871 Goeben succeeded that general in the command of the First Army, with which he had served throughout the campaign as a corps commander. A fortnight later he had brought the war in northern France to a brilliant conclusion, by the decisive victory of St Quentin (18th and 19th January 1871). The close of the Franco-German War left Goeben one of the most distinguished men in the victorious army. He was colonel of the 28th infantry, and had the grand cross of the Iron Cross. He commanded the VIII. corps at Coblenz until his death in 1880.

General von Goeben left many writings. His memoirs are to be found in his works _Vier Jahre in Spanien_ (Hanover, 1841), _Reise- und Lagerbriefe aus Spanien und vom spanischen Heere in Marokko_ (Hanover, 1863) and in the Darmstadt _Allgemeine Militarzeitung_. The former French port (Queuleu) at Metz was renamed Goeben after him, and the 28th infantry bears his name. A statue of Goeben by Schaper was erected at Coblenz in 1884.

See G. Zernin, _Das Leben des Generals August von Goeben_ (2 vols.,
Berlin, 1895-1897); H. Barth, _A. von Goeben_ (Berlin, 1906); and, for
his share in the war of 1870-71; H. Kunz, _Der Feldzug im N. und N.W.
Frankreichs 1870-1871_ (Berlin, 1889), and the 14th Monograph of the
Great General Staff (1891).

GOEJE, MICHAEL JAN DE (1836-1909), Dutch orientalist, was born in Friesland in 1836. He devoted himself at an early age to the study of oriental languages and became especially proficient in Arabic, under the guidance of Dozy and Juynboll, to whom he was afterwards an intimate friend and colleague. He took his degree of doctor at Leiden in 1860, and then studied for a year in Oxford, where he examined and collated the Bodleian MSS. of Idrisi (part being published in 1866, in collaboration with R. P. Dozy, as _Description de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne_). About the same time he wrote _Memoires de l'histoire et de la geographie orientales_, and edited _Expugnatio regionum_. In 1883, on the death of Dozy, he became Arabic professor at Leiden, retiring in 1906. He died on the 17th of May 1909. Though perhaps not a teacher of the first order, he wielded a great influence during his long professoriate not only over his pupils, but over theologians and eastern administrators who attended his lectures, and his many editions of Arabic texts have been of the highest value to scholars, the most important being his great edition of Tabari. Though entirely averse from politics, he took a keen interest in the municipal affairs of Leiden and made a special study of elementary education. He took the leading part in the International Congress of Orientalists at Algiers in 1905. He was a member of the Institut de France, was awarded the German Order of Merit, and received an honorary doctorate of Cambridge University. At his death he was president of the newly formed International Association of Academies of Science. Among his chief works are _Fragmenta historicorum Arabicorum_ (1869-1871); _Diwan of Moslim ibn al-Walid_ (1875); _Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum_ (1870-1894); _Annals of Tabari_ (1879-1901); edition of Ibn Qutaiba's biographies (1904); of the travels of Ibn Jubaye (1907, 5th vol. of Gibb Memorial). He was also the chief editor of the _Encyclopaedia of Islam_ (vols. i.-iii.), and contributed many articles to periodicals. He wrote for the 9th and the present edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

GOES, DAMIAO DE (1502-1574), Portuguese humanist, was born of a patrician family at Alemquer, in February 1502. Under King John III. he was employed abroad for many years from 1523 on diplomatic and commercial missions, and he travelled over the greater part of Europe. He was intimate with the leading scholars of the time, was acquainted with Luther and other Protestant divines, and in 1532 became the pupil and friend of Erasmus. Goes took his degree at Padua in 1538 after a four years' course. In 1537, at the instance of his friend Cardinal Sadoleto, he undertook to mediate between the Church and the Lutherans, but failed through the attitude of the Protestants. He married in Flanders a rich and noble Dutch lady, D. Joanna de Hargen, and settled at Louvain, then the literary centre of the Low Countries, where he was living in 1542 when the French besieged the town. He was given the command of the defending forces, and saved Louvain, but was taken prisoner and confined for nine months in France, till he obtained his freedom by a heavy ransom. He was rewarded, however, by a grant of arms from Charles V. He finally returned to Portugal in 1545, with a view of becoming tutor to the king's son, but he failed to obtain this post, owing to the denunciations of Father Simon Rodriguez, provincial of the Jesuits, who accused Goes of favouring the Lutheran doctrines and of being a disciple of Erasmus. Nevertheless in 1548 he was appointed chief keeper of the archives and royal chronicler, and at once introduced some much-needed reforms into the administration of his office.

In 1558 he was given a commission to write a history of the reign of King Manoel, a task previously confided to Joao de Barros, but relinquished by him. It was an onerous undertaking for a conscientious historian, since it was necessary to expose the miseries as well as relate the glories of the period, and so to offend some of the most powerful families. Goes had already written a _Chronicle_ of Prince John (afterwards John II.), and when, after more than eight years' labour, he produced the First Part of his _Chronicle_ of King Manoel (1566), a chorus of attacks greeted it, the edition was destroyed, and he was compelled to issue a revised version. He brought out the three other parts in 1566-1567, though chapters 23 to 27 of the Third Part were so mutilated by the censorship that the printed text differs largely from the MS. Hitherto Goes, notwithstanding his Liberalism, had escaped the Inquisition, though in 1540 his _Fides, religio, moresque Aethiopum_ had been prohibited by the chief inquisitor, Cardinal D. Henrique; but the denunciation of Father Rodriguez in 1545, which had been vainly renewed in 1550, was now brought into action, and in 1571 he was arrested to stand his trial. There seems to be no doubt that the Inquisition made itself on this occasion, as on others, the instrument of private enmity; for eighteen months Goes lay ill in prison, and then he was condemned, though he had lived for thirty years as a faithful Catholic, and the worst that could be proved against him was that in his youth he had spoken against Indulgences, disbelieved in auricular confession, and consorted with heretics. He was sentenced to a term of reclusion, and his property was confiscated to the crown. After he had abjured his errors in private, he was sent at the end of 1572 to do penance at the monastery of Batalha. Later he was allowed to return home to Alemquer, where he died on the 30th of January 1574. He was buried in the church of Nossa Senhora da Varzea.

Damiao de Goes was a man of wide culture and genial and courtly manners, a skilled musician and a good linguist. He wrote both Portuguese and Latin with classic strength and simplicity, and his style is free from affectation and rhetorical ornaments. His portrait by Albrecht Durer shows an open, intelligent face, and the record of his life proves him to have been upright and fearless. His prosperity doubtless excited ill-will, but above all, his ideas, advanced for Portugal, his foreign ways, outspokenness and honesty contributed to the tragedy of his end, at a time when the forces of ignorant reaction held the ascendant. He had, it may be presumed, given some umbrage to the court by condemning, in the _Chronicle of King Manoel_, the royal ingratitude to distinguished public servants, though he received a pension and other rewards for that work, and he had certainly offended the nobility by his administration of the archive office and by exposing false genealogical claims in his _Nobiliario_. He paid the penalty for telling the truth, as he knew it, in an age when an historian had to choose between flattery of the great and silence. The _Chronicle of King Manoel_ was the first official history of a Portuguese reign to be written in a critical spirit, and Damiao de Goes has the honour of having been the first Portuguese royal chronicler to deserve the name of an historian.

His Portuguese works include _Chronica do felicissimo rei Dom Emanuel_
(parts i. and ii., Lisbon, 1566, parts iii. and iv., ib. 1567). Other
editions appeared in Lisbon in 1619 and 1749 and in Coimbra in 1790.
_Chronica do principe Dom Joam_ (Lisbon, 1558), with subsequent
editions in 1567 and 1724 in Lisbon and in 1790 in Coimbra. _Livro de
Marco Tullio Ciceram chamado Catam Mayor_ (Venice, 1538). This is a
translation of Cicero's _De senectute_. His Latin works, published
separately, comprise: (1) _Legatio magni imperatoris Presbiteri
Joannis, &c._ (Antwerp, 1532); (2) _Legatio Davidis Ethiopiae regis,
&c._ (Bologna, 1533); (3) _Commentarii rerum gestarum in India_
(Louvain, 1539); (4) _Fides, religio, moresque Aethiopum_ (Louvain,
1540), incorporating Nos. (1) and (2); (5) _Hispania_ (Louvain, 1542);
(6) _Aliquot epistolae Sadoleti Bembi et aliorum clarissimorum
virorum, &c._ (Louvain, 1544); (7) _Damiani a Goes equitis Lusitani
aliquot opuscula_ (Louvain, 1544); (8) _Urbis Lovaniensis obsidia_
(Lisbon, 1546); (9) _De bello Cambaico ultimo_ (Louvain, 1549); (10)
_Urbis Olisiponensis descriptio_ (Evora, 1554); (11) _Epistola ad
Hieronymum Cardosum_ (Lisbon, 1556). Most of the above went through
several editions, and many were afterwards included with new works in
such collections as No. (7), and seven sets of _Opuscula_ appeared,
all incomplete. Nos. (3), (4) and (5) suffered mutilation in
subsequent editions, at the hands of the censors, because they
offended against religious orthodoxy or family pride.

AUTHORITIES.--(A) Joaquim de Vasconcellos, _Goesiana_ (5 vols.), with
the following sub-titles: (1) _O Retrato de Albrecht Durer_ (Porto,
1879); (2) _Bibliographia_ (Porto, 1879), which describes 67 numbers
of books by Goes; (3) As Variantes das Chronicus Portuguezas (Porto,
1881); (4) _Damiao de Goes: Novos Estudos_ (Porto, 1897); (5) _As
Cartas Latinas_--in the press (1906). Snr. Vasconcellos only printed a
very limited number of copies of these studies for distribution among
friends, so that they are rare. (B) Guilherme J. C. Henriques,
_Ineditos Goesianos_, vol. i. (Lisbon, 1896), vol. ii. (containing the
proceedings at the trial by the Inquisition) (Lisbon, 1898). (C) A. P.
Lopes de Mendonca, _Damiao de Goes e a Inquisicao de Portugal_
(Lisbon, 1859). (D) Dr Sousa Viterbo, _Damiao de Goes e D. Antonio
Pinheiro_ (Coimbra, 1895). (E) Dr Theophilo Braga, _Historia da
Universidade de Coimbra_ (Lisbon, 1892), i. 374-380. (F) Menendez y
Pelayo, _Historia de los Heter. Espanoles_, ii. 129-143. (E. Pr.)

GOES, HUGO VAN DER (d. 1482), a painter of considerable celebrity at Ghent, was known to Vasari, as he is known to us, by a single picture in a Florentine monastery. At a period when the family of the Medici had not yet risen from the rank of a great mercantile firm to that of a reigning dynasty, it employed as an agent at the port of Bruges Tommaso Portinari, a lineal descendant, it was said, of Folco, the father of Dante's Beatrix. Tommaso, at that time patron of a chapel in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova at Florence, ordered an altar-piece of Hugo van der Goes, and commanded him to illustrate the sacred theme of "Quem genuit adoravit." In the centre of a vast triptych, comprising numerous figures of life size, Hugo represented the Virgin kneeling in adoration before the new-born Christ attended by Shepherds and Angels. On the wings he portrayed Tommaso and his two sons in prayer under the protection of Saint Anthony and St Matthew, and Tommaso's wife and two daughters supported by St Margaret and St Mary Magdalen. The triptych, which has suffered much from decay and restoring, was for over 400 years at Santa Maria Nuova, and is now in the Uffizi Gallery. Imposing because composed of figures of unusual size, the altar-piece is more remarkable for portrait character than for charms of ideal beauty.

There are also small pieces in public galleries which claim to have been executed by Van der Goes. One of these pictures in the National Gallery in London is more nearly allied to the school of Memling than to the triptych of Santa Maria Nuova; another, a small and very beautiful "John the Baptist," at the Pinakothek of Munich, is really by Memling; whilst numerous fragments of an altar-piece in the Belvedere at Vienna, though assigned to Hugo, are by his more gifted countryman of Bruges. Van der Goes, however, was not habitually a painter of easel pieces. He made his reputation at Bruges by producing coloured hangings in distemper. After he settled at Ghent, and became a master of his gild in 1465, he designed cartoons for glass windows. He also made decorations for the wedding of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York in 1468, for the festivals of the Rhetoricians and papal jubilees on repeated occasions, for the solemn entry of Charles the Bold into Ghent in 1470-1471, and for the funeral of Philip the Good in 1474. The labour which he expended on these occasions might well add to his fame without being the less ephemeral. About the year 1475 he retired to the monastery of Rouge Cloitre near Ghent, where he took the cowl. There, though he still clung to his profession, he seems to have taken to drinking, and at one time to have shown decided symptoms of insanity. But his superiors gradually cured him of his intemperance, and he died in the odour of sanctity in 1482.

GOES, a town in the province of Zeeland, Holland, on the island of South Beveland, 11-1/2 m. by rail E. of Middelburg. Pop. (1900) 6919. It is connected by a short canal with the East Scheldt, and has a good harbour (1819) defended by a fort. The principal buildings are the interesting Gothic church (1423) and the picturesque old town hall (restored 1771). There are various educational and charitable institutions. Goes has preserved for centuries its prosperous position as the market-town of the island. The chief industries are boat-building, brewing, book-binding and cigar-making. The town had its origin in the castle of Oostende, built here by the noble family of Borssele. It received a charter early in the 15th century from the countess Jacoba of Holland, who frequently stayed at the castle.

GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist and philosopher, was born at Frankfort-on-Main on the 28th of August 1749. He came, on his father's side, of Thuringian stock, his great-grandfather, Hans Christian Goethe, having been a farrier at Artern-on-the-Unstrut, about the middle of the 17th century. Hans Christian's son, Friedrich Georg, was brought up to the trade of a tailor, and in this capacity settled in Frankfort in 1686. A second marriage, however, brought him into possession of the Frankfort inn, "Zum Weidenhof," and he ended his days as a well-to-do innkeeper. His son, Johann Kaspar, the poet's father (1710-1782), studied law at Leipzig, and, after going through the prescribed courses of practical training at Wetzlar, travelled in Italy. He hoped, on his return to Frankfort, to obtain an official position in the government of the free city, but his personal influence with the authorities was not sufficiently strong. In his disappointment he resolved never again to offer his services to his native town, and retired into private life, a course which his ample means facilitated. In 1742 he acquired, as a consolation for the public career he had missed, the title of _kaiserlicher Rat_, and in 1748 married Katharina Elisabeth (1731-1808), daughter of the _Schultheiss_ or _Burgermeister_ of Frankfort, Johann Wolfgang Textor. The poet was the eldest son of this union. Of the later children only one, Cornelia, born in 1750, survived the years of childhood; she died as the wife of Goethe's friend, J. G. Schlosser, in 1777. The best elements in Goethe's genius came from his mother's side; of a lively, impulsive disposition, and gifted with remarkable imaginative power, Frau Rat was the ideal mother of a poet; moreover, being hardly eighteen at the time of her son's birth, she was herself able to be the companion of his childhood. From his father, whose stern, somewhat pedantic nature repelled warmer feelings on the part of the children, Goethe Inherited that "holy earnestness" and stability of character which brought him unscathed through temptations and passions, and held the balance to his all too powerful imagination.

Unforgettable is the picture which the poet subsequently drew of his childhood spent in the large house with its many nooks and crannies, in the Grosse Hirschgraben at Frankfort. Books, pictures, objects of art, antiquities, reminiscences of Rat Goethe's visit to Italy, above all a marionette theatre, kindled the child's quick intellect and imagination. His training was conducted in its early stages by his father, and was later supplemented by tutors. Meanwhile the varied and picturesque life of Frankfort was in itself an education. In 1759, during the Seven Years' War, the French, as Maria Theresa's allies, occupied the town, and, much to the irritation of Goethe's father, who was a stanch partisan of Frederick the Great, a French lieutenant, Count Thoranc, was quartered on the Goethe household. The foreign occupation also led to the establishment of a French troupe of actors, and to their performances the boy, through his grandfather's influence, had free access. Goethe has also recorded his memories of another picturesque event, the coronation of the emperor Joseph II. in the Frankfort Romer or town hall in 1764; but these memories were darkened by being associated in his mind with the tragic denouement of his first love affair. The object of this passion was a certain Gretchen, who seems to have taken advantage of the boy's interest in her to further the dishonest ends of one of her friends. The discovery of the affair and the investigation that followed cooled Goethe's ardour and caused him to turn his attention seriously to the studies which were to prepare him for the university. Meanwhile the literary instinct had begun to show itself; we hear of a novel in letters--a kind of linguistic exercise, in which the characters carried on the correspondence in different languages--of a prose epic on the subject of Joseph, and various religious poems of which one, _Die Hollenfahrt Christi_, found its way in a revised form into the poet's complete works.

In October 1765, Goethe, then a little over sixteen, left Frankfort for Leipzig, where a wider and, in many respects, less provincial life awaited him. He entered upon his university studies with zeal, but his own education in Frankfort had not been the best preparation for the scholastic methods which still dominated the German universities; of his professors, only Gellert seems to have won his interest, and that interest was soon exhausted. The literary beginnings he had made in Frankfort now seemed to him amateurish and trivial; he felt that he had to turn over a new leaf, and, under the guidance of E. W. Behrisch, a genial, original comrade, he learned the art of writing those light Anacreontic lyrics which harmonized with the tone of polite Leipzig society. Artificial as this poetry is, Goethe was, nevertheless, inspired by a real passion in Leipzig, namely, for Anna Katharina Schonkopf, the daughter of a wine-merchant at whose house he dined. She is the "Annette" after whom the recently discovered collection of lyrics was named, although it must be added that neither these lyrics nor the _Neue Lieder_, published in 1770, express very directly Goethe's feelings for Kathchen Schonkopf. To his Leipzig student-days belong also two small plays in Alexandrines, _Die Laune des Verliebten_, a pastoral comedy in one act, which reflects the lighter side of the poet's love affair, and _Die Mitschuldigen_ (published in a revised form, 1769), a more sombre picture, in which comedy is incongruously mingled with tragedy. In Leipzig Goethe also had time for what remained one of the abiding interests of his life, for art; he regarded A. F. Oeser (1717-1799), the director of the academy of painting in the Pleissenburg, who had given him lessons in drawing, as the teacher who in Leipzig had influenced him most. His art studies were also furthered by a short visit to Dresden. His stay in Leipzig came, however, to an abrupt conclusion; the distractions of student life proved too much for his strength; a sudden haemorrhage supervened, and he lay long ill, first in Leipzig, and, after it was possible to remove him, at home in Frankfort. These months of slow recovery were a time of serious introspection for Goethe. He still corresponded with his Leipzig friends, but the tone of his letters changed; life had become graver and more earnest for him. He pored over books on occult philosophy; he busied himself with alchemy and astrology. A friend of his mother's, Susanne Katharina von Klettenberg, who belonged to pietist circles in Frankfort, turned the boy's thoughts to religious mysticism. On his recovery his father resolved that he should complete his legal studies at Strassburg, a city which, although then outside the German empire, was, in respect of language and culture, wholly German. From the first moment Goethe set foot in the narrow streets of the Alsatian capital, in April 1770, the whole current of his thought seemed to change. The Gothic architecture of the Strassburg minster became to him the symbol of a national and German ideal, directly antagonistic to the French tastes and the classical and rationalistic atmosphere that prevailed in Leipzig. The second moment of importance in Goethe's Strassburg period was his meeting with Herder, who spent some weeks in Strassburg undergoing an operation of the eye. In this thinker, who was his senior by five years, Goethe found the master he sought; Herder taught him the significance of Gothic architecture, revealed to him the charm of nature's simplicity, and inspired him with enthusiasm for Shakespeare and the _Volkslied_. Meanwhile Goethe's legal studies were not neglected, and he found time to add to knowledge of other subjects, notably that of medicine. Another factor of importance in Goethe's Strassburg life was his love for Friederike Brion, the daughter of an Alsatian village pastor in Sesenheim. Even more than Herder's precept and example, this passion showed Goethe how trivial and artificial had been the Anacreontic and pastoral poetry with which he had occupied himself in Leipzig; and the lyrics inspired by Friederike, such as _Kleine Blumen, kleine Blatter_ and _Wie herrlich leuchtet mir die Natur!_ mark the beginning of a new epoch in German lyric poetry. The idyll of Sesenheim, as described in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_, is one of the most beautiful love-stories in the literature of the world. From the first, however, it was clear that Friederike Brion could never become the wife of the Frankfort patrician's son; an unhappy ending to the romance was unavoidable, and, as is to be seen in passionate outpourings like the _Wanderers Sturmlied_, and in the bitter self-accusations of _Clavigo_, it left deep wounds on the poet's sensitive soul.

To Strassburg we owe Goethe's first important drama, _Gotz von Berlichingen_, or, as it was called in its earliest form, _Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berlichingen dramatisiert_ (not published until 1831). Revised under the now familiar title, it appeared in 1773, after Goethe's return to Frankfort. In estimating this drama we must bear in mind Goethe's own Strassburg life, and the turbulent spirit of his own age, rather than the historical facts, which the poet found in the autobiography of his hero published in 1731. The latter supplied only the rough materials; the Gotz von Berlichingen whom Goethe drew, with his lofty ideals of right and wrong, and his enthusiasm for freedom, is a very different personage from the unscrupulous robber-knight of the 16th century, the rough friend of Franz von Sickingen and of the revolting peasants. Still less historical justification is to be found for the vacillating Weisslingen in whom Goethe executed poetic justice on himself as the lover of Friederike, or in the women of the play, the gentle Maria, the heartless Adelheid. But there is genial, creative power in the very subjectivity of these characters, and a vigorous dramatic life, which is irresistible in its appeal. With _Gotz von Berlichingen_, Shakespeare's art first triumphed on the German stage, and the literary movement known as _Sturm und Drang_ was inaugurated.