Chapter XVI: Part 16

GOLDFINCH (Ger. _Goldfink_[1]), the _Fringilla carduelis_ of Linnaeus and the _Carduelis elegans_ of later authors, an extremely well-known bird found over the greater parts of Europe and North Africa, and eastwards to Persia and Turkestan. Its gay plumage is matched by its sprightly nature; and together they make it one of the most favourite cage-birds among all classes. As a songster it is indeed surpassed by many other species, but its docility and ready attachment to its master or mistress make up for any defect in its vocal powers. In some parts of England the trade in goldfinches is very considerable. In 1860 Mr Hussey reported (_Zool._, p. 7144) the average annual captures near Worthing to exceed 11,000 dozens--nearly all being cock-birds; and a witness before a committee of the House of Commons in 1873 stated that, when a boy, he could take forty dozens in a morning near Brighton. In these districts and others the number has become much reduced, owing doubtless in part to the fatal practice of catching the birds just before or during the breeding-season; but perhaps the strongest cause of their growing scarcity is the constant breaking-up of waste lands, and the extirpation of weeds (particularly of the order _Compositae_) essential to the improved system of agriculture; for in many parts of Scotland, East Lothian for instance, where goldfinches were once as plentiful as sparrows, they are now only rare stragglers, and yet there they have not been thinned by netting. Though goldfinches may occasionally be observed in the coldest weather, incomparably the largest number leave Britain in autumn, returning in spring, and resorting to gardens and orchards to breed, when the lively song of the cock, and the bright yellow wings of both sexes, quickly attract notice. The nest is a beautifully neat structure, often placed at no great height from the ground, but generally so well hidden by the leafy bough on which it is built as not to be easily found, until, the young being hatched, the constant visits of the parents reveal its site. When the broods leave the nest they move into the more open country, and frequenting pastures, commons, heaths and downs, assemble in large flocks towards the end of summer. Eastward of the range of the present species its place is taken by its congener _C. caniceps_, which is easily recognized by wanting the black hood and white ear-coverts of the British bird. Its home seems to be in Central Asia, but it moves southward in winter, being common at that season in Cashmere, and is not unfrequently brought for sale to Calcutta. The position of the genus _Carduelis_ in the family _Fringillidae_ is not very clear. Structurally it would seem to have some relation to the siskins (_Chrysomitris_), though the members of the two groups have very different habits, and perhaps its nearest kinship lies with the hawfinches (_Coccothraustes_). See FINCH. (A. N.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The more common German name, however, is _Distelfink_
(Thistle-Finch) or _Stieglitz_.

GOLDFISH (_Cyprinus_ or _Carassius auratus_), a small fish belonging to the Cyprinid family, a native of China but naturalized in other countries. In the wild state its colours do not differ from those of a Crucian carp, and like that fish it is tenacious of life and easily domesticated. Albinos seem to be rather common; and as in other fishes (for instance, the tench, carp, eel, flounder), the colour of most of these albinos is a bright orange or golden yellow; occasionally even this shade of colour is lost, the fish being more or less pure white or silvery. The Chinese have domesticated these albinos for a long time, and by careful selection have succeeded in propagating all those strange varieties, and even monstrosities, which appear in every domestic animal. In some individuals the dorsal fin is only half its normal length, in others entirely absent; in others the anal fin has a double spine; in others all the fins are of nearly double the usual length. The snout is frequently malformed, giving the head of the fish an appearance similar to that of a bull-dog. The variety most highly prized has an extremely short snout, eyes which almost wholly project beyond the orbit, no dorsal fin, and a very long three- or four-lobed caudal fin (Telescope-fish).

The domestication of the goldfish by the Chinese dates back from the highest antiquity, and they were introduced into Japan at the beginning of the 16th century; but the date of their importation into Europe is still uncertain. The great German ichthyologist, M. E. Bloch, thought he could trace it back in England to the reign of James I., whilst other authors fix the date at 1691. It appears certain that they were brought to France, only much later, as a present to Mme de Pompadour, although the de Goncourts, the historians of the mistresses of Louis XV., have failed to trace any records of this event. The fish has since spread over a considerable part of Europe, and in many places it has reverted to its wild condition. In many parts of south-eastern Asia, in Mauritius, in North and South Africa, in Madagascar, in the Azores, it has become thoroughly acclimatized, and successfully competes with the indigenous fresh-water fishes. It will not thrive in rivers; in large ponds it readily reverts to the coloration of the original wild stock. It flourishes best in small tanks and ponds, in which the water is constantly changing and does not freeze; in such localities, and with a full supply of food, which consists of weeds, crumbs of bread, bran, worms, small crustaceans and insects, it attains to a length of from 6 to 12 in., breeding readily, sometimes at different times of the same year.

GOLDFUSS, GEORG AUGUST (1782-1848), German palaeontologist, born at Thurnau near Bayreuth on the 18th of April 1782, was educated at Erlangen, where he graduated Ph.D. in 1804 and became professor of zoology in 1818. He was subsequently appointed professor of zoology and mineralogy in the university of Bonn. Aided by Count G. Munster he issued the important _Petrefacta Germaniae_ (1826-1844), a work which was intended to illustrate the invertebrate fossils of Germany, but it was left incomplete after the sponges, corals, crinoids, echinids and part of the mollusca had been figured. Goldfuss died at Bonn on the 2nd of October 1848.

GOLDIE, SIR GEORGE DASHWOOD TAUBMAN (1846- ), English administrator, the founder of Nigeria, was born on the 20th of May 1846 at the Nunnery in the Isle of Man, being the youngest son of Lieut.-Colonel John Taubman Goldie-Taubman, speaker of the House of Keys, by his second wife Caroline, daughter of John E. Hoveden of Hemingford, Cambridgeshire. Sir George resumed his paternal name, Goldie, by royal licence in 1887. He was educated at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and for about two years held a commission in the Royal Engineers. He travelled in all parts of Africa, gaining an extensive knowledge of the continent, and first visited the country of the Niger in 1877. He conceived the idea of adding to the British empire the then little known regions of the lower and middle Niger, and for over twenty years his efforts were devoted to the realization of this conception. The method by which he determined to work was the revival of government by chartered companies within the empire--a method supposed to be buried with the East India Company. The first step was to combine all British commercial interests in the Niger, and this he accomplished in 1879 when the United African Company was formed. In 1881 Goldie sought a charter from the imperial government (the 2nd Gladstone ministry). Objections of various kinds were raised. To meet them the capital of the company (renamed the National African Company) was increased from L125,000 to L1,000,000, and great energy was displayed in founding stations on the Niger. At this time French traders, encouraged by Gambetta, established themselves on the lower river, thus rendering it difficult for the company to obtain territorial rights; but the Frenchmen were bought out in 1884, so that at the Berlin conference on West Africa in 1885 Mr Goldie, present as an expert on matters relating to the river, was able to announce that on the lower Niger the British flag alone flew. Meantime the Niger coast line had been placed under British protection. Through Joseph Thomson, David Mclntosh, D. W. Sargent, J. Flint, William Wallace, E. Dangerfield and numerous other agents, over 400 political treaties--drawn up by Goldie--were made with the chiefs of the lower Niger and the Hausa states. The scruples of the British government being overcome, a charter was at length granted (July 1886), the National African Company becoming the Royal Niger Company, with Lord Aberdare as governor and Goldie as vice-governor. In 1895, on Lord Aberdare's death, Goldie became governor of the company, whose destinies he had guided throughout.

The building up of Nigeria as a British state had to be carried on in face of further difficulties raised by French travellers with political missions, and also in face of German opposition. From 1884 to 1890, Prince Bismarck was a persistent antagonist, and the strenuous efforts he made to secure for Germany the basin of the lower Niger and Lake Chad were even more dangerous to Goldie's schemes of empire than the ambitions of France. Herr E. R. Flegel, who had travelled in Nigeria during 1882-1884 under the auspices of the British company, was sent out in 1885 by the newly-formed German Colonial Society to secure treaties for Germany, which had established itself at Cameroon. After Flegel's death in 1886 his work was continued by his companion Dr Staudinger, while Herr Hoenigsberg was despatched to stir up trouble in the occupied portions of the Company's territory,--or, as he expressed it, "to burst up the charter." He was finally arrested at Onitsha, and, after trial by the company's supreme court at Asaba, was expelled the country. Prince Bismarck then sent out his nephew, Herr von Puttkamer, as German consul-general to Nigeria, with orders to report on this affair, and when this report was published in a White Book, Bismarck demanded heavy damages from the company. Meanwhile Bismarck maintained constant pressure on the British government to compel the Royal Niger Company to a division of spheres of influence, whereby Great Britain would have lost a third, and the most valuable part, of the company's territory. But he fell from power in March 1890, and in July following Lord Salisbury concluded the famous "Heligoland" agreement with Germany. After this event the aggressive action of Germany in Nigeria entirely ceased, and the door was opened for a final settlement of the Nigeria-Cameroon frontiers. These negotiations, which resulted in an agreement in 1893, were initiated by Goldie as a means of arresting the advance of France into Nigeria from the direction of the Congo. By conceding to Germany a long but narrow strip of territory between Adamawa and Lake Chad, to which she had no treaty claims, a barrier was raised against French expeditions, semi-military and semi-exploratory, which sought to enter Nigeria from the east. Later French efforts at aggression were made from the western or Dahomeyan side, despite an agreement concluded with France in 1890 respecting the northern frontier.

The hostility of certain Fula princes led the company to despatch, in 1897, an expedition against the Mahommedan states of Nupe and Illorin. This expedition was organized and personally directed by Goldie and was completely successful. Internal peace was thus secured, but in the following year the differences with France in regard to the frontier line became acute, and compelled the intervention of the British government. In the negotiations which ensued Goldie was instrumental in preserving for Great Britain the whole of the navigable stretch of the lower Niger. It was, however, evidently impossible for a chartered company to hold its own against the state-supported protectorates of France and Germany, and in consequence, on the 1st of January 1900, the Royal Niger Company transferred its territories to the British government for the sum of L865,000. The ceded territory together with the small Niger Coast Protectorate, already under imperial control, was formed into the two protectorates of northern and southern Nigeria (see further NIGERIA).

In 1903-1904, at the request of the Chartered Company of South Africa, Goldie visited Rhodesia and examined the situation in connexion with the agitation for self-government by the Rhodesians. In 1902-1903 he was one of the royal commissioners who inquired into the military preparations for the war in South Africa (1899-1902) and into the operations up to the occupation of Pretoria, and in 1905-1906 was a member of the royal commission which investigated the methods of disposal of war stores after peace had been made. In 1905 he was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society and held that office for three years. In 1908 he was chosen an alderman of the London County Council. Goldie was created K.C.M.G. in 1887, and a privy councillor in 1898. He became an F.R.S., honorary D.C.L. of Oxford University (1897) and honorary LL.D. of Cambridge (1897). He married in 1870 Matilda Catherine (d. 1898), daughter of John William Elliott of Wakefield.

GOLDING, ARTHUR (c. 1536-c. 1605), English translator, son of John Golding of Belchamp St Paul and Halsted, Essex, one of the auditors of the exchequer, was born probably in London about 1536. His half-sister, Margaret, married John de Vere, 16th earl of Oxford. In 1549 he was already in the service of Protector Somerset, and the statement that he was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, lacks corroboration. He seems to have resided for some time in the house of Sir William Cecil, in the Strand, with his nephew, the poet, the 17th earl of Oxford, whose receiver he was, for two of his dedications are dated from Cecil House. His chief work is his translation of Ovid. _The Fyrst Fower Bookes of P. Ovidius Nasos worke, entitled Metamorphosis, translated oute of Latin into Englishe meter_ (1565), was supplemented in 1567 by a translation of the fifteen books. Strangely enough the translator of Ovid was a man of strong Puritan sympathies, and he translated many of the works of Calvin. To his version of the _Metamorphoses_ he prefixed a long metrical explanation of his reasons for considering it a work of edification. He sets forth the moral which he supposes to underlie certain of the stories, and shows how the pagan machinery may be brought into line with Christian thought. It was from Golding's pages that many of the Elizabethans drew their knowledge of classical mythology, and there is little doubt that Shakespeare was well acquainted with the book. Golding translated also the _Commentaries_ of Caesar (1565), Calvin's commentaries on the Psalms (1571), his sermons on the Galatians and Ephesians, on Deuteronomy and the book of Job, Theodore Beza's _Tragedie of Abrahams Sacrifice_ (1577) and the _De Beneficiis_ of Seneca (1578). He completed a translation begun by Sidney from Philippe de Mornay, _A Worke concerning the Trewnesse of the Christian Religion_ (1604). His only original work is a prose _Discourse_ on the earthquake of 1580, in which he saw a judgment of God on the wickedness of his time. He inherited three considerable estates in Essex, the greater part of which he sold in 1595. The last trace we have of Golding is contained in an order dated the 25th of July 1605, giving him licence to print certain of his works.

GOLDINGEN (Lettish, _Kuldiga_), a town of Russia, in the government of Courland, 55 m. by rail N.E. of Libau, and on Windau river, in 56 deg. 58' N. and 22 deg. E. Pop. (1897) 9733. It has woollen mills, needle and match factories, breweries and distilleries, a college for teachers, and ruins of a castle of the Teutonic Knights, built in 1248 and used in the 17th century as the residence of the dukes of Courland.

GOLDMARK, KARL (1832- ), Hungarian composer, was born at Keszthely-am-Plattensee, in Hungary, on the 18th of May 1832. His father, a poor cantor in the local Jewish synagogue, was unable to assist to any extent financially in the development of his son's talents. Yet in the household much music was made, and on a cheap violin and home-made flute, constructed by Goldmark himself from reeds cut from the riverbank, the future composer gave rein to his musical ideas. His talent was fostered by the village schoolmaster, by whose aid he was able to enter the music-school of the Oedenburger Verein. Here he remained but a short time, his success at a school concert finally determining his parents to allow him to devote himself entirely to music. In 1844, then, he went to Vienna, where Jansa took up his cause and eventually obtained for him admission to the conservatorium. For two years Goldmark worked under Jansa at the violin, and on the outbreak of the revolution, after studying all the orchestral instruments he obtained an engagement in the orchestra at Raab. There, on the capitulation of Raab, he was to have been shot for a spy, and was only saved at the eleventh hour by the happy arrival of a former colleague. In 1850 Goldmark left Raab for Vienna, where from his friend Mittrich he obtained his first real knowledge of the classics. There, too, he devoted himself to composition. In 1857 Goldmark, who was then engaged in the Karl-theater band, gave a concert of his own works with such success that his first quartet attracted very general attention. Then followed the "Sakuntala" and "Penthesilea" overtures, which show how Wagner's influence had supervened upon his previous domination by Mendelssohn, and the delightful "Landliche Hochzeit" symphony, which carried his fame abroad. Goldmark's reputation was now made, and very largely increased by the production at Vienna in 1875 of his first and best opera, _Die Konigin von Saba_. Over this opera he spent seven years. Its popularity is still almost as great as ever. It was followed in November 1886, also at Vienna, by _Merlin_, much of which has been rewritten since then. A third opera, a version of Dickens's _Cricket on the Hearth_, was given by the Royal Carl Rosa Company in London in 1900. Goldmark's chamber music has not made much lasting impression, but the overtures "Im Fruhling," "Prometheus Bound," and "Sapho" are fairly well known. A "programme" seems essential to him. In opera he is most certainly at his best, and as an orchestral colourist he ranks among the very highest.

GOLDONI, CARLO (1707-1793), Italian dramatist, the real founder of modern Italian comedy, was born at Venice, on the 25th of February 1707, in a fine house near St Thomas's church. His father Giulio was a native of Modena. The first playthings of the future writer were puppets which he made dance; the first books he read were plays,--among others, the comedies of the Florentine Cicognini. Later he received a still stronger impression from the _Mandragora_ of Machiavelli. At eight years old he had tried to sketch a play. His father, meanwhile, had taken his degree in medicine at Rome and fixed himself at Perugia, where he made his son join him; but, having soon quarrelled with his colleagues in medicine, he departed for Chioggia, leaving his son to the care of a philosopher, Professor Caldini of Rimini. The young Goldoni soon grew tired of his life at Rimini, and ran away with a Venetian company of players. He began to study law at Venice, then went to continue the same pursuit at Pavia, but at that time he was studying the Greek and Latin comic poets much more and much better than books about law. "I have read over again," he writes in his own _Memoirs_, "the Greek and Latin poets, and I have told to myself that I should like to imitate them in their style, their plots, their precision; but I would not be satisfied unless I succeeded in giving more interest to my works, happier issues to my plots, better drawn characters and more genuine comedy." For a satire entitled _Il Colosso_, which attacked the honour of several families of Pavia, he was driven from that town, and went first to study with the jurisconsult Morelli at Udine, then to take his degree in law at Modena. After having worked some time as clerk in the chanceries of Chioggia and Feltre, his father being dead, he went to Venice, to exercise there his profession as a lawyer. But the wish to write for the stage was always strong in him, and he tried to do so; he made, however, a mistake in his choice, and began with a tragedy, _Amalasunta_, which was represented at Milan and proved a failure. In 1734 he wrote another tragedy, _Belisario_, which, though not much better, chanced nevertheless to please the public. This first success encouraged him to write other tragedies, some of which were well received; but the author himself saw clearly that he had not yet found his proper sphere, and that a radical dramatic reform was absolutely necessary for the stage. He wished to create a characteristic comedy in Italy, to follow the example of Moliere, and to delineate the realities of social life in as natural a manner as possible. His first essay of this kind was _Momolo Cortesan_ (Momolo the Courtier), written in the Venetian dialect, and based on his own experience. Other plays followed--some interesting from their subject, others from the characters; the best of that period are--_Le Trentadue Disgrazie d' Arlecchino_, _La Notte critica_, _La Bancarotta_, _La Donna di Garbo_. Having, while consul of Genoa at Venice, been cheated by a captain of Ragusa, he founded on this his play _L'Impostore_. At Leghorn he made the acquaintance of the comedian Medebac, and followed him to Venice, with his company, for which he began to write his best plays. Once he promised to write sixteen comedies in a year, and kept his word; among the sixteen are some of his very best, such as _Il Caffe_, _Il Bugiardo_, _La Pamela_. When he left the company of Medebac, he passed over to that maintained by the patrician Vendramin, continuing to write with the greatest facility. In 1761 he was called to Paris, and before leaving Venice he wrote _Una delle ultime sere di Carnevale_ (One of the Last Nights of Carnival), an allegorical comedy in which he said good-bye to his country. At the end of the representation of this play, the theatre resounded with applause, and with shouts expressive of good wishes. Goldoni, at this proof of public sympathy, wept as a child. At Paris, during two years, he wrote comedies for the Italian actors; then he taught Italian to the royal princesses; and for the wedding of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette he wrote in French one of his best comedies, _Le Bourru bienfaisant_, which was a great success. When he retired from Paris to Versailles, the king made him a gift of 6000 francs, and fixed on him an annual pension of 1200 francs. It was at Versailles he wrote his _Memoirs_, which occupied him till he reached his eightieth year. The Revolution deprived him all at once of his modest pension, and reduced him to extreme misery; he dragged on his unfortunate existence till 1793, and died on the 6th of February. The day after, on the proposal of Andre Chenier, the Convention agreed to give the pension back to the poet; and as he had already died, a reduced allowance was granted to his widow.

The best comedies of Goldoni are: _La Donna di Garbo_, _La Bottega di
Caffe_, _Pamela nubile_, _Le Baruffe chiozzotte_, _I Rusteghi_,
_Todero Brontolon_, _Gli Innamorati_, _Il Ventaglio_, _Il Bugiardo_,
_La Casa nova_, _Il Burbero benefico_, _La Locandiera_. A collected
edition (Venice, 1788) was republished at Florence in 1827. See P. G.
Molmenti, _Carlo Goldoni_ (Venice, 1875); Rabany, _Carlo Goldoni_
(Paris, 1896). The _Memoirs_ were translated into English by John
Black (Boston, 1877). with preface by W. D. Howells.

GOLDS, a Mongolo-Tatar people, living on the Lower Amur in south-eastern Siberia. Their chief settlements are on the right bank of the Amur and along the Sungari and Usuri rivers. In physique they are typically Mongolic. Like the Chinese they wear a pigtail, and from them, too, have learnt the art of silk embroidery. The Golds live almost entirely on fish, and are excellent boatmen. They keep large herds of swine and dogs, which live, like themselves, on fish. Geese, wild duck, eagles, bears, wolves and foxes are also kept in menageries. There is much reverence paid to the eagles, and hence the Manchus call the Golds "Eaglets." Their religion is Shamanism.

See L. Schrenck, _Die Volker des Amurlandes_ (St Petersburg, 1891);
Laufer, "The Amoor Tribes," in _American Anthropologist_ (New York,
1900); E. G. Ravenstein, _The Russians on the Amur_ (1861).

GOLDSBORO, a city and the county-seat of Wayne county, North Carolina, U.S.A., on the Neuse river, about 50 m. S.E. of Raleigh. Pop. (1890) 4017; (1900) 5877 (2520 negroes); (1910) 6107. It is served by the Southern, the Atlantic Coast Line and the Norfolk & Southern railways. The surrounding country produces large quantities of tobacco, cotton and grain, and trucking is an important industry, the city being a distributing point for strawberries and various kinds of vegetables. The city's manufactures include cotton goods, knit goods, cotton-seed oil, agricultural implements, lumber and furniture. Goldsboro is the seat of the Eastern insane asylum (for negroes) and of an Odd Fellows' orphan home. The municipality owns and operates its water-works and electric-lighting plant. Goldsboro was settled in 1838, and was first incorporated in 1841. In the campaign of 1865 Goldsboro was the point of junction of the Union armies under generals Sherman and Schofield, previous to the final advance to Greensboro.

GOLDSCHMIDT, HERMANN (1802-1866), German painter and astronomer, was the son of a Jewish merchant, and was born at Frankfort on the 17th of June 1802. He for ten years assisted his father in his business; but, his love of art having been awakened while journeying in Holland, he in 1832 began the study of painting at Munich under Cornelius and Schnorr, and in 1836 established himself at Paris, where he painted a number of pictures of more than average merit, among which may be mentioned the "Cumaean Sibyl" (1844); an "Offering to Venus" (1845); a "View of Rome" (1849); the "Death of Romeo and Juliet" (1857); and several Alpine landscapes. In 1847 he began to devote his attention to astronomy; and from 1852 to 1861 he discovered fourteen asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, on which account he received the grand astronomical prize from the Academy of Sciences. His observations of the protuberances on the sun, made during the total eclipse on the 10th of July 1860, are included in the work of Madler on the eclipse, published in 1861. Goldschmidt died at Fontainebleau on the 26th of August 1866.

GOLDSMID, the name of a family of Anglo-Jewish bankers sprung from Aaron Goldsmid (d. 1782), a Dutch merchant who settled in England about 1763. Two of his sons, Benjamin Goldsmid (c. 1753-1808) and Abraham Goldsmid (c. 1756-1810), began business together about 1777 as bill-brokers in London, and soon became great powers in the money market, during the Napoleonic war, through their dealings with the government. Abraham Goldsmid was in 1810 joint contractor with the Barings for a government loan, but owing to a depreciation of the scrip he was forced into bankruptcy and committed suicide. His brother, in a fit of depression, had similarly taken his own life two years before. Both were noted for their public and private generosity, and Benjamin had a part in founding the Royal Naval Asylum. Benjamin left four sons, the youngest being Lionel Prager Goldsmid; Abraham a daughter, Isabel.

Their nephew, Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, Bart. (1778-1859), was born in London, and began in business with a firm of bullion brokers to the Bank of England and the East India Company. He amassed a large fortune, and was made Baron da Palmeira by the Portuguese government in 1846 for services rendered In settling a monetary dispute between Portugal and Brazil, but he is chiefly known for his efforts to obtain the emancipation of the Jews in England and for his part in founding University College, London. The Jewish Disabilities Bill, first introduced in Parliament by Sir Robert Grant in 1830, owed its final passage to Goldsmid's energetic work. He helped to establish the University College hospital in 1834, serving as its treasurer for eighteen years, and also aided in the efforts to obtain reform in the English penal code. Moreover he assisted by his capital and his enterprise to build part of the English southern railways and also the London docks. In 1841 he became the first Jewish baronet, the honour being conferred upon him by Lord Melbourne. He had married his cousin Isabel (see above), and their second son was Sir Francis Henry Goldsmid, Bart. (1808-1878), born in London, and called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1833 (the first Jew to become an English barrister; Q.C. 1858). After the passing of the Jewish Disabilities Bill, in which he had aided his father with a number of pamphlets that attracted great attention, he entered Parliament in 1860 (having succeeded to the baronetcy) as member for Reading, and represented that constituency until his death. He was strenuous on behalf of the Jewish religion, and the founder of the great Jews' Free School. He was a munificent contributor to charities and especially to the endowment of University College. He, like his father, married a cousin, and, dying without issue, was succeeded in the baronetcy by his nephew Sir Julian Goldsmid, Bart. (1838-1896), son of Frederick David Goldsmid (1812-1866), long M.P. for Honiton. Sir Julian was for many years in Parliament, and his wealth, ability and influence made him a personage of considerable importance. He was eventually made a privy councillor. He had eight daughters, but no son, and his entailed property passed to his relation, Mr d'Avigdor, his house in Piccadilly being converted into the Isthmian Club.

Another distinguished member of the same family, Sir Frederic John Goldsmid (1818-1908), son of Lionel Prager Goldsmid (see above), was educated at King's College, London, and entering the Madras army in 1839 served in the China War of 1840-41, with the Turkish troops in eastern Crimea in 1855-56, and was given political employment by the Indian government. He received the thanks of the commander-in-chief and of the war office for services during the Egyptian campaign, and was retired a major-general in 1875. Sir Frederic Goldsmid's name is, however, associated less with military service than with much valuable work in exploration and in surveying, for which he repeatedly received the thanks of government. From 1865 to 1870 he was director-general of the Indo-European telegraph, and carried through the telegraph convention with Persia; and between 1870 and 1872, as commissioner, he settled with Persia the difficult questions of the Perso-Baluch and Perso-Afghan boundaries. In the course of his work he had to travel extensively, and he followed this up by various responsible missions connected with emigration questions. In 1881-1882 he was in Egypt, as controller of the Daira Sanieh, and doing other miscellaneous military work; and in 1883 he went to the Congo, on behalf of the king of the Belgians, as one of the organizers of the new state, but had to return on account of illness. From his early years he had made studies of several Eastern languages, and he ranked among the foremost Orientalists of his day. In 1886 he was president of the geographical section of the British Association meeting held at Birmingham. He had married in 1849, and had two sons and four daughters. In 1871 he was made a K.C.S.I. Besides important contributions to the 9th edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ and many periodicals, he wrote an excellent and authoritative biography of Sir James Outram (2 vols., 1880).

A sister of the last-named married Henry Edward Goldsmid (1812-1855), an eminent Indian civil servant, son of Edward Goldsmid; his reform of the revenue system in Bombay, and introduction of a new system, established after his death, through his reports in 1840-1847, and his devoted labour in land-surveys, were of the highest importance to western India, and established his memory there as a public benefactor.

GOLDSMITH, LEWIS (c. 1763-1846), Anglo-French publicist, of Portuguese-Jewish extraction, was born near London about 1763. Having published in 1801 _The Crimes of Cabinets, or a Review of the Plans and Aggressions for Annihilating the Liberties of France, and the Dismemberment of her Territories_, an attack on the military policy of Pitt, he moved, in 1802, from England to Paris. Talleyrand introduced him to Napoleon, who arranged for him to establish in Paris an English tri-weekly, the _Argus_, which was to review English affairs from the French point of view. According to his own account, he was in 1803 entrusted with a mission to obtain from the head of the French royal family, afterwards Louis XVIII., a renunciation of his claims to the throne of France, in return for the throne of Poland. The offer was declined, and Goldsmith says that he then received instructions to kidnap Louis and kill him if he resisted, but, instead of executing these orders, he revealed the plot. He was, nevertheless, employed by Napoleon on various other secret service missions till 1807, when his Republican sympathies began to wane. In 1809 he returned to England, where he was at first imprisoned but soon released; and he became a notary in London. In 1811, being now violently anti-republican, he founded a Sunday newspaper, the _Anti-Gallican Monitor_ and _Anti-Corsican Chronicle_, subsequently known as the _British Monitor_, in which he denounced the French Revolution. In 1811 he proposed that a public subscription should be raised to put a price on Napoleon's head, but this suggestion was strongly reprobated by the British government. In the same year he published _Secret History of the Cabinet of Bonaparte and Recueil des manifestes, or a Collection of the Decrees of Napoleon Bonaparte_, and in 1812 _Secret History of Bonaparte's Diplomacy_. Goldsmith alleged that in the latter year he was offered L200,000 by Napoleon to discontinue his attacks. In 1815 he published _An Appeal to the Governments of Europe on the Necessity of bringing Napoleon Bonaparte to a Public Trial_. In 1825 he again settled down in Paris, and in 1832 published his _Statistics of France_. His only child, Georgiana, became, in 1837, the second wife of Lord Lyndhurst. He died in Paris on the 6th of January 1846.

GOLDSMITH, OLIVER (1728-1774), English poet, playwright, novelist and man of letters, came of a Protestant and Saxon family which had long been settled in Ireland. He is usually said to have been born at Pallas or Pallasmore, Co. Longford; but recent investigators have contended, with much show of probability, that his true birthplace was Smith-Hill House, Elphin, Roscommon, the residence of his mother's father, the Rev. Oliver Jones. His father, Charles Goldsmith, lived at Pallas, supporting with difficulty his wife and children on what he could earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer.

While Oliver was still a child his father was presented to the living of Kilkenny West, in the county of West Meath. This was worth about L200 a year. The family accordingly quitted their cottage at Pallas for a spacious house on a frequented road, near the village of Lissoy. Here the boy was taught his letters by a relative and dependent, Elizabeth Delap, and was sent in his seventh year to a village school kept by an old quartermaster on half-pay, who professed to teach nothing but reading, writing and arithmetic, but who had an inexhaustible fund of stories about ghosts, banshees and fairies, about the great Rapparee chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and galloping Hogan, and about the exploits of Peterborough and Stanhope, the surprise of Monjuich and the glorious disaster of Brihuega. This man must have been of the Protestant religion; but he was of the aboriginal race, and not only spoke the Irish language, but could pour forth unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver early became, and through life continued to be, a passionate admirer of the Irish music, and especially of the compositions of Carolan, some of the last notes of whose harp he heard. It ought to be added that Oliver, though by birth one of the Englishry, and though connected by numerous ties with the Established Church, never showed the least sign of that contemptuous antipathy with which, in his days, the ruling minority in Ireland too generally regarded the subject majority. So far indeed was he from sharing in the opinions and feelings of the caste to which he belonged that he conceived an aversion to the Glorious and Immortal Memory, and, even when George III. was on the throne, maintained that nothing but the restoration of the banished dynasty could save the country.

From the humble academy kept by the old soldier Goldsmith was removed in his ninth year. He went to several grammar-schools, and acquired some knowledge of the ancient languages. His life at this time seems to have been far from happy. He had, as appears from the admirable portrait of him by Reynolds at Knole, features harsh even to ugliness. The small-pox had set its mark on him with more than usual severity. His stature was small, and his limbs ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. He became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in the play-ground, and flogged as a dunce in the schoolroom. When he had risen to eminence, those who had once derided him ransacked their memory for the events of his early years, and recited repartees and couplets which had dropped from him, and which, though little noticed at the time, were supposed, a quarter of a century later, to indicate the powers which produced the _Vicar of Wakefield_ and the _Deserted Village_.

On the 11th of June 1744, being then in his sixteenth year, Oliver went up to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar. The sizars paid nothing for food and tuition, and very little for lodging; but they had to perform some menial services from which they have long been relieved. Goldsmith was quartered, not alone, in a garret of what was then No. 35 in a range of buildings which has long since disappeared. His name, scrawled by himself on one of its window-panes is still preserved in the college library. From such garrets many men of less parts than his have made their way to the woolsack or to the episcopal bench. But Goldsmith, while he suffered all the humiliations, threw away all the advantages of his situation. He neglected the studies of the place, stood low at the examinations, was turned down to the bottom of his class for playing the buffoon in the lecture-room, was severely reprimanded for pumping on a constable, and was caned by a brutal tutor for giving a ball in the attic storey of the college to some gay youths and damsels from the city.

While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided between squalid distress and squalid dissipation, his father died, leaving a mere pittance. In February 1749 the youth obtained his bachelor's degree, and left the university. During some time the humble dwelling to which his widowed mother had retired was his home. He was now in his twenty-first year; it was necessary that he should do something; and his education seemed to have fitted him to do nothing but to dress himself in gaudy colours, of which he was as fond as a magpie, to take a hand at cards, to sing Irish airs, to play the flute, to angle in summer and to tell ghost stories by the fire in winter. He tried five or six professions in turn without success. He applied for ordination; but, as he applied in scarlet clothes, he was speedily turned out of the episcopal palace. He then became tutor in an opulent family, but soon quitted his situation in consequence of a dispute about pay. Then he determined to emigrate to America. His relations, with much satisfaction, saw him set out for Cork on a good horse, with L30 in his pocket. But in six weeks he came back on a miserable hack, without a penny, and informed his mother that the ship in which he had taken his passage, having got a fair wind while he was at a party of pleasure, had sailed without him. Then he resolved to study the law. A generous uncle, Mr Contarine, advanced L50. With this sum Goldsmith went to Dublin, was enticed into a gaming-house and lost every shilling. He then thought of medicine. A small purse was made up; and in his twenty-fourth year he was sent to Edinburgh. At Edinburgh he passed eighteen months in nominal attendance on lectures, and picked up some superficial information about chemistry and natural history. Thence he went to Leiden, still pretending to study physic. He left that celebrated university, the third university at which he had resided, in his twenty-seventh year, without a degree, with the merest smattering of medical knowledge, and with no property but his clothes and his flute. His flute, however, proved a useful friend. He rambled on foot through Flanders, France and Switzerland, playing tunes which everywhere set the peasantry dancing, and which often procured for him a supper and a bed. He wandered as far as Italy. His musical performances, indeed, were not to the taste of the Italians; but he contrived to live on the alms which he obtained at the gates of convents. It should, however, be observed that the stories which he told about this part of his life ought to be received with great caution; for strict veracity was never one of his virtues; and a man who is ordinarily inaccurate in narration is likely to be more than ordinarily inaccurate when he talks about his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, was so regardless of truth as to assert in print that he was present at a most interesting conversation between Voltaire and Fontenelle, and that this conversation took place at Paris. Now it is certain that Voltaire never was within a hundred leagues of Paris during the whole time which Goldsmith passed on the continent.

In February 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a shilling, without a friend and without a calling. He had indeed, if his own unsupported evidence may be trusted, obtained a doctor's degree on the continent; but this dignity proved utterly useless to him. In England his flute was not in request; there were no convents; and he was forced to have recourse to a series of desperate expedients. There is a tradition that he turned strolling player. He pounded drugs and ran about London with phials for charitable chemists. He asserted, upon one occasion, that he had lived "among the beggars in Axe Lane." He was for a time usher of a school, and felt the miseries and humiliations of this situation so keenly that he thought it a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as a bookseller's hack; but he soon found the new yoke more galling than the old one, and was glad to become an usher again. He obtained a medical appointment in the service of the East India Company; but the appointment was speedily revoked. Why it was revoked we are not told. The subject was one on which he never liked to talk. It is probable that he was incompetent to perform the duties of the place. Then he presented himself at Surgeons' Hall for examination, as "mate to an hospital." Even to so humble a post he was found unequal. Nothing remained but to return to the lowest drudgery of literature. Goldsmith took a room in a tiny square off Ludgate Hill, to which he had to climb from Sea-coal Lane by a dizzy ladder of flagstones called Breakneck Steps. Green Arbour Court and the ascent have long disappeared. Here, at thirty, the unlucky adventurer sat down to toil like a galley slave. Already, in 1758, during his first bondage to letters, he had translated Marteilhe's remarkable _Memoirs of a Protestant, Condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion_. In the years that now succeeded he sent to the press some things which have survived, and many which have perished. He produced articles for reviews, magazines and newspapers; children's books, which, bound in gilt paper and adorned with hideous woodcuts, appeared in the window of Newbery's once far-famed shop at the corner of Saint Paul's churchyard; _An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe_, which, though of little or no value, is still reprinted among his works; a volume of essays entitled _The Bec; a Life of Beau Nash_; a superficial and incorrect, but very readable, _History of England_, in a series of letters purporting to be addressed by a nobleman to his son; and some very lively and amusing sketches of London Society in another series of letters purporting to be addressed by a Chinese traveller to his friends. All these works were anonymous; but some of them were well known to be Goldsmith's; and he gradually rose in the estimation of the booksellers for whom he drudged. He was, indeed, emphatically a popular writer. For accurate research or grave disquisition he was not well qualified by nature or by education. He knew nothing accurately; his reading had been desultory; nor had he meditated deeply on what he had read. He had seen much of the world; but he had noticed and retained little more of what he had seen than some grotesque incidents and characters which had happened to strike his fancy. But, though his mind was very scantily stored with materials, he used what materials he had in such a way as to produce a wonderful effect. There have been many greater writers; but perhaps no writer was ever more uniformly agreeable. His style was always pure and easy, and, on proper occasions, pointed and energetic. His narratives were always amusing, his descriptions always picturesque, his humour rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, there was a certain natural grace and decorum, hardly to be expected from a man a great part of whose life had been passed among thieves and beggars, street-walkers and merryandrews, in those squalid dens which are the reproach of great capitals.

As his name gradually became known, the circle of his acquaintance widened. He was introduced to Johnson, who was then considered as the first of living English writers; to Reynolds, the first of English painters; and to Burke, who had not yet entered parliament, but had distinguished himself greatly by his writings and by the eloquence of his conversation. With these eminent men Goldsmith became intimate. In 1763 he was one of the nine original members of that celebrated fraternity which has sometimes been called the Literary Club, but which has always disclaimed that epithet, and still glories in the simple name of the Club.

By this date Goldsmith had quitted his miserable dwelling at the top of Breakneck Steps, and, after living for some time at No. 6 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, had moved into the Temple. But he was still often reduced to pitiable shifts, the most popular of which is connected with the sale of his solitary novel, the _Vicar of Wakefield_. Towards the close of 1764(?) his rent is alleged to have been so long in arrear that his landlady one morning called in the help of a sheriff's officer. The debtor, in great perplexity, despatched a messenger to Johnson; and Johnson, always friendly, though often surly, sent back the messenger with a guinea, and promised to follow speedily. He came, and found that Goldsmith had changed the guinea, and was railing at the landlady over a bottle of Madeira. Johnson put the cork into the bottle, and entreated his friend to consider calmly how money was to be procured. Goldsmith said that he had a novel ready for the press. Johnson glanced at the manuscript, saw that there were good things in it, took it to a bookseller, sold it for L60 and soon returned with the money. The rent was paid; and the sheriff's officer withdrew. (Unfortunately, however, for this time-honoured version of the circumstances, it has of late years been discovered that as early as October 1762 Goldsmith had already sold a third of the _Vicar_ to one Benjamin Collins of Salisbury, a printer, by whom it was eventually printed for F. Newbery, and it is difficult to reconcile this fact with Johnson's narrative.)

But before the _Vicar of Wakefield_ appeared in 1766, came the great crisis of Goldsmith's literary life. In Christmas week 1764 he published a poem, entitled the _Traveller_. It was the first work to which he had put his name, and it at once raised him to the rank of a legitimate English classic. The opinion of the most skilful critics was that nothing finer had appeared in verse since the fourth book of the _Dunciad_. In one respect the _Traveller_ differs from all Goldsmith's other writings. In general his designs were bad, and his execution good. In the _Traveller_ the execution, though deserving of much praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so simple. An English wanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, near the point where three great countries meet, looks down on the boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, of climate, of government, of religion, of national character, which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just or unjust, that our happiness depends little on political institutions, and much on the temper and regulation of our own minds.

While the fourth edition of the _Traveller_ was on the counters of the booksellers, the _Vicar of Wakefield_ appeared, and rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted down to our own time, and which is likely to last as long as our language. The fable is indeed one of the worst that ever was constructed. It wants, not merely that probability which ought to be found in a tale of common English life, but that consistency which ought to be found even in the wildest fiction about witches, giants and fairies. But the earlier chapters have all the sweetness of pastoral poetry, together with all the vivacity of comedy. Moses and his spectacles, the vicar and his monogamy, the sharper and his cosmogony, the squire proving from Aristotle that relatives are related, Olivia preparing herself for the arduous task of converting a rakish lover by studying the controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the great ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's amours and Dr Burdock's verses, and Mr Burchell with his "Fudge," have caused as much harmless mirth as has ever been caused by matter packed into so small a number of pages. The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the beginning. As we approach the catastrophe, the absurdities lie thicker and thicker, and the gleams of pleasantry become rarer and rarer.

The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist emboldened him to try his fortune as a dramatist. He wrote the _Good Natur'd Man_, a piece which had a worse fate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it at Drury Lane. It was acted at Covent Garden in January 1768, but was coldly received. The author, however, cleared by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, no less than L500, five times as much as he had made by the _Traveller_ and the _Vicar of Wakefield_ together. The plot of the _Good Natur'd Man_ is, like almost all Goldsmith's plots, very ill constructed. But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous,--much more ludicrous indeed than suited the taste of the town at that time. A canting, mawkish play, entitled _False Delicacy_, had just been produced, and sentimentality was all the mode. During some years more tears were shed at comedies than at tragedies; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to anything more than a grave smile was reprobated as low. It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the _Good Natur'd Man_, that in which Miss Richland finds her lover attended by the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in full court dresses, should have been mercilessly hissed, and should have been omitted after the first night, not to be restored for several years.