most trusted men of his staff. His reward was a transfer to the Coldstream Guards and the K.C.B. In the Waterloo campaign he served on the staff of the 5th British Division. From the peace until 1839 he was employed on home service, becoming colonel in 1829 and major-general in 1837. From 1839 to 1842 he commanded the troops in Jamaica. He became lieutenant-general in 1846, and was sent out to be commander-in-chief in India, arriving only to find that his appointment had been cancelled in favour of Sir Charles Napier, whom, however, he eventually succeeded (1850–1855). In 1854 he became general and in 1868 field marshal. In 1872 he was appointed constable of the Tower, and he died in 1875. He was twice married, but had no children. His Letters and Journals were published by F. C. Carr-Gomm in 1881. Five “Field Marshal Gomm” scholarships were afterwards founded in his memory at Keble College, Oxford.
GOMPERS, SAMUEL (1850– ), American labour leader,
was born in London on the 27th of January 1850. He was
put to work in a shoe-factory when ten years old, but soon
became apprenticed to a cigar-maker, removed to New York
in 1863, became a prominent member of the International
Cigar-makers’ Union, was its delegate at the convention of the
Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the United
States and Canada, later known as the American Federation of
Labor, of which he became first president in 1882. He was
successively re-elected up to 1895, when the opposition of the
Socialist Labor Party, then attempting to incorporate the
Federation into itself, secured his defeat; he was re-elected
in the following year. In 1894 he became editor of the Federation’s
organ, The American Federationist.
GOMPERZ, THEODOR (1832– ), German philosopher and
classical scholar, was born at Brünn on the 29th of March 1832.
He studied at Brünn and at Vienna under Herman Bonitz.
Graduating at Vienna in 1867 he became Privatdozent, and
subsequently professor of classical philology (1873). In 1882
he was elected a member of the Academy of Science. He
received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa from
the university of Königsberg, and Doctor of Literature from
the universities of Dublin and Cambridge, and became correspondent
for several learned societies. His principal works are:
Demosthenes der Staatsmann (1864), Philodemi de ira liber (1864).
Traumdeutung und Zauberei (1866), Herkulanische Studien
(1865–1866), Beiträge zur Kritik und Erklärung griech. Schriftsteller
(7 vols., 1875–1900), Neue Bruchstücke Epikurs (1876),
Die Bruchstücke der griech. Tragiker und Cobets neueste kritische Manier (1878),
Herodoteische Studien (1883), Ein bisher unbekanntes griech. Schriftsystem (1884),
Zu Philodems Büchern von der Musik (1885), Über den Abschluss des herodoteischen Geschichtswerkes (1886),
Platonische Aufsätze (3 vols., 1887–1905),
Zu Heraklits Lehre und den Überresten seines Werkes (1887),
Zu Aristoteles’ Poëtik (2 parts, 1888–1896), Über die Charaktere Theophrasts (1888),
Nachlese zu den Bruchstücken der griech. Tragiker (1888), Die Apologie der Heilkunst (1890),
Philodem und die ästhetischen Schriften der herculanischen Bibliothek (1891),
Die Schrift vom Staatswesen der Athener (1891),
Die jüngst entdeckten Überreste einer den Platonischen Phädon enthaltenden Papyrusrolle
(1892), Aus der Hekale des Kallimachos (1893), Essays und Erinnerungen (1905).
He supervised a translation of J. S.
Mill’s complete works (12 vols., Leipzig, 1869–1880), and
wrote a life (Vienna, 1889) of Mill. His Griechische Denker: Geschichte der antiken Philosophie
(vols. i. and ii., Leipzig, 1893
and 1902) was translated into English by L. Magnus (vol. i., 1901).
GONAGUAS (“borderers”), descendants of a very old cross
between the Hottentots and the Kaffirs, on the “ethnical divide”
between the two races, apparently before the arrival of the
whites in South Africa. They have been always a despised race
and regarded as outcasts by the Bantu peoples. They were
threatened with extermination during the Kaffir wars, but were
protected by the British. At present they live in settled communities
under civil magistrates without any tribal organization,
and in some districts could be scarcely distinguished from the other
natives but for their broken Hottentot-Dutch-English speech.
GONÇALVES DIAS, ANTONIO (1823–1864), Brazilian lyric
poet, was born near the town of Caxias, in Maranhão. From the
university of Coimbra, in Portugal, he returned in 1845 to his
native province, well-equipped with legal lore, but the literary
tendency which was strong within him led him to try his fortune
as an author at Rio de Janeiro. Here he wrote for the newspaper
press, ventured to appear as a dramatist, and in 1846 established
his reputation by a volume of poems—Primeiros Cantos—which
appealed to the national feelings of his Brazilian readers, were
remarkable for their autobiographic impress, and by their beauty
of expression and rhythm placed their author at the head of the
lyric poets of his country. In 1848 he followed up his success by
Segundos Cantos e sextilhas de Frei Antão, in which, as the title
indicates, he puts a number of the pieces in the mouth of a simple
old Dominican friar; and in the following year, in fulfilment of
the duties of his new post as professor of Brazilian history in the
Imperial College of Pedro II. at Rio de Janeiro, he published an
edition of Berredo’s Annaes historicos do Maranhão and added a
sketch of the migrations of the Indian tribes. A third volume of
poems, which appeared with the title of Ultimos Cantos in 1851,
was practically the poet’s farewell to the service of the muse, for
he spent the next eight years engaged under government patronage
in studying the state of public instruction in the north and the
educational institutions of Europe. On his return to Brazil in
1860 he was appointed a member of an expedition for the exploration
of the province of Ceará, was forced in 1862 by the state of
his health to try the effects of another visit to Europe, and died in
September 1864, the vessel that was carrying him being wrecked
off his native shores. While in Germany he published at Leipzig
a complete collection of his lyrical poems, which went through
several editions, the four first cantos of an epic poem called Os Tymbiras (1857) and a
Diccionario da lingua Tupy (1858).
A complete edition of the works of Dias has made its appearance at Rio de Janeiro. See Wolf, Brésil littéraire (Berlin, 1863); Innocencio de Silva, Diccionario bibliographico portuguez, viii. 157; Sotero dos Reis, Curso de litteratura portugueza e brazileira, iv. (Maranhão, 1868); José Verissimo, Estudos de literatura brazileira, segunda serie (Rio, 1901).
GONCHAROV, IVAN ALEXANDROVICH (1812–1891), Russian novelist, was born 6/18 July 1812, being the son of a rich merchant in the town of Simbirsk. At the age of ten he was placed in one of the gymnasiums at Moscow, from which he passed, though not without some difficulty on account of his ignorance of Greek, into the Moscow University. He read many French works of fiction, and published a translation of one of the novels of Eugène Sue. During his university career he devoted himself to study, taking no interest in the political and Socialistic agitation among his fellow-students. He was first employed as secretary to the governor of Simbirsk, and afterwards in the ministry of finance at St Petersburg. Being absorbed in bureaucratic work, Goncharov paid no attention to the social questions then ardently discussed by such men as Herzen, Aksakov and Bielinski. He began his literary career by publishing translations from Schiller, Goethe and English novelists. His first original work was Obuiknovennaya Istoria, “A Common Story” (1847). In 1856 he sailed to Japan as secretary to Admiral Putiatin for the purpose of negotiating a commercial treaty, and on his return to Russia he published a description of the voyage under the title of “The Frigate Pallada.” His best work is Oblomov (1857), which exposed the laziness and apathy of the smaller landed gentry in Russia anterior to the reforms of Alexander II. Russian critics have pronounced this work to be a faithful characterization of Russia and the Russians. Dobrolubov said of it, “Oblomofka [the country-seat of the Oblomovs] is our fatherland: something of Oblomov is to be found in every one of us.” Peesarev, another celebrated critic, declared that “Oblomovism,” as Goncharov called the sum total of qualities with which he invested the hero of his story, “is an illness fostered by the nature of the Slavonic character and the life of Russian society.” In 1858 Goncharov was appointed a censor, and in 1868 he published another novel called Obreev. He was not a voluminous writer, and during the latter part of his life produced nothing of any importance. His death occurred on 15/27 September 1891.
