lacked the philosophical spirit, was now tempted to essay work of a more ambitious order, publishing in 1857 two books, Life and Omphalos, embodying his speculations on the appearance of life on the earth, which he considered to have been instantaneous, at least as regarded its higher forms. His views met with no favour from scientific men, and he returned to the field of observation, which he was better qualified to cultivate. Taking up his residence at St Marychurch, in South Devon, he produced from 1858 to 1860 his standard work on sea-anemones, the Actinologia Britannica. The Romance of Natural History and other popular works followed. In 1865 he abandoned authorship, and chiefly devoted himself to the cultivation of orchids. Study of the Rotifera, however, also engaged his attention, and his results were embodied in a monograph by Dr C. T. Hudson (1886). He died at St Marychurch on the 23rd of August 1888.
His life was written by his son, Edmund Gosse.
GOSSEC, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH (1734–1829), French musical composer, son of a small farmer, was born at the village of Vergnies, in Belgian Hainaut, and showing early a taste for music became a choir-boy at Antwerp. He went to Paris in 1751 and was taken up by Rameau. He became conductor of a private band kept by La Popelinière, a wealthy amateur, and gradually determined to do something to revive the study of instrumental music in France. He had his own first symphony performed in 1754, and as conductor to the Prince de Condé’s orchestra he produced several operas and other compositions of his own. He imposed his influence upon French music with remarkable success, founded the Concert des Amateurs in 1770, organized the École de Chant in 1784, was conductor of the band of the Garde Nationale at the Revolution, and was appointed (with Méhul and Cherubini) inspector of the Conservatoire de Musique when this institution was created in 1795. He was an original member of the Institute and a chevalier of the legion of honour. Outside France he was but little known, and his own numerous compositions, sacred and secular, were thrown into the shade by those of men of greater genius; but he has a place in history as the inspirer of others, and as having powerfully stimulated the revival of instrumental music. He died at Passy on the 16th of February 1829.
See the Lives by P. Hédouin (1852) and E. G. J. Gregoir (1878).
GOSSIP (from the O. E. godsibb, i.e. God, and sib, akin, standing
in relation to), originally a god-parent, i.e. one who by taking a
sponsor’s vows at a baptism stands in a spiritual relationship
to the child baptized. The common modern meaning is of light
personal or social conversation, or, with an invidious sense, of
idle tale-bearing. “Gossip” was early used with the sense of
a friend or acquaintance, either of the parent of the child
baptized or of the other god-parents, and thus came to be used,
with little reference to the position of sponsor, for women friends
of the mother present at a birth; the transition of meaning
to an idle chatterer or talker for talking’s sake is easy. The
application to the idle talk of such persons does not appear to
be an early one.
GOSSNER, JOHANNES EVANGELISTA (1773–1858), German divine and philanthropist, was born at Hausen near Augsburg on the 14th of December 1773, and educated at the university of Dillingen. Here like Martin Boos and others he came under the spell of the Evangelical movement promoted by Johann Michael Sailer, the professor of pastoral theology. After taking priest’s orders, Gossner held livings at Dirlewang (1804–1811) and Munich (1811–1817), but his evangelical tendencies brought about his dismissal and in 1826 he formally left the Roman Catholic for the Protestant communion. As minister of the Bethlehem church in Berlin (1829–1846) he was conspicuous not only for practical and effective preaching, but for the founding of schools, asylums and missionary agencies. He died on the 20th of March 1858.
Lives by Bethmann-Hollweg (Berlin, 1858) and H. Dalton (Berlin, 1878).
GOSSON, STEPHEN (1554–1624), English satirist, was baptized at St George’s, Canterbury, on the 17th of April 1554. He entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1572, and on leaving the university in 1576 he went to London. In 1598 Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia mentions him with Sidney, Spenser, Abraham Fraunce and others among the “best for pastorall,” but no pastorals of his are extant. He is said to have been an actor, and by his own confession he wrote plays, for he speaks of Catilines Conspiracies as a “Pig of mine own Sowe.” To this play and some others, on account of their moral intention, he extends indulgence in the general condemnation of stage plays contained in his Schoole of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters and such like Caterpillars of the Commonwealth (1579). The euphuistic style of this pamphlet and its ostentatious display of learning were in the taste of the time, and do not necessarily imply insincerity. Gosson justified his attack by considerations of the disorder which the love of melodrama and of vulgar comedy was introducing into the social life of London. It was not only by extremists like Gosson that these abuses were recognized. Spenser, in his Teares of the Muses (1591), laments the same evils, although only in general terms. The tract was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, who seems not unnaturally to have resented being connected with a pamphlet which opened with a comprehensive denunciation of poets, for Spenser, writing to Gabriel Harvey (Oct. 16, 1579) of the dedication, says the author “was for hys labor scorned.” He dedicated, however, a second tract, The Ephemerides of Phialo . . . and A Short Apologie of the Schoole of Abuse, to Sidney on Oct. 28th, 1579. Gosson’s abuse of poets seems to have had a large share in inducing Sidney to write his Apologie for Poetrie, which probably dates from 1581. After the publication of the Schoole of Abuse Gosson retired into the country, where he acted as tutor to the sons of a gentleman (Plays Confuted. “To the Reader,” 1582). Anthony à Wood places this earlier and assigns the termination of his tutorship indirectly to his animosity against the stage, which apparently wearied his patron of his company. The publication of his polemic provoked many retorts, the most formidable of which was Thomas Lodge’s Defence of Playes (1580). The players themselves retaliated by reviving Gosson’s own plays. Gosson replied to his various opponents in 1582 by his Playes Confuted in Five Actions, dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham. Meanwhile he had taken orders, was made lecturer of the parish church at Stepney (1585), and was presented by the queen to the rectory of Great Wigborough, Essex, which he exchanged in 1600 for St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate. He died on the 13th of February 1624. Pleasant Quippes for Upstart New-fangled Gentlewomen (1595), a coarse satiric poem, is also ascribed to Gosson.
The Schoole of Abuse and Apologie were edited (1868) by Prof. E. Arber in his English Reprints. Two poems of Gosson’s are included.
GOT, FRANÇOIS JULES EDMOND (1822–1901), French actor, was born at Lignerolles on the 1st of October 1822, and entered the Conservatoire in 1841, winning the second prize for comedy that year and the first in 1842. After a year of military service he made his début at the Comédie Française on the 17th of July 1844, as Alexis in Les Héritiers and Mascarelles in Les Précieuses ridicules. He was immediately admitted pensionnaire, and became sociétaire in 1850. By special permission of the emperor in 1866 he played at the Odéon in Emile Augier’s Contagion. His golden jubilee at the Théâtre Français was celebrated in 1894, and he made his final appearance the year after. Got was a fine representative of the grand style of French acting, and was much admired in England as well as in Paris. He wrote the libretto of the opera François Villon (1857) and also of L’Esclave (1874). In 1881 he was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honour.
GÖTA, a river of Sweden, draining the great Lake Vener. The name, however, is more familiar in its application to the canal which affords communication between Gothenburg and Stockholm. The river flows out of the southern extremity of the lake almost due south to the Cattegat, which it enters by two arms enclosing the island of Hisingen, the eastern forming the harbour and bearing the heavy sea-traffic of the port of
