conseiller du roi au siège présidial et sénéchaussée of Le Maine, his native district, and later lieutenant-général criminel. His friend Lacroix du Maine says that he enjoyed a great reputation as an orator. He was a distinguished magistrate, of considerable weight in his native province, who gave his leisure to literature, and whose merits as a poet were fully recognized by his own generation. He died at Le Mans probably in 1599 or 1600.
In his early plays he was a close follower of the school of dramatists who were inspired by the study of Seneca. In these productions there is little that is strictly dramatic except the form. A tragedy was a series of rhetorical speeches relieved by a lyric chorus. His pieces in this manner are Porcie (published 1568, acted at the hôtel de Bourgogne in 1573), Cornélie and Hippolyte (both acted in 1573 and printed in 1574). In Porcie the deaths of Cassius, Brutus and Portia are each the subject of an eloquent recital, but the action is confined to the death of the nurse, who alone is allowed to die on the stage. His next group of tragedies—Marc-Antoine (1578), La Troade (1579), Antigone (acted and printed 1580)—shows an advance on the theatre of Étienne Jodelle and Jacques Grévin, and on his own early plays, in so much that the rhetorical element is accompanied by abundance of action, though this is accomplished by the plan of joining together two virtually independent pieces in the same way.
In 1582 and 1583 he produced his two masterpieces Bradamante and Les Juives. In Bradamante, which alone of his plays has no chorus, he cut himself adrift from Senecan models, and sought his subject in Ariosto, the result being what came to be known later as a tragi-comedy. The dramatic and romantic story becomes a real drama in Garnier’s hands, though even there the lovers, Bradamante and Roger, never meet on the stage. The contest in the mind of Roger supplies a genuine dramatic interest in the manner of Corneille. Les Juives is the pathetic story of the barbarous vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar on the Jewish king Zedekiah and his children. The Jewish women lamenting the fate of their children take a principal part in this tragedy, which, although almost entirely elegiac in conception, is singularly well designed, and gains unity by the personality of the prophet. M. Faguet says that of all French tragedies of the 16th and 17th centuries it is, with Athalie, the best constructed with regard to the requirements of the stage. Actual representation is continually in the mind of the author; his drama is, in fact, visually conceived.
Garnier must be regarded as the greatest French tragic poet of his century and the precursor of the great achievements of the next.
The best edition of his works is by Wendelin Foerster (Heilbronn, 4 vols., 1882–1883). A detailed criticism of his works is to be found in Émile Faguet, La Tragédie française au XVIe siècle (1883, pp. 183-307).
GARNIER-PAGÈS, ÉTIENNE JOSEPH LOUIS (1801–1841),
French politician, was born at Marseilles on the 27th of December
1801. Soon after his birth his father Jean François Garnier, a
naval surgeon, died, and his mother married Simon Pagès, a
college professor, by whom she had a son. The boys were brought
up together, and took the double name Garnier-Pagès. Étienne
found employment first in a commercial house in Marseilles, and
then in an insurance office in Paris. In 1825 he began to study
law, and made some mark as an advocate. A keen opponent of
the Restoration, he joined various democratic societies, notably
the Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera, an organization for purifying the
elections. He took part in the revolution of July 1830; became
secretary of the Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera, whose propaganda he
brought into line with his anti-monarchical ideas; and in 1831
was sent from Isère to the chamber of deputies. He was concerned
in the preparation of the Compte rendu of 1832, and
advocated universal suffrage. He was an eloquent speaker, and
his sound knowledge of business and finance gave him a marked
influence among all parties in the chamber. He died in Paris on
the 23rd of June 1841.
His half-brother, Louis Antoine Garnier-Pagès (1803–1878), fought on the barricades during the revolution of July 1830, and after Étienne’s death was elected to the chamber of deputies (1842). He was a keen promoter of reform, and was a leading spirit in the affair of the reform banquet fixed for the 22nd of February 1848. He was a member of the provisional government of 1848, and was named mayor of Paris. On the 5th of March 1848 he was made minister of finance, and incurred great unpopularity by the imposition of additional taxes. He was a member of the Constituent Assembly and of the Executive Commission. Under the Empire he was conspicuous in the republican opposition and opposed the war with Prussia, and after the fall of Napoleon III. became a member of the Government of National Defence. Unsuccessful at the elections for the National Assembly (the 8th of February 1871), he retired into private life, and died in Paris on the 31st of October 1878. He wrote Histoire de la révolution de 1848 (1860–1862); Histoire de la commission exécutive (1869–1872); and L’Opposition et l’empire (1872).
GARNISH, a word meaning to fit out, equip, furnish, now
particularly used of decoration or ornament. It is formed from
the O. Fr. garnisant or guarnissant, participle of garnir, guarnir,
to furnish, equip. This is of Teutonic origin, the base being
represented in O. Eng. warnian, to take warning, beware, and
Ger. warnen, to warn, Eng. warn; the original sense would be to
guard against, fortify, hence equip or fit out. The meaning of
“warn” is seen in the law term “garnishee,” a person who owes
money to or holds money belonging to another and is “warned”
by order of the court not to pay it to his immediate creditor but
to a third person who has obtained final judgment against that
creditor. (See Attachment; Execution; Bankruptcy.)
GARO HILLS, a district of British India, in the hills division of
Eastern Bengal and Assam. It takes its name from the Garos, a
tribe of doubtful ethnical affinities and peculiar customs, by whom
it is almost entirely inhabited. The Garos are probably a section
of the great Bodo tribe, which at one time occupied a large part of
Assam. According to the census of 1901 they numbered 128,117.
In the 18th century they are mentioned as being frequently in
conflict with the inhabitants of the plains below their hills, and in
1790 the British government first tried to reduce them. No
permanent success was achieved. In 1852 raids by the Garos
were followed by a blockade of the hills, but in 1856 they were
again in revolt. Again a repressive expedition was despatched in
1861, but in 1866 there was a further raid. A British officer was
now posted among the hills; this step was effective; in 1869 the
district was constituted, and though in 1871 an outrage was
committed against a native on the survey staff, there was little
opposition when an expedition was sent in 1872–1873 to bring the
whole district into submission, and there were thereafter no
further disturbances.
The district consists of the last spurs of the Assam hills, which here run down almost to the bank of the Brahmaputra, where that river debouches upon the plain of Bengal and takes its great sweep to the south. The administrative headquarters are at Tura. The area of the district is 3140 sq. m. In 1901 the population was 138,274, showing an increase of 14% in the decade. The American missionaries maintain a small training school for teachers. The public buildings at Tura were entirely destroyed by the earthquake of June 12, 1897, and the roads in the district were greatly damaged by subsidence and fissures. Coal in large quantities and petroleum are known to exist. The chief exports are cotton, timber and forest products. Trade is small, though the natives, according to their own standard, are prosperous. They are fair agriculturists. Communications within the district are by cart-roads, bridle-paths and native tracks.
GARONNE (Lat. Garumna), a river of south-western France,
rising in the Maladetta group of the Pyrenees, and flowing in a
wide curve to the Atlantic Ocean. It is formed by two torrents,
one of which has a subterranean course of 212 m., disappearing in
the sink known as the Trou du Taureau (“bull’s hole”) and
reappearing at the Goueil de Jouéou. After a course of 30 m. in
Spanish territory, during which it flows through the fine gorge
called the Vallée d’Aran, the Garonne enters France in the
department of Haute Garonne through the narrow defile of the
