army of the north, Gloucester to some extent advanced upon the royal road to distinction which lay before him. Shortly after his return to Britain in 1795, he was promoted to the rank of major-general, and towards the close of the same year he received the colonelcy of the 6th regiment of infantry. When the Swedes dethroned their king, Gustavus IV., in 1809, they offered to place the crown on the head of the duke of Gloucester, but the British government saw reason to decline entering into this arrangement. After passing successively through the grades of lieutenant-general (1799) and general (1808), Gloucester was dignified in May, 1816, for what important services history has omitted to record, with the baton of a field-marshal. In July, 1816, he married Mary, fourth daughter of George III. Notwithstanding his birth and alliance, he commonly voted in parliament with the whigs in opposition to the court party.—R. V. C.
GLOVER, Julia, a distinguished Irish actress, was born at Newry in 1781. She commenced her theatrical career, as "an infant prodigy," at the age of six years; and in 1789 joined the York circuit, appearing as the page in the tragedy of the Orphan. Soon after we find her playing the Duke of York to Cooke's Richard the Third. In 1796 the theatrical critics of Bath passed high encomiums on her taste, talent, and versatility of dramatic power. In 1800 she became the wife of Mr. Glover. She afterwards appeared at Covent Garden, and subsequently at Drury Lane, where she aided the genius and powers of Edmund Kean. Mrs. Glover continued for many years to personate an immense variety of characters; and she has been pronounced, by a competent critic, to have had no equal in her peculiar theatrical walk. Mrs. Glover died July 6, 1850.—W. J. F.
GLOVER, Richard, an English poet, was born in London in 1712. His father, a merchant of that city, destined the son for his own business, and sent him to a school at Cheam in Surrey. Even there he showed a decided taste for letters, and in his sixteenth year wrote a poem to the memory of Sir Isaac Newton, the merit of which secured it a place in Dr. Pemberton's View of Newton's Philosophy. Notwithstanding his love for the classics, and his distinguished progress as a scholar, he became in due time a merchant, contriving, however, to find leisure amidst his mercantile avocations to cultivate his tastes and acquire the reputation of being one of the best classical scholars of his day. The fruits of his studies were first given to the world in 1737, when he published "Leonidas," a poem which at once attained a high celebrity, and subsequently passed through many editions. The object of the poem, while celebrating the defence of Thermopylae, was to some extent political, and accordingly found its most ardent admirers amongst politicians. Lord Cobham, to whom the poem was dedicated, spoke in high terms of it, while Fielding and Lord Lyttleton were loud in its praise. It is not to be wondered that this success directed Glover to political life. His first essay in that direction was in 1739, when he took an active part in setting aside the election of the lord mayor of London, and subsequently in the remonstrances presented to parliament against Sir Robert Walpole by the merchants of that city. From this period he was a consistent whig, and so continued to the end of his life. In 1760 he was elected member of parliament for Weymouth, which he represented till 1768, and in 1775 he retired altogether from public life, thenceforth devoting himself to letters till his death in 1785. Besides "Leonidas," Glover wrote the "Atheniad," a poem intended as a sequel to "Leonidas," embracing the portion of the war with Persia from the death of Leonidas to the battle of Platea. It was not, however, as popular as its precursor. He published other poems and several dramas, of which perhaps only "Hosier's Ghost" and "Boadicea" are now remembered. It is, however, to "Leonidas" Glover owes his poetic fame; and it must be admitted that it is full of a fine classic spirit, though it does not retain all its original popularity. Glover was one of the many to whom the authorship of the Letters of Junius was attributed in his own day; that honour, however, had but slight materials to sustain it, and his claims are now put at rest with that of over forty other writers.—J. F. W.
GLOVER, Robert, son of Thomas Glover of Ashford in Kent, was made portcullis-pursuivant, and afterwards, in 1571, Somerset herald. Queen Elizabeth permitted him to travel abroad for improvement. In 1582 he attended Lord Willoughby with the order of the garter to Frederick II. of Denmark, and in 1584 he accompanied the earl of Derby with that order to Henry III., king of France. He was one of the most distinguished members of the college of arms, and appears to have been the leader in the quarrel with Sir William Dethick, garter king, which was terminated by the latter resigning his office. Glover assisted Camden in the pedigrees for his Britannica, drew up the visitations of twenty-four counties, compiled MS. genealogies of the nobility of the realm in Latin, made a collection of the funeral inscriptions in Kent, and a catalogue of the northern gentry whose names ended in son. He wrote "De Nobilitate politica vel civili," and "A Catalogue of Honour," both of which were published after his death by his nephew, Mr. Milles. He also compiled an Ordinary of Arms, classed in such a manner as to render it easy to ascertain the family to which any particular coat belongs. This was augmented and improved by Edmondson, and is published in the first volume of his Body of Heraldry. Glover died in London, April 14, 1588, aged only forty-five years, and was buried in St. Giles' church, Cripplegate.—R. H.
GLUCK, Christoph von, Chevalier, the renowned musician, was born at Weidenwang, in the domain of Prince Lobkowitz in the Upper Palatinate, on the borders of Bohemia, on July 14, 1714; died at Vienna on November 17, 1787. His father, Alexander, was huntsman to the prince, quitting whose service he removed to Prague, where he died when the boy was still young. With the smallest educational advantages, Christoph cultivated his natural musical talent so far as to acquire some skill on several instruments, particularly the violoncello, by means of which he was able to support himself. Aspiring to something above the grade he held of an itinerant musician, he worked his way to Vienna, and there he found a valuable patron in a nobleman, who took him to Italy and placed him under the instruction of Padre Martini, some say as early as 1731, others not till 1736. It was probably at this latter date that he obtained an engagement as composer to Prince Melzi at Milan, which he held till 1741, when he produced his first opera, "Artaserse," at La Scala, with such success, that he was invited to compose for the theatres of several other Italian cities, and he increased his reputation with every fresh work he brought out. In 1745 he came to London to write for the King's theatre, then under the management of Lord Middlesex, in opposition to Handel; and his opera, "La Caduta dei Giganti," a tribute to the duke of Cumberland on the defeat of the Pretender, was given for the opening of the theatre in January, 1746. This was followed by "Piramo e Tisbe," a pasticcio of the most successful pieces from his previous operas, the cold reception of which, thus brought together, convinced the composer, that, beyond abstract technical beauty, dramatic music requires special fitness to its particular situation to enable it to excite the sympathies of an audience. Gluck left England, ill satisfied with his success, but with the germ of those original principles in his art to the embodiment of which he devoted the remainder of his career, and thus secured to himself the prominent position he holds in the history of music. The origination of the opera and oratorio nearly two centuries before, by Caccini, Peri, Monteverdi, and Cavaliere, was with the idea of restoring to music the high status among the arts assigned to it by the Greeks, as being the most powerful medium of expressing the passions. From this they considered it had degenerated into an exercise of scholastic contrivance; and, rejecting all the conventional forms of contrapuntal elaboration which at the period constituted the chief if not the sole element of composition, these important innovators, in the recitative which they were the first to write, proved that music, beyond being a mere play of sounds, might be rendered the most powerful means of poetic declamation. The lyric drama which their crude efforts had established, had, in Italy especially, become greatly perverted from their object into a vehicle for vocal display, the truth of dramatic action being disregarded, and the executive art of the singer being made as paramount a consideration with composers of this period as the ingenious skill of the contrapuntist had been with those of earlier times. It was Gluck's idea to reassert the supreme dramatic capability of music, connecting every phrase with the requirement of the situation, the personality of the characters, and the expression of the words; to avoid all conventionality of construction, and to found his forms exclusively on the exigencies of the action: it was, in fact, with the advantage of the immensely enlarged resources of the art which the development of two hundred years had placed at his disposal, to embody anew the lofty purpose which had induced the invention of the opera, and of recitative as its characteristic feature. After visiting Copenhagen he took up his residence at Vienna, where, almost entirely secluded
