earl's chamberlain, Ruthven reproached the king with his father's unjust execution, and attempted to bind his majesty's hands. A struggle ensued, during which James thrust his head partially through a small window in the turret, and shouted for help. Four of his retainers rushed up the stair which led to the turret, and mortally wounded Ruthven, who instantly expired. Gowrie himself hearing the noise, made his way to the scene of conflict, but was also killed on the spot. A minute investigation was made into the conspiracy, but very little of importance was elicited at the time, mainly owing to the small number of persons who were privy to it. But eight years after, the letters which passed between Logan and the earl were discovered and laid before the parliament, and had the effect of clearing up, to some extent, the objects and plans of the conspirators. Pinkerton and other writers, however, have revived the doubts which were expressed at the time respecting the credibility of the king's narrative, and maintain that it was not Gowrie and his brother who conspired against the king, but the king, who, by a prearranged plan, murdered them in their own dwelling. The evidence on the other side, however, is quite overwhelming; and the recent discovery at Edinburgh of the originals of Logan's letters has set the question finally at rest. The honours and magnificent estates of Gowrie were forfeited in consequence of his treason, and the bodies of the earl and his brother were suspended on a gibbet and quartered. The name of Ruthven was abolished, and those who had borne it were forbidden to approach within ten miles of the king. Not contented with these measures, James and his greedy courtiers sought with vindictive cruelty to revenge the crime of the Ruthvens on their innocent kinsmen. William and Patrick, the two younger brothers of the earl, who at this time were mere boys, with great difficulty made their escape into England, and they and their posterity were declared incapable of enjoying inheritance, place, or dignity in Scotland. The former was famous for his skill in alchemy. The latter, who was an able and most accomplished man, was for many years confined in the Tower of London. His daughter married Sir Anthony Vandyke, the celebrated painter. So ruthlessly did James carry out his threat to "root out that whole house and name," that no male descendant of the direct line of the family is now known to exist. The last earl had eight sisters, seven of whom were married to Scottish barons of high rank and influence, and Elizabeth, the fourth, was the mother of the great marquis of Montrose.—(See Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. ii.)—J. T.
GOYEN, Jan van, was born at Leyden in 1596, and having studied under various masters, was ultimately the scholar of Esaias Vandevelde. He was both marine and landscape painter, and, owing to the greyness of his colours, his sea and river pieces are the most valued. His works are all enriched with figures, but are generally the work of other hands; Jan Steen often assisted him in this way. The dull flatness of colour, which now generally distinguished his works, is attributed to his indiscriminate use of Haarlem blue, a very inconstant colour. Van Goyen died at the Hague in 1656. There are a few etchings by his hand.—(Houbraken, Groote Schouburg, &c.)—R. N. W.
GOZZI, Carlo, Count, a Venetian nobleman, who in the latter half of the eighteenth century introduced into Italian comedy the romantic wildness and freedom of the Spanish theatre, combined with a novelty of plot and machinery peculiarly his own, was born at Venice in the year 1718. Descended from a family the fortunes of which had shared in the declining prosperity of the republic, and being one of a numerous household of brothers and sisters, he joined, at the early age of sixteen, the engineering department of the army in Dalmatia. In this comparatively savage country, and far away from everything that could develope or encourage his literary abilities, he still evinced the natural bent of his genius by occasional improvised dramatic sketches, with which he amused the ennui of his brother officers at Zara, and dissipated the tedium of his own existence by the study of the imaginative drama of the Spaniards, particularly that of Calderon, which ultimately had so great an effect upon the character of his own productions. Returning to Venice, he found the old national comedy—the Commedia dell' arte—almost extinct; the time-honoured masks, which from the days of Ruzzante had been the delight of the Italian populace, neglected; and the stage almost completely in the hands of Goldoni and (what was still more intolerable) even of Chiari. The cold proprieties of the former of these writers, and the pompous absurdities of the latter, would have been enough to have excited in the mind of Carlo Gozzi a desire for something more in accordance with the spirit and life which had fascinated him in his Spanish studies, if the forlorn condition of the celebrated Sacchi and his talented troop of masks had not awakened his pity and indignation. Partly to sustain them, and partly to have an opportunity of satirizing the two-writers whose influence he found so injurious to the true national comedy of his country, he commenced that series of singular fairy dramas (Fiabe), the success of which, it is stated, drove Goldoni from the scene of his triumphs and from his country, to die eventually a denationalized Italian at Paris. The first of these was the outline, or sketch, called "L'Amore delle Tre Melarance" (the Loves of the Three Oranges), the story of which he probably found in the collection of fairy tales in the Neapolitan dialect called Lo Cunto delle Cunti, &c., from which, he tells us himself, he drew the plot of his next more elaborate fairy drama, "Il Corvo," but for some of the details of which he certainly was indebted to the fairy tales of the celebrated Irishman Count Hamilton—now almost solely remembered by his Memoirs of Count Grammont. The success of the "Three Oranges" was immediate and decisive, owing, perhaps, as much to the novelty of the fairy machinery which he introduced for the sake of buffoonery and burlesque, as to the merciless use of satire and caricature with which he assailed the position of the two offending rival poets. That this was the opinion of Gozzi himself is evident from the elaborate and serious use which he made of this accidentally discovered machinery in his subsequent dramas. His "Il Corvo," his "Re Cervo," his "Donna Serpente," his "Blue Bird," his "King of the Genii," and other dramas of this class, are wonderful, not only for the spirit in which they are conceived and carried out, but for the real interest and pathos excited by the vicissitudes of beings so fantastic and remote from human sympathies. This charm has been felt in almost every country of Europe, particularly in Germany, where Schiller paid him the compliment of translating his "Princess of China" (Turandot), and where Göthe, Tieck, and others have always expressed an admiration of him, and proved it by their not unfrequent imitations. Carlo Gozzi followed, or varied, the production of his "Fiabe" by translating Calderon's Il Secreto a Voces, and two or three others of his dramas. These, with various essays, poems, and novelle are to be found in the eight volume edition of his works published by himself in 1772, the first six at Venice, and the last two at Florence. The eighth he calls "el ultimo" on the title-page of the volume and at its termination; but it is stated he added a ninth in 1779, which the writer of this notice has not seen. He also published, like Goldoni and Alfieri, his autobiography, which is perhaps more amusing than either of the others, and which he certainly called by no very boastful name, entitling them the "Memorie inutili di Carlo Gozzi, Scritte da lui Medesimo, e publicate per umilta," Venice, 1797. The dramas of Carlo Gozzi have long since disappeared from the stage; although the statement of Sismondi, that his plays were never represented in any of the theatres of Italy but those of Venice, is incorrect, as he tells us himself, in the preface to "Il Corvo," that this drama was first represented in the royal theatre of Milan. In their printed form, his works have become very scarce even in Italy. A recent writer in the Athenæum, alluding to this circumstance, says, "certain it is, that Venice might now be ransacked from end to end, and its old books in calle and arcade and riva turned, with small chance of the 'Fiabe' of Carlo Gozzi turning up, or of the book-hunter coming nearer to his mark of inquiry than by being answered with the dull proprieties of Gasparo Gozzi."—(Athenæum, November 26, 1859, No. 1674.) This the writer of the present notice can confirm from his own experience in Rome and Naples; nor has he ever been able to see a copy of Carlo Gozzi's works, except the edition in eight volumes, which he possesses, and which he has already described. A full and satisfactory account of Carlo Gozzi and his works is not to be found in English literature. The late Stewart Rose, however, in his Letters from the South of Italy, addressed to Hallam (London, 1819), has given a pleasing analysis of "The Three China Oranges," with some versified specimens worthy of the translator of the Orlando. Blackwood's Magazine contains some scenes from "Turandot," the play selected by Schiller for complete translation. In Philarete Chasles' Etudes sur l'Espagne, copious extracts are given from the "Fiabe" and the "Memorie." In
