mentions a proof of his loyalty, which, perhaps, may not be regarded with universal approbation. "He drew upon himself," says the writer, very ill treatment from one Mr. Wentworth, for the pains he took to moderate that licentious ness of speech, which he conceived might become as dangerous to the liberties of the subject, as offensive to the queen's prerogative." Peter Wentworth was at that time almost the only man in the House of Commons who dared to speak like the representative of a free people; and the danger to the public liberties was certainly rather that they should be lost through disuse, than injured by abuse. The first of the reasons assigned for sir Humphrey's interference is therefore mere cant. In 1572 he sailed with a reinforcement to colonel Morgan in Flanders. His thoughts were now much occupied with those schemes for the advancement of maritime discovery, and the improvement of trade and navigation, which were becoming popular in England; and in 1576 he published a "Discourse to prove a Passage by the Northwest to Cathaia and the East-Indies." This is represented as being a solid and scientific performance, written in a plain style and good method. It is probable that he himself designed to make attempts for the discovery of this supposed passage; but an anterior project was that of settling some of the countries in the northern part of America. For this purpose he obtained letters patent from the crown in 1578, giving him full powers for prosecuting discoveries, and making settlements, in the unoccupied lands of North America. He attempted to associate several persons in his undertaking, but with little success. At length he fitted out an expedition, of what kind we are not told, with which he sailed to Newfoundland; but he continued there only a short time, and returned, as appears, without having effected any thing. Perhaps it was only meant as an exploratory voyage; for he persisted in his design, and in 1583, with the assistance of his friends, and his brother sir W. Ralegh, had mustered a small fleet, with which he proceeded again to Newfoundland. He took possession of the harbour of St. John, in the queen's name, and granted leases of the circumjacent country, as patentee, to those of his company who chose to take them. He had carried out with him a Saxon miner; for the notion of vying with the Spaniards in their possession of the gold and silver of the new world occupied the minds of all other adventurers, and was, in reality, the soul of their enterprises. This man pretended to have discovered a very rich silver mine on the

coast, and dug up some ore, which seems fully to have convinced sir Humphrey that the means of wealth were in his reach. Well knowing the temper of his royal mistress, he told his friends that he did not doubt of being able to borrow ten thousand pounds of her for another expedition next year, Misfortune, however, was impending over him. His largest ship was lost in a storm with all the crew except twelve, and his miner and ore perished with her. He himself had gone on board a small sloop of ten tons, for the purpose of farther exploring the coast. After this disaster he could not be persuaded to shift his station to his larger remaining vessel; heroically refusing to desert the little crew with whom he had encountered so many dangers. He steered homeward in the midst of a tempestuous sea; and on the 9th of September, when his small bark was in manifest danger of foundering, he was seen by the crew of the other vessel sitting in the stern with a book in his hand, and was heard to cry, "Courage, my lads! we are as near heaven at sea as at land." About midnight the bark was swallowed up by the ocean, and all on board perished with her. He deserves to be recorded among the benefactors to his country, since his project of settling Newfoundland, though not brought to effect by himself, was soon after realised under his patent so far as to be of great advantage to the fishery from this country, established upon its coast. Biog. Britan.-A.

GILBERT or GILBERD, WILLIAM, physician and experimental philosopher, was born in 1540 at Colchester, of which town his father had been recorder. After studying at both the English universities according to A. Wood (his epitaph mentions only Cambridge), he travelled abroad for improvement, and probably pursued the study of physic and graduated in it at some foreign university. Returning to his own country, he settled in London about 1573, became a member of the College of Physicians, and practised in his profession with great reputation. Queen Elizabeth appointed him her first physician, and gave him a pension; and king James continued him in the same post. He died in 1603, and was buried at Colchester, where a handsome monument was erected to his memory. Dr. Gilbert has perpetuated his name by a work in natural philosophy, which affords one of the earliest examples of the method of treating such subjects on the basis of experimental enquiry. This was his book "De Magnete, magneticisque Corporibus, & de magno Magnete Tellure, Physiologia nova," Lond. 1600, folio. This performance, the com

position of which had occupied many years of his life, is the first complete system of magnetism. It begins with a history of all that had been observed by the ancients and moderns concerning this remarkable power in nature, in which he records several Englishmen as acquainted with both the variation and declination of the needle. He then proceeds to account for its various phenomena under the following heads: 1. Its attraction: 2. Its direction to the poles of the earth, and the earth's verticity and fixedness to certain points of the world: 3. Its variation: 4. Its declination. All these he illustrates by a multitude of experiments elucidated by diagrams; and he attempts to form a theory of the whole upon the hypothesis of the earth's being one vast magnet. He suggests a variety of practical deductions important to navigation, particularly the use of the declination in discovering the latitude at sea. This work has been much commended by several English writers, and was also received with interest abroad. Lord Bacon instances it as a very meritorious attempt to found a philosophical theory upon experiment, according to his own principles. It may be added, that the celebrated Halley afterwards applied Gilbert's notion of a great internal magnet in the earth, to explain the variation and dipping of the needle. Dr. Gilbert's attention to the nautical art was farther evinced by his invention of two very ingenious instruments for ascertaining the latitude of any place without assistance from the heavenly bodies. Long after his death a work of his was published from two MS. copies in the library of sir William Boswell, entitled "De Mundo nostro sublunari Philosophia nova," Amst. 1651, 4to. This is an attempt to establish a new system of natural philosophy upon the ruins of that of Aristotle, which he attacks with great vigour. Like many other philosophers, however, he has been more successful in pulling down than in building up, for with some just conceptions, his system contains much extravagant hypotheses. In common with Kepler, he supposes the heavenly bodies to be a kind of animated being, possessing an intelligent principle. He also makes great use of his favourite magnetism in his speculations. This piece seems to have excited little attention, though its editor was the learned Gruter. Bicg. Britan. Brucker's

Hist. of Philos.-A.

GILDAS, surnamed THE WISE, a British monk in the sixth century, and the most ancient British writer now extant, was born in the year 520. He is also by many authors surnamed BADONICUS, to distinguish him from a GILDAS

VOL. IV.

ALBANIUS, who is supposed to have lived at an earlier period. His latter surname is derived from the circumstance of a memorable victory gained by the Britons over the Saxons, at the hill of Badon, now Bath, about the time of his nativity. He was a disciple of Iltutus, abbot of Morgan, and became a monk of Bangor, where he diligently applied himself to the learning of the times; and particularly to the study of the Scriptures, in order to qualify himself for the duties of a public preacher. If we are to credit the account of his life by an anonymous author, published by John à Bosco from a MS. in the Florentine library, he visited Ireland, at the request of Americus, afterwards king of that country, where he distinguished himself by his zeal and success in converting Pagans, confuting Heretics, establishing monasteries, and in reforming the corrupt state of principles and manners which had become prevalent among the Christians in that island. After his return from Ireland, he visited the monastery of Lhancarvan, lately founded by a pious nobleman of South Wales, and engaged other persons, eminent for their rank and character, to follow his example. He also appears to have spent some time in the northern parts of Britain, near the wall of Severus; since he relates that he was himself a witness to the attacks made by the Caledonians upon that barrier against their inroads, and that he saw them demolish a part of it. According to some writers, he likewise visited France and Italy, whence he returned to his native country, and acquired a high reputation as an indefatigable and useful preacher, who exercised undaunted freedom in censuring the vices of the age. In the year 581 he wrote his "Epistola de Excidio Britanniæ, & Castigatione Ordinis Ecclesiastici," containing a lamentation over the miseries and almost total ruin of his countrymen, and severe reproofs of the corruption and profligacy of manners in which all ranks were sharers, and of which he draws a frightful picture. Archbishop Usler refers this epistle to the year 564; but Cave, on the authority of Ralph de Dicetus, Polydore Virgil, Bale, &c. gives it the date which we have' adopted. This curious remain of British ecclesiastical antiquities was first printed by Polydore Virgil, in 1525, Evo. from an imperfect and corrupt copy; which edition was followed in the eighth volume of the "Biblioth. Patr." It was afterwards published in the year 1568, by John Josseline, from another MS. not much more correct than the former. The latest and best edition of it was published by the learned Dr. Thomas Gale, from a more ancient and 3 G

perfect MS. than either of the preceding, in the year 1691, in the first volume of his "Historiæ Britannicæ, Saxonicæ, &c." This Gildas also wrote several "Letters," of which there are numerous fragments in an old collection of Canons, preserved among the MSS. in the Cotton library. Other pieces which have been ascribed to him by Bale, Pitts, &c. are considered by the best judges to be either clearly supposititious, or the productions of other authors. In the latter number is the "Historia de Gestis Britonum," which was written by Nennius. With respect to the time of Gildas's death there is also much difference among writers, some stating it to have taken place at the abbey of Glastonbury, in the year 570; while according to others, whom we have chiefly followed, he died at the abbey of Bangor, in the year 590.

There was another GILDAS, whom Bale calls the fourth of that name, who was of Irish extraction, but born in Wales, where he embraced the monastic life, and flourished in 820 and the following years. He wrote a "Kalendar of the Saints," which is to be found among the MSS. of the Cotton library, the preface of which is inserted by archbishop Usher in his "Epist. Hibernic." p. 55. Leland also makes mention of another GILDAS, who was a poet, and who is said to have drawn up the prophecies of Merlin in Latin verse, and to have composed a number of epigrams, which Giraldus Cambrensis pronounced to be not inelegant. For the opinions of Cave, bishop Nicholson, &c. respecting the authors of those and other poetical pieces which have borne the name of Gildas, we refer our readers to those authorities as quoted in Cave's Hist. Lit. vol. I. sub sac. Eutych. Nicholson's Eng. Hist. Library, Part I. ch. iii. Dupin. Moreri.-M.

GILDO, son of Nabal, à potent lord in Mauritania, and brother to the tyrant Firmus, served the emperor Theodosius in his brother's revolt in 373 with so much fidelity, that the forfeited patrimony of the family was bestowed upon him, and he was raised to the dignity of a military count, and at length to the chief command in Africa. In the civil war between Theodosius and Eugenius, though nominally acknowledging the authority of the former, he declined sending him any succours, and reserved himself for the event. The weakness of the government of Arcadius and Honorius further encouraged him in maintaining a kind of independence; and he ruled at his pleasure the provinces under his command, which he oppressed by every mode of cruel and licentious tyranny. When dissensions arose between the eastern and

western empires, he was persuaded by the mnister Eutropius to revolt from Honorius his legal sovereign, and acknowledge Arcadius. On this account he was condemned as a public enemy by the Roman senate, and the conduct of a war against him was committed to the fauous general Stilicho. In the mean time a deadly feud had arisen between Gildo and his younger brother Mascezcl, in which the latter had been obliged to take refuge at the court of Honorius. Gildo satiated his disappointed vengeance upon the two children of his brother, whom he barbarously murdered. Mascezel, burning for revenge, was employed by Stilicho to lead a chosen but small body of Europeans to the invasion of Africa. They landed in 398, and encamped in the face of a numerous army of Moors collected by Gildo. Some obscurity is thrown upon the subsequent transactions, by the attempt of ecclesiastical writers to make a miracle in favour of Mascezel against Gildo, "the patron of Heretics and Schismatics;" but the fact seems to have been, that the Moors, intimidated by the superior courage and discipline of the Europeans, and secretly disaffected to their tyrant, fled almost without resistance. Gildo escaped to the sea-shore, where he embarked with an intention of seeking a foreign refuge, but being driven back by adverse winds to the harbour of Tabraca, he was seized by the inhabitants, and thrown into a dungeon. There, a voluntary death saved him from the cruel fate he might expect from an injured brother. His revolt was considered as an event of so much importance to the empire, that the poet Claudian made the "Gildonic war" the subject of one of his panegyrical tributes to the honour of his hero Stilicho; but it is come down to us in a mutilated state. Univers. Hist. Univers. Hist. Gibbon.-A.

GILES OF VITERBO, a learned Italian prelate and cardinal in the sixteenth century, was descended from an obscure family in the city whence he took his surname, and when he was eighteen years of age embraced the monastic life among the hermits of St. Augustine. He distinguished himself by the progress which he made in different branches of literature, and, was appointed professor of philosophy, and afterwards professor of theology in his order. He also acquired a high reputation for pulpit oratory, and is spoken of as one of the most able preachers of his time. In the year 1507 his merits occasioned his being raised to the post of general of his order. He was employed by pope Julius II. to open the council assembled at the Lateran in the year 1512; and in 1517 wassent legate into Germany by pope Leo X., on

which occasion he was promoted to a cardinal's hat. Afterwards he was sent legate into Spain, and employed in many important and difficult negociations. He was at different periods nominated bishop of Viterbo, Neni, Castro, Sutri, and patriarch of Constantinople. He died at Rome in the year 1532. This prelate maintained an intimate acquaintance with the most celebrated men of letters in his time. He understood the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee, and was often consulted on difficulties in those languages. Among the works which he left behind him are: "Remarks on the first three Chapters of Genesis ;"" Commentaries" on some of the Psalms; "Dialogues;" "Epistles;""Poems" in Latin, &c. Fathers Martenne and Durand, in the third volume of their "Amplissima Collectio veterum Monumentorum," have inserted many letters of this prelate and his correspondents, which are interesting on account of the particulars contained in them relating to the life of our author, and the events of the period in which he lived. Moreri.-M. Moreri.-M. GILIMER, or GELIMER, last king of the Vandals in Africa, a descendant of Genseric, succeeded in the throne his deposed cousin Hilderic in 530. The emperor Justinian, after vainly interceding for the dethroned king, resolved to avenge his cause, and also to re-annex the African provinces to the Roman dominion. He chose for executing this design the renowned Belisarius (see his life); and after a considerable time spent in preparations, this general sailed with his army for Africa in 533. Zano, the brother of Gilimer, was at this time engaged in the conquest of Sardinia, by which circumstance the force of the Vandals was divided; while a party of the nation at home still adhered to the cause of Hilderic. Gilimer assembled his troops to resist the invader; but being defeated in a tumultuary engagement by Belisarius, he retreated to the Numidian deserts, having first with a tyrant's policy commanded the execution of Hilderic and his captive friends. Carthage fell to the victor; but Gilimer, col. lecting his scattered forces, encamped in its neighbourhood, where he was joined by Zano, who returned victorious from Sardinia.

cond action ensued, in which the brave Zano lost his life, and Gilimer made an inglorious retreat. The loss of all the African provinces succeeded; and the defeated king, continually pursued by his enemies, took refuge at last in the inaccessible mountain of Papua, in the interior part of Numidia. There he was invested by a part of the Roman army under Pharas, and reduced to a state of indigence and distress,

rendered peculiarly afflictive by its contrast with the luxury and effeminacy in which he had formerly lived. In a reply to a letter from Pharas advising him to surrender, he requested to be supplied with a lyre, a sponge, and a loaf of bread: the first was to sooth his sorrows by affording one of the amusements of his happier days; the second, to relieve a defluxion upon his eyes caused by weeping; the third, an humble delicacy of which for a long time he had not tasted. He was soon after persuaded to descend from his mountain and submit to the conqueror; and at his first interview with Belisarius he surprised the spectators by bursting into a fit of laughter-probably the consequence of a reflection upon the mutability of human affairs upon a debilitated mind. He accompanied the general to Constantinople, and marched in the train of his triumph; on which occasion it was observed that neither a tear nor a sigh escaped him; but that he repeatedly pronounced, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" The emperor received Gilimer to favour, and would have raised him to the dignity of a patrician, had he not refused to renounce the arian doctrine in which he had been educated. An ample estate in the province of Galatia was bestowed upon him, where, in the bosom of his family, he ended his days in peace. The extinction of the Vandal kingdom in his person dates in the year 534. Gibbon. Univers. Hist.-A.

GILL, JOHN, a learned English nonconformist divine, of the baptist denomination, was born at Kettering in Northamptonshire, in the year 1697. His father, who was the deacon of a baptist church in that town, discovering in him early an uncommon capacity for learning, sent him to a neighbouring grammar school, where he soon outstript his companions in his classical acquirements. By the time that he was about eleven years of age, besides having gone through the common school books, he had read many of the chief Latin classics, and made considerable proficiency in the Greek language., He was taken from the grammar school, however, soon after this period, owing to a determination formed by the master, that the children of dissenting parents should, with the other scholars who belonged to the establishment, attend him to church on week-days when service was performed. This conduct the dissenters resented, as an arbitrary and bigotted imposition, and as it was virtually making conformity a test by which his pupils were to receive the benefit of tuition. Accordingly, they withdrew their children from his school, and sent them, for the most part, to other seminaries where

they might reap the same advantages without being subjected to so invidious a regulation. Young Gill's parents, however, could not afford to place their son in any such situation, and they had no other prospect of providing for him in life, than by educating him to his father's business. In these circumstances several neighbouring ministers endeavoured to procure for him the assistance of some of the funds in London, appropriated to the benefit of young persons designed for the ministry; but to their applications on his behalf, accompanied with testimonies of his progress in learning, it was answered that he was too young to be admitted a recipient of their exhibitions; and that "should he continue, as it might be expected he would, to make such rapid advances in his studies, he would go through the common circle before he could be capable of taking care of himself, or of being employed in any public service." Discouraging as young Gill's situation now was, yet he possessed an unconquerable love of learning, and diligently improved the hours of leisure from business, not only to preserve, but greatly to extend his acquaintance with classical literature. Before he was nineteen years of age he had read all the Greek and Latin authors that fell in his way, and had studied logic, rhetoric, moral and natural philosophy. He likewise, without any other assistance than Buxtorf's Grammar and Lexicon, had surmounted the chief difficulties of the Hebrew language, so as to be able to read the Hebrew Bible with great ease and pleasure. In the mean time he had perused such books on theological and controversial subjects, as confirmed him in the calvinistic principles in which he had been educated, and the distinguishing tenet of the sect to which his father belonged; and as his mind was under the influence of strong religious impressions, he was baptised, and received into communion with the baptist church at Kettering, in the year 1716. He had not been long a member of this church, before he commenced preaching in private, and was soon afterwards called by the congregation to the occasional exercise of the ministry in public. By the advice of some friends at London he now removed to Higham-Ferrers, with the intention of prosecuting his studies under the instructions of Mr. Davis, pastor of a new baptist church in that place, and a man of learning, whom he was also to assist in his ministerial duties; but after a year's stay there returned to his native town, where he became assistant to the pastor in that place. In the year 1719 he received an invitation from London, to become pastor of the bap

tist congregation in Horsly-down, and was ordained to that office when in the twenty-second year of his age. The duties of this situation he discharged with great diligence and acceptability for upwards of fifty-one years, and at the same time pursued his literary studies with wonderful assiduity, as is sufficiently apparent from his voluminous and laborious productions. In the year 1729 he was appointed preacher to a Wednesday-evening Lecture, supported by voluntary subscription, which situation he retained nearly twenty-seven years, much admired and followed by dissenters and churchmen of calvinistical principles. Soon after Mr. Gill settled in London, he became intimately acquainted with a dissenting minister, who under the instructions of a Jewish teacher had made considerable proficiency in Rabbinical Hebrew. By his frequent association with this gentleman, he was led to form a strong inclination for the same kind of learning, which he conceived would prove of great use, not only in illustrating the sense of the Old Testament writings, but also the phraseology of the New, and the rites and customs to which it frequently alludes. Upon the death of this gentleman, which took place within a year or two after the commencement of Mr. Gill's intimacy with him, the latter purchased most of his Hebrew and Rabbinical books, and, having contracted an acquaintance with one of the most learned of the Jewish rabbis, applied himself under his instructions to the diligent study of them. He read the Targums, the Talmuds, the Rabboth, their ancient commentaries, the book Zohar, with whatever else of the kind he could procure, and in the course of between twenty and thirty years' acquaintance with them, collected a vast number of remarks and quotations, which he made use of in his scriptural comments. He likewise made himself master of the other oriental languages which by their affinity contribute to illustrate the Hebrew; and diligently studied the writings of the fathers, ecclesiastical history, the accounts of the rites and customs of the eastern nations, and other branches of knowledge adapted to enrich his stores of biblical learning. When in the year 1748 he had published the third volume of his "Exposition of the New Testament," the degree of doctor of divinity was conferred upon him by the Marischal college and university of Aberdeen, without his solicitation or knowledge; of which honour information was communicated to him in very handsome terms by two of the professors, who declared that his diploma was presented to him "on account of his knowledge of the Scriptures, of the oriental lan