(July 1886), the National African Company becoming the Royal Niger Company, with Lord Aberdare as governor and Goldie as vice-governor. In 1895, on Lord Aberdare’s death, Goldie became governor of the company, whose destinies he had guided throughout.
The building up of Nigeria as a British state had to be carried on in face of further difficulties raised by French travellers with political missions, and also in face of German opposition. From 1884 to 1890, Prince Bismarck was a persistent antagonist, and the strenuous efforts he made to secure for Germany the basin of the lower Niger and Lake Chad were even more dangerous to Goldie’s schemes of empire than the ambitions of France. Herr E. R. Flegel, who had travelled in Nigeria during 1882–1884 under the auspices of the British company, was sent out in 1885 by the newly-formed German Colonial Society to secure treaties for Germany, which had established itself at Cameroon. After Flegel’s death in 1886 his work was continued by his companion Dr Staudinger, while Herr Hoenigsberg was despatched to stir up trouble in the occupied portions of the Company’s territory,—or, as he expressed it, “to burst up the charter.” He was finally arrested at Onitsha, and, after trial by the company’s supreme court at Asaba, was expelled the country. Prince Bismarck then sent out his nephew, Herr von Puttkamer, as German consul-general to Nigeria, with orders to report on this affair, and when this report was published in a White Book, Bismarck demanded heavy damages from the company. Meanwhile Bismarck maintained constant pressure on the British government to compel the Royal Niger Company to a division of spheres of influence, whereby Great Britain would have lost a third, and the most valuable part, of the company’s territory. But he fell from power in March 1890, and in July following Lord Salisbury concluded the famous “Heligoland” agreement with Germany. After this event the aggressive action of Germany in Nigeria entirely ceased, and the door was opened for a final settlement of the Nigeria-Cameroon frontiers. These negotiations, which resulted in an agreement in 1893, were initiated by Goldie as a means of arresting the advance of France into Nigeria from the direction of the Congo. By conceding to Germany a long but narrow strip of territory between Adamawa and Lake Chad, to which she had no treaty claims, a barrier was raised against French expeditions, semi-military and semi-exploratory, which sought to enter Nigeria from the east. Later French efforts at aggression were made from the western or Dahomeyan side, despite an agreement concluded with France in 1890 respecting the northern frontier.
The hostility of certain Fula princes led the company to despatch, in 1897, an expedition against the Mahommedan states of Nupé and Illorin. This expedition was organized and personally directed by Goldie and was completely successful. Internal peace was thus secured, but in the following year the differences with France in regard to the frontier line became acute, and compelled the intervention of the British government. In the negotiations which ensued Goldie was instrumental in preserving for Great Britain the whole of the navigable stretch of the lower Niger. It was, however, evidently impossible for a chartered company to hold its own against the state-supported protectorates of France and Germany, and in consequence, on the 1st of January 1900, the Royal Niger Company transferred its territories to the British government for the sum of £865,000. The ceded territory together with the small Niger Coast Protectorate, already under imperial control, was formed into the two protectorates of northern and southern Nigeria (see further Nigeria).
In 1903–1904, at the request of the Chartered Company of South Africa, Goldie visited Rhodesia and examined the situation in connexion with the agitation for self-government by the Rhodesians. In 1902–1903 he was one of the royal commissioners who inquired into the military preparations for the war in South Africa (1899–1902) and into the operations up to the occupation of Pretoria, and in 1905–1906 was a member of the royal commission which investigated the methods of disposal of war stores after peace had been made. In 1905 he was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society and held that office for three years. In 1908 he was chosen an alderman of the London County Council. Goldie was created K.C.M.G. in 1887, and a privy councillor in 1898. He became an F.R.S., honorary D.C.L. of Oxford University (1897) and honorary LL.D. of Cambridge (1897). He married in 1870 Matilda Catherine (d. 1898), daughter of John William Elliott of Wakefield.
GOLDING, ARTHUR (c. 1536–c. 1605), English translator, son of John Golding of Belchamp St Paul and Halsted, Essex, one of the auditors of the exchequer, was born probably in London about 1536. His half-sister, Margaret, married John de Vere, 16th earl of Oxford. In 1549 he was already in the service of Protector Somerset, and the statement that he was educated at Queen’s College, Cambridge, lacks corroboration. He seems to have resided for some time in the house of Sir William Cecil, in the Strand, with his nephew, the poet, the 17th earl of Oxford, whose receiver he was, for two of his dedications are dated from Cecil House. His chief work is his translation of Ovid. The Fyrst Fower Bookes of P. Ovidius Nasos worke, entitled Metamorphosis, translated oute of Latin into Englishe meter (1565), was supplemented in 1567 by a translation of the fifteen books. Strangely enough the translator of Ovid was a man of strong Puritan sympathies, and he translated many of the works of Calvin. To his version of the Metamorphoses he prefixed a long metrical explanation of his reasons for considering it a work of edification. He sets forth the moral which he supposes to underlie certain of the stories, and shows how the pagan machinery may be brought into line with Christian thought. It was from Golding’s pages that many of the Elizabethans drew their knowledge of classical mythology, and there is little doubt that Shakespeare was well acquainted with the book. Golding translated also the Commentaries of Caesar (1565), Calvin’s commentaries on the Psalms (1571), his sermons on the Galatians and Ephesians, on Deuteronomy and the book of Job, Theodore Beza’s Tragedie of Abrahams Sacrifice (1577) and the De Beneficiis of Seneca (1578). He completed a translation begun by Sidney from Philippe de Mornay, A Worke concerning the Trewnesse of the Christian Religion (1604). His only original work is a prose Discourse on the earthquake of 1580, in which he saw a judgment of God on the wickedness of his time. He inherited three considerable estates in Essex, the greater part of which he sold in 1595. The last trace we have of Golding is contained in an order dated the 25th of July 1605, giving him licence to print certain of his works.
GOLDINGEN (Lettish, Kuldiga), a town of Russia, in the government of Courland, 55 m. by rail N.E. of Libau, and on Windau river, in 56° 58′ N. and 22° E. Pop. (1897) 9733. It has woollen mills, needle and match factories, breweries and distilleries, a college for teachers, and ruins of a castle of the Teutonic Knights, built in 1248 and used in the 17th century as the residence of the dukes of Courland.
GOLDMARK, KARL (1832–), Hungarian composer, was born at Keszthely-am-Plattensee, in Hungary, on the 18th of May 1832. His father, a poor cantor in the local Jewish synagogue, was unable to assist to any extent financially in the development of his son’s talents. Yet in the household much music was made, and on a cheap violin and home-made flute, constructed by Goldmark himself from reeds cut from the riverbank, the future composer gave rein to his musical ideas. His talent was fostered by the village schoolmaster, by whose aid he was able to enter the music-school of the Oedenburger Verein. Here he remained but a short time, his success at a school concert finally determining his parents to allow him to devote himself entirely to music. In 1844, then, he went to Vienna, where Jansa took up his cause and eventually obtained for him admission to the conservatorium. For two years Goldmark worked under Jansa at the violin, and on the outbreak of the revolution, after studying all the orchestral instruments he obtained an engagement in the orchestra at Raab. There, on the capitulation of Raab, he was to have been shot for a spy, and was only saved at the eleventh hour by the happy arrival of a former colleague. In 1850 Goldmark left Raab for Vienna, where from his friend Mittrich he obtained his first real knowledge of the classics. There, too, he devoted himself to composition. In 1857 Goldmark,
