two collections and Songs of a Savoyard were united in a volume issued in 1898, with many new illustrations. The best of the old cuts, such as those depicting the “Bishop of Rum-ti-Foo” and the “Discontented Sugar Broker,” were preserved intact.
While remaining a staunch supporter of Fun, Gilbert was soon immersed in other journalistic work, and his position as dramatic critic to the Illustrated Times turned his attention to the stage. He had not to wait long for an opportunity. Early in December 1866 T. W. Robertson was asked by Miss Herbert, lessee of the St James’s theatre, to find some one who could turn out a bright Christmas piece in a fortnight, and suggested Gilbert; the latter promptly produced Dulcamara, a burlesque of L’Elisire d’amore, written in ten days, rehearsed in a week, and duly performed at Christmas. He sold the piece outright for £30, a piece of rashness which he had cause to regret, for it turned out a commercial success. In 1870 he was commissioned by Buckstone to write a blank verse fairy comedy, based upon Le Palais de la vérité, the novel by Madame de Genlis. The result was The Palace of Truth, a fairy drama, poor in structure but clever in workmanship, which served the purpose of Mr and Mrs Kendal in 1870 at the Haymarket. This was followed in 1871 by Pygmalion and Galatea, another three-act “mythological comedy,” a clever and effective but artificial piece. Another fairy comedy, The Wicked World, written for Buckstone and the Kendals, was followed in March 1873 by a burlesque version, in collaboration with Gilbert à Beckett, entitled The Happy Land. Gilbert’s next dramatic ventures inclined more to the conventional pattern, combining sentiment and a cynical humour in a manner strongly reminiscent of his father’s style. Of these pieces, Sweethearts was given at the Prince of Wales’s theatre, 7th November 1874; Tom Cobb at the St James’s, 24th April 1875; Broken Hearts at the Court, 9th December 1875; Dan’l Druce (a drama in darker vein, suggested to some extent by Silas Marner) at the Haymarket, 11th September 1876; and Engaged at the Haymarket, 3rd October 1877. The first and last of these proved decidedly popular. Gretchen, a verse drama in four acts, appeared in 1879. A one-act piece, called Comedy and Tragedy, was produced at the Lyceum, 26th January, 1884. Two dramatic trifles of later date were Foggerty’s Fairy and Rozenkrantz and Guildenstern, a travesty of Hamlet, performed at the Vaudeville in June 1891. Several of these dramas were based upon short stories by Gilbert, a number of which had appeared from time to time in the Christmas numbers of various periodicals. The best of them have been collected in the volume entitled Foggerty’s Fairy, and other Stories. In the autumn of 1871 Gilbert commenced his memorable collaboration (which lasted over twenty years) with Sir Arthur Sullivan. The first two comic operas, Thespis; or The Gods grown Old (26th September 1871) and Trial by Jury (Royalty, 25th March 1875) were merely essays. Like one or two of their successors, they were, as regards plot, little more than extended “Bab Ballads.” Later (especially in the Yeomen of the Guard), much more elaboration was attempted. The next piece was produced at the Opera Comique (17th November 1877) as The Sorcerer. At the same theatre were successfully given H.M.S. Pinafore (25th May 1878), The Pirates of Penzance; or The Slave of Duty (3rd April 1880), and Patience; or Bunthorne’s Bride (23rd April 1881). In October 1881 the successful Patience was removed to a new theatre, the Savoy, specially built for the Gilbert and Sullivan operas by Richard D’Oyly Carte. Patience was followed, on 25th November 1882, by Iolanthe; or The Peer and the Peri; and then came, on 5th January 1884, Princess Ida; or Castle Adamant, a re-cast of a charming and witty fantasia which Gilbert had written some years previously, and had then described as a “respectful perversion of Mr. Tennyson’s exquisite poem.” The impulse reached its fullest development in the operas that followed next in order—The Mikado; or The Town of Titipu (14th March 1885); Ruddigore (22nd January 1887); The Yeomen of the Guard (3rd October 1888); and The Gondoliers (7th December 1889). After the appearance of The Gondoliers a coolness occurred between the composer and librettist, owing to Gilbert’s considering that Sullivan had not supported him in a business disagreement with D’Oyly Carte. But the estrangement was only temporary. Gilbert wrote several more librettos, and of these Utopia Limited (1893) and the exceptionally witty Grand Duke (1896) were written in conjunction with Sullivan. As a master of metre Gilbert had shown himself consummate, as a dealer in quips and paradoxes and ludicrous dilemmas, unrivalled. Even for the music of the operas he deserves some credit, for the rhythms were frequently his own (as in “I have a Song to Sing, O”), and the metres were in many cases invented by himself. One or two of his librettos, such as that of Patience, are virtually flawless. Enthusiasts are divided only as to the comparative merit of the operas. Princess Ida and Patience are in some respects the daintiest. There is a genuine vein of poetry in The Yeomen of the Guard. Some of the drollest songs are in Pinafore and Ruddigore. The Gondoliers shows the most charming lightness of touch, while with the general public The Mikado proved the favourite. The enduring popularity of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas was abundantly proved by later revivals. Among the birthday honours in June 1907 Gilbert was given a knighthood. In 1909 his Fallen Fairies (music by Edward German) was produced at the Savoy. (T. Se.)
GILBERT DE LA PORRÉE, frequently known as Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis (1070–1154), scholastic logician and theologian, was born at Poitiers. He was educated under Bernard of Chartres and Anselm of Laon. After teaching for about twenty years in Chartres, he lectured on dialectics and theology in Paris (from 1137), and in 1141 returned to Poitiers, being elected bishop in the following year. His heterodox opinions regarding the doctrine of the Trinity drew upon his works the condemnation of the church. The synod of Reims in 1148 procured papal sanction for four propositions opposed to certain of Gilbert’s tenets, and his works were condemned until they should be corrected in accordance with the principles of the church. Gilbert seems to have submitted quietly to this judgment; he yielded assent to the four propositions, and remained on friendly terms with his antagonists till his death on the 4th of September 1154. Gilbert is almost the only logician of the 12th century who is quoted by the greater scholastics of the succeeding age. His chief logical work, the treatise De sex principiis, was regarded with a reverence almost equal to that paid to Aristotle, and furnished matter for numerous commentators, amongst them Albertus Magnus. Owing to the fame of this work, he is mentioned by Dante as the Magister sex principiorum. The treatise itself is a discussion of the Aristotelian categories, specially of the six subordinate modes. Gilbert distinguishes in the ten categories two classes, one essential, the other derivative. Essential or inhering (formae inhaerentes) in the objects themselves are only substance, quantity, quality and relation in the stricter sense of that term. The remaining six, when, where, action, passion, position and habit, are relative and subordinate (formae assistentes). This suggestion has some interest, but is of no great value, either in logic or in the theory of knowledge. More important in the history of scholasticism are the theological consequences to which Gilbert’s realism led him. In the commentary on the treatise De Trinitate (erroneously attributed to Boëtius) he proceeds from the metaphysical notion that pure or abstract being is prior in nature to that which is. This pure being is God, and must be distinguished from the triune God as known to us. God is incomprehensible, and the categories cannot be applied to determine his existence. In God there is no distinction or difference, whereas in all substances or things there is duality, arising from the element of matter. Between pure being and substances stand the ideas or forms, which subsist, though they are not substances. These forms, when materialized, are called formae substantiales or formae nativae; they are the essences of things, and in themselves have no relation to the accidents of things. Things are temporal, the ideas perpetual, God eternal. The pure form of existence, that by which God is God, must be distinguished from the three persons who are God by participation in this form. The form or essence is one, the persons or substances three. It was this distinction between Deitas or
