diocese of Calahorra. His name is to be met with in a number of documents between the years 1237 and 1246. He wrote upwards of 13,000 verses, all on devotional subjects. His best work is a life of St Oria; others treat of the life of St Millan, of St Dominic of Silos, of the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Martyrdom of St Laurence, the visible signs preceding the Last Judgment, the Praises of Our Lady, the Miracles of Our Lady and the Lamentations of the Virgin on the Passion of her Son. He writes in the common tongue, the roman paladino, and his claim to the name of poet rests on his use of the cuaderna via (single-rhymed quatrains, each verse being of fourteen syllables). Sometimes, however, he takes the more modest title of juglar (jongleur), when claiming payment for his poems. His literary attainments are not great, and he lacks imagination and animation of style, but he has a certain eloquence, and in speaking of the Virgin and the saints a certain charm, while his verse bears at times the imprint of a passionate devotion, recalling the lyrical style of the great Spanish mystics. There is, however, a very strong popular element in his writings, which explains his long vogue. The great majority of his legends of the Virgin are obviously borrowed from the collection of a Frenchman, Gautier de Coinci; but he has succeeded in making this material entirely his own by reason of a certain conciseness and a realism in detail which make his work far superior to the tedious and colourless narrative of his model.
His Poesias are in the Biblioteca de autores españoles of Rivadeneyra, vol. lvii. (1864); La Vida de San Domingo de Silos has been edited by J. D. FitzGerald (Paris, 1904; see the Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, part 149); see also F. Fernandez y Gonzalez in the Razón (vol. i., Madrid, 1860); N. Hergueta, “Documentos referentes a Gonzalo de Berceo,” in the Revista de archivos, (3rd series, Feb.-March, 1904, pp. 178-179). (P. A.)
GOOCH, SIR DANIEL, Bart. (1816–1889), English mechanical engineer, was born at Bedlington, in Northumberland, on the 16th of August 1816. At the age of fifteen, having shown a taste for mechanics, he was put to work at the Tredegar Ironworks, Monmouthshire. In 1834 he went to Warrington, where, at the Vulcan foundry, under Robert Stephenson, he acquired the principles of locomotive design. Subsequently, after passing a year at Dundee, he was engaged by the Stephensons at their Gateshead works, where he seems to have conceived that predilection for the broad gauge for which he was afterwards distinguished, through having to design some engines for a 6-foot gauge in Russia and noticing the advantages it offered in allowing greater space for the machinery, &c., as compared with the standard gauge favoured by Stephenson. In 1837, on I. K. Brunel’s recommendation, he was appointed locomotive superintendent to the Great Western railway at a time when the engines possessed by the railway were very poor and inefficient. He soon improved this state of affairs, and gradually provided his employers with locomotives which were unsurpassed for general excellence and economy of working. One of the most famous, the “Lord of the Isles,” was awarded a gold medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and when, thirty years afterwards, it was withdrawn from active service it had run more than three-quarters of a million miles, all with its original boiler. In 1864 he left the Great Western and interested himself in the problem of laying a telegraph cable across the Atlantic. At this time the “Great Eastern” was in the hands of the bondholders, of whom he himself was one of the most important, and it occurred to him that she might advantageously be utilized in the enterprise. Accordingly, at his instance she was chartered by the Telegraph Construction Company, of which also he was a director, and in 1865 was employed in the attempt to lay a cable, Gooch himself superintending operations. The cable, however, broke in mid-ocean, and the attempt was a failure. Next year it was renewed with more success, for not only was a new cable safely put in place, but the older one was picked up and spliced, so that there were two complete lines between England and America. For this achievement Gooch was created a baronet. Meanwhile the Great Western railway had fallen on evil days, being indeed on the verge of bankruptcy, when in 1866 the directors appealed to him to accept the chairmanship of the board and undertake the rehabilitation of the company. He agreed to the proposal, and was so successful in restoring its prosperity that in 1889, at the last meeting over which he presided, a dividend was declared at the rate of 712%. Under his administration the system was greatly enlarged and consolidated by the absorption of various smaller lines, such as the Bristol and Exeter and the Cornwall railways; and his appreciation of its strategic value caused him to be a strenuous supporter of the construction of the Severn Tunnel. His death occurred on the 15th of October 1889 at his residence, Clewer Park, near Windsor.
GOOD, JOHN MASON (1764–1827), English writer on medical, religious and classical subjects, was born on the 25th of May 1764 at Epping, Essex. After attending a school at Romsey kept by his father, the Rev. Peter Good, who was a Nonconformist minister, he was, at about the age of fifteen, apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary at Gosport. In 1783 he went to London to prosecute his medical studies, and in the autumn of 1784 he began to practise as a surgeon at Sudbury in Suffolk. In 1793 he removed to London, where he entered into partnership with a surgeon and apothecary. But the partnership was soon dissolved, and to increase his income he began to devote attention to literary pursuits. Besides contributing both in prose and verse to the Analytical and Critical Reviews and the British and Monthly Magazines, and other periodicals, he wrote a large number of works relating chiefly to medical and religious subjects. In 1794 he became a member of the British Pharmaceutical Society, and in that connexion, and especially by the publication of his work, A History of Medicine (1795), he did much to effect a greatly needed reform in the profession of the apothecary. In 1820 he took the diploma of M.D. at Marischal College, Aberdeen. He died at Shepperton, Middlesex, on the 2nd of January 1827. Good was not only well versed in classical literature, but was acquainted with the principal European languages, and also with Persian, Arabic and Hebrew. His prose works display wide erudition; but their style is dull and tedious. His poetry never rises above pleasant and well-versified commonplace. His translation of Lucretius, The Nature of Things (1805–1807), contains elaborate philological and explanatory notes, together with parallel passages and quotations from European and Asiatic authors.
GOOD FRIDAY (probably “God’s Friday”), the English name for the Friday before Easter, kept as the anniversary of the Crucifixion. In the Greek Church it has been or is known as πάσχα [σταυρώσιμον], παρασκευή, παρασκευὴ μεγάλη or ἁγία, σωτηρία or τὰ σωτήρια, ἡμέρα τοῦ σταυροῦ, while among the Latins the names of most frequent occurrence are Pascha Crucis, Dies Dominicae Passionis, Parasceve, Feria Sexta Paschae, Feria Sexta Major in Hierusalem, Dies Absolutionis. It was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons[1] and Danes, possibly in allusion to the length of the services which marked the day. In Germany it is sometimes designated Stiller Freitag (compare Greek, ἑβδομὰς ἄπρακτος; Latin, hebdomas inofficiosa, non laboriosa), but more commonly Charfreitag. The etymology of this last name has been much disputed, but there seems now to be little doubt that it is derived from the Old High German chara, meaning suffering or mourning.
The origin of the custom of a yearly commemoration of the Crucifixion is somewhat obscure. It may be regarded as certain that among Jewish Christians it almost imperceptibly grew out of the old habit of annually celebrating the Passover on the 14th of Nisan, and of observing the “days of unleavened bread” from the 15th to the 21st of that month. In the Gentile churches, on the other hand, it seems to be well established that originally no yearly cycle of festivals was known at all. (See Easter.)
From its earliest observance, the day was marked by a specially rigorous fast, and also, on the whole, by a tendency to greater simplicity in the services of the church. Prior to the 4th century there is no evidence of non-celebration of the eucharist on Good Friday; but after that date the prohibition of communion
- ↑ See Johnson’s Collection of Ecclesiastical Laws (vol. i., anno 957): “Housel ought not to be hallowed on Long Friday, because Christ suffered for us on that day.”
