regiments belonging to the minor sovereigns are counted in the
line of the German army. In war the Guard is employed as a unit,
like other army corps. It is recruited by the assignment of selected
young men of each annual contingent, and is thus free from the
reproach of the French Imperial Guard, which took the best-trained
soldiers from the regiments of the line.
GUARD-SHIP, a warship stationed at some port or harbour
to act as a guard, and in former times in the British navy to
receive the men impressed for service. She usually was the
flagship of the admiral commanding on the coast. A guard-boat
is a boat which goes the round of a fleet at anchor to see that
due watch is kept at night.
GUÁRICO, a large inland state of Venezuela created by the
territorial redivision of 1904, bounded by Aragua and Miranda
on the N., Bermúdez on the E., Bolívar on the S., and Zamora on
the W. Pop. (1905 estimate), 78,117. It extends across the
northern llanos to the Orinoco and Apure rivers and is devoted
almost wholly to pastoral pursuits, exporting cattle, horses and
mules, hides and skins, cheese and some other products. The
capital is Calabozo, and the other principal towns are Camaguán
(pop. 3648) on the Portugueza river, Guayabal (pop. 3146),
on a small tributary of the Guárico river, and Zaraza (pop.
14,546) on the Unare river, nearly 150 m. S.E. of Carácas.
GUARIENTO, sometimes incorrectly named Guerriero, the
first Paduan painter who distinguished himself. The only date
distinctly known in his career is 1365, when, having already
acquired high renown in his native city, he was invited by the
Venetian authorities to paint a Paradise, and some incidents
of the war of Spoleto, in the great council-hall of Venice. These
works were greatly admired at the time, but have long ago
disappeared under repaintings. His works in Padua have
suffered much. In the church of the Eremitani are allegories
of the Planets, and, in its choir, some small sacred histories in
dead colour, such as an Ecce Homo; also, on the upper walls,
the life of St Augustine, with some other subjects. A few
fragments of other paintings by Guariento are still extant in
Padua. In the gallery of Bassano is a Crucifixion, carefully
executed, and somewhat superior to a merely traditional method
of handling, although on the whole Guariento must rather be
classed in that school of art which preceded Cimabue than as
having advanced in his vestiges; likewise two other works in
Bassano, ascribed to the same hand. The painter is buried in
the church of S. Bernardino, Padua.
GUARINI, CAMILLO-GUARINO (1624–1683), Italian monk,
writer and architect, was born at Modena in 1624. He was at
once a learned mathematician, professor of literature and
philosophy at Messina, and, from the age of seventeen, was
architect to Duke Philibert of Savoy. He designed a very large
number of public and private buildings at Turin, including the
palaces of the duke of Savoy and the prince of Cacignan, and
many public buildings at Modena, Verona, Vienna, Prague,
Lisbon and Paris. He died at Milan in 1683.
GUARINI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1537–1612), Italian poet,
author of the Pastor fido, was born at Ferrara on the 10th of
December 1537, just seven years before the birth of Tasso. He
was descended from Guarino da Verona. The young Battista
studied both at Pisa and Padua, whence he was called, when not
yet twenty, to profess moral philosophy in the schools of his
native city. He inherited considerable wealth, and was able early
in life to marry Taddea de’ Bendedei, a lady of good birth. In
1567 he entered the service of Alphonso II., duke of Ferrara,
thus beginning the court career which was destined to prove a
constant source of disappointment and annoyance to him.
Though he cultivated poetry for pastime, Guarini aimed at
state employment as the serious business of his life, and managed
to be sent on various embassies and missions by his ducal master.
There was, however, at the end of the 16th century no opportunity
for a man of energy and intellectual ability to distinguish
himself in the petty sphere of Italian diplomacy. The time too
had passed when the profession of a courtier, painted in such
glowing terms by Castiglione, could confer either profit or
honour. It is true that the court of Alphonso presented a
brilliant spectacle to Europe, with Tasso for titular poet, and
an attractive circle of accomplished ladies. But the last duke
of Ferrara was an illiberal patron, feeding his servants with
promises, and ever ready to treat them with the brutality that
condemned the author of the Gerusalemme liberata to a madhouse.
Guarini spent his time and money to little purpose,
suffered from the spite and ill-will of two successive secretaries,—Pigna
and Montecatini,—quarrelled with his old friend Tasso,
and at the end of fourteen years of service found himself half-ruined,
with a large family and no prospects. When Tasso was
condemned to S. Anna, the duke promoted Guarini to the vacant
post of court poet. There is an interesting letter extant from
the latter to his friend Cornelio Bentivoglio, describing the efforts
he made to fill this place appropriately. “I strove to transform
myself into another person, and, like a player, reassumed the
character, costume and feelings of my youth. Advanced in
manhood, I forced myself to look young; I turned my natural
melancholy into artificial gaiety, affected loves I did not feel,
exchanged wisdom for folly, and, in a word, passed from a
philosopher into a poet.” How ill-adapted he felt himself to
this masquerade life may be gathered from the following sentence:
“I am already in my forty-fourth year, the father of eight
children, two of whom are old enough to be my censors, while
my daughters are of an age to marry.” Abandoning so uncongenial
a strain upon his faculties, Guarini retired in 1582 to
his ancestral farm, the Villa Guarina, in the lovely country that lies
between the Adige and Po, where he gave himself up to the cares
of his family, the nursing of his dilapidated fortunes and the
composition of the Pastor fido. He was not happy in his
domestic lot; for he had lost his wife young, and quarrelled
with his elder sons about the division of his estate. Litigation
seems to have been an inveterate vice with Guarini; nor was
he ever free from legal troubles. After studying his biography,
the conclusion is forced upon our minds that he was originally
a man of robust and virile intellect, ambitious of greatness,
confident in his own powers, and well qualified for serious affairs,
whose energies found no proper scope for their exercise. Literary
work offered but a poor sphere for such a character, while the
enforced inactivity of court life soured a naturally capricious
and choleric temper. Of poetry he spoke with a certain tone of
condescension, professing to practise it only in his leisure
moments; nor are his miscellaneous verses of a quality to secure
for their author a very lasting reputation. It is therefore not a
little remarkable that the fruit of his retirement—a disappointed
courtier past the prime of early manhood—should have been a
dramatic masterpiece worthy to be ranked with the classics of
Italian literature. Deferring a further account of the Pastor
fido for the present, the remaining incidents of Guarini’s restless
life may be briefly told. In 1585 he was at Turin superintending
the first public performance of his drama, whence Alphonso
recalled him to Ferrara, and gave him the office of secretary of
state. This reconciliation between the poet and his patron did
not last long. Guarini moved to Florence, then to Rome, and
back again to Florence, where he established himself as the
courtier of Ferdinand de’ Medici. A dishonourable marriage,
pressed upon his son Guarino by the grand-duke, roused the
natural resentment of Guarini, always scrupulous upon the point
of honour. He abandoned the Medicean court, and took refuge
with Francesco Maria of Urbino, the last scion of the Montefeltro-della-Rovere
house. Yet he found no satisfaction at Urbino.
“The old court is a dead institution,” he writes to a friend;
“one may see a shadow of it, but not the substance in Italy of
to-day. Ours is an age of appearances, and one goes
a-masquerading all the year.” This was true enough. Those
dwindling deadly-lively little residence towns of Italian ducal
families, whose day of glory was over, and who were waiting
to be slowly absorbed by the capacious appetite of Austria,
were no fit places for a man of energy and independence. Guarini
finally took refuge in his native Ferrara, which, since the death
of Alphonso, had now devolved to the papal see. Here, and at
the Villa Guarina, his last years were passed in study, law-suits,
and polemical disputes with his contemporary critics, until
1612, when he died at Venice in his seventy-fifth year.
