an English translation being by J. Bourchier (London, 1546) and another being by T. North. It is difficult now to account for its extraordinary popularity, its thought being neither just nor profound, while its style is stiff and affected. It gave rise to a literary controversy, however, of great bitterness and violence, the author having ventured without warrant to claim for it an historical character, appealing to an imaginary “manuscript in Florence.” Other works of Guevara are the Decada de los Césares (Valladolid, 1539), or “Lives of the Ten Roman Emperors,” in imitation of the manner of Plutarch and Suetonius; and the Epistolas familiares (Valladolid, 1539–1545), sometimes called “The Golden Letters,” often printed in Spain, and translated into all the principal languages of Europe. They are in reality a collection of stiff and formal essays which have long ago fallen into merited oblivion. Guevara, whose influence upon the Spanish prose of the 16th century was considerable, also wrote Libro de los inventores del arte de marear (Valladolid, 1539, and Madrid, 1895).
GUEVARA, LUIS VELEZ DE (1579–1644), Spanish dramatist
and novelist, was born at Écija on the 1st of August 1579.
After graduating as a sizar at the university of Osuna in 1596,
he joined the household of Rodrigo de Castro, cardinal-archbishop
of Seville, and celebrated the marriage of Philip II. in
a poem signed “Velez de Santander,” a name which he continued
to use till some years later. He appears to have served
as a soldier in Italy and Algiers, returning to Spain in 1602 when
he entered the service of the count de Saldaña, and dedicated
himself to writing for the stage. He died at Madrid on the
10th of November 1644. He was the author of over four hundred
plays, of which the best are Reinar despues de morir, Más pesa el
rey que la sangre, La Luna de la Sierra and El Diablo está en
Cantillana; but he is most widely known as the author of El
Diablo cojuelo (1641), a fantastic novel which suggested to Le
Sage the idea of his Diable boiteux.
GUGLIELMI, PIETRO (1727–1804), Italian composer, was
born at Massa Carrara in May 1727, and died in Rome on the
19th of November 1804. He received his first musical education
from his father, and afterwards studied under Durante at the
Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto at Naples. His first
operatic work, produced at Turin in 1755, established his
reputation, and soon his fame spread beyond the limits of his
own country, so that in 1762 he was called to Dresden to conduct
the opera there. He remained for some years in Germany,
where his works met with much success, but the greatest triumphs
were reserved for him in England. He went to London, according
to Burney, in 1768, but according to Florimo in 1772,
returning to Naples in 1777. He still continued to produce
operas at an astounding rate, but was unable to compete successfully
with the younger masters of the day. In 1793 he
became maestro di cappella at St Peter’s, Rome. He was a very
prolific composer of Italian comic opera, and there is in most
of his scores a vein of humour and natural gaiety not surpassed
by Cimarosa himself. In serious opera he was less successful.
But here also he shows at least the qualities of a competent
musician. Considering the enormous number of his works, his
unequal workmanship and the frequent instances of mechanical
and slip-shod writing in his music need not surprise us. The
following are among the most celebrated of his operas: I Due
Gemelli, La Serva inamorata, La Pastorella nobile, La Bella Peccatrice,
Rinaldo, Artaserse, Didone and Enea e Lavinia. He also
wrote oratorios and miscellaneous pieces of orchestral and
chamber music. Of his eight sons two at least acquired fame as
musicians—Pietro Carlo (1763–1827), a successful imitator of
his father’s operatic style, and Giacomo, an excellent singer.
GUIANA (Guyana, Guayana[1]), the general name given in its
widest acceptation to the part of South America lying to the
north-east from 8° 40′ N. to 3° 30′ S. and from 50° W. to 68° 30′
W. Its greatest length, from Cabo do Norte to the confluence
of the Rio Xie and Rio Negro, is about 1250 m., its greatest
breadth, from Barima Point in the mouth of the Orinoco to
the confluence of the Rio Negro and Amazon, 800 m. Its area
is roughly 690,000 sq. m. Comprised in this vast territory are
Venezuelan (formerly Spanish) Guiana, lying on both sides of
the Orinoco and extending S. and S.W. to the Rio Negro and
Brazilian settlements; British Guiana, extending from Venezuela
to the left bank of the Corentyn river; Dutch Guiana
- ↑ The origin of the name is somewhat obscure, and has been variously interpreted. But the late Col. G. E. Church supplies the following note, which has the weight of his great authority: “I cannot confirm the suggestion of Schomburgk that Guayaná ‘received its name from a small river, a tributary of the Orinoco’, supposed to be the Waini or Guainia. In South America, east of the Andes, it was the common custom of any tribe occupying a length of river to call it simply ‘the river’; but the other tribes designated any section of it by the name of the people living on its banks. Many streams, therefore, had more than a dozen names. It is probable that no important river had one name alone throughout its course, prior to the time of the Conquest. The radical wini, waini, wayni, is found as a prefix, and very frequently as a termination, to the names of numerous rivers, not only throughout Guayaná but all over the Orinoco and Amazon valleys. For instance, Paymary Indians called the portion of the Purús river which they occupied the Waini. It simply means water, or a fountain of water, or a river. The alternative suggestion that Guayaná is an Indian word signifying ’wild coast,’ I also think untenable. This term, applied to the north-east frontage of South America between the Orinoco and the Amazon, is found on the old Dutch map of Hartsinck, who calls it ’Guiana Caribania of de Wilde Kust,’ a name which must have well described it when, in 1580, some Zealanders, of the Netherlands, sent a ship to cruise along it, from the mouth of the Amazon to that of the Orinoco, and formed the first settlement near the river Pomeroon. The map of Firnao Vaz Dourado, 1564, calls the northern part of South America, including the present British Guiana, ‘East Peru.’ An anonymous Spanish map, about 1566, gives Guayaná as lying on the east side of the Orinoco just above its mouth. About 1660, Sebastien de Ruesta, cosmographer of the Casa de Contractacion de Seville, shows Guayaná covering the British, French and Dutch Guayanás. According to the map of Nicolas de Fer, 1719, a tribe of Guayazis (Guyanas) occupied the south side of the Amazon river, front of the island of Tupinambará, east of the mouth of the Madeira. Aristides Rojas, an eminent Venezuelan scholar, says that the Mariches Indians, near Caracas, inhabited a site called Guayaná long before the discovery of South America by the Spaniards. Coudreau in his Chez nos Indiens mentions that the Roucouyennes of Guayaná take their name from a large tree in their forests, ‘which appears to be the origin of the name Guayane.’ According to Michelana y Rojas, in their report to the Venezuelan government on their voyages in the basin of the Orinoco, ‘Guyana derives its name from the Indians who live between the Caroni river and the Sierra de Imataca, called Guayanos.’ My own studies of aboriginal South America lead me to support the statement of Michelana y Rojas, but with the following enlargement of it: The Portuguese, in the early part of the 16th century, found that the coast and mountain district of Rio de Janeiro, between Cape São Thome and Angra dos Reis, belonged to the formidable Tamoyos. South of these, for a distance of about 300 m. of the ocean slope of the coast range, were the Guayaná tribes, called by the early writers Guianás, Goyaná, Guayaná, Goaná and, plural, Goaynázés, Goayanázes and Guayanázes. They were constantly at feud with the Tamoyos and with their neighbours on the south, the Carijos, as well as with the vast Tapuya hordes of the Sertão of the interior. Long before the discovery, they had been forced to abandon their beautiful lands, but had recuperated their strength, returned and reconquered their ancient habitat. Meanwhile, however, many of them had migrated northward, some had settled in the Sertão back of Bahia and Pernambuco, others on the middle Amazon and in the valley of the Orinoco, but a large number had crossed the lower Amazon and occupied an extensive area of country to the north of it, about the size of Belgium, along the Tumuchumac range of highlands, and the upper Paron and Maroni rivers, as well as a large district on the northern slope of the above-named range. In their new home they became known as Roucouyennes, because, like the Mundurucus of the middle Amazon, they rubbed and painted themselves with roucou or urucu (Bixa Orellana); but other surrounding tribes called them Ouayanás, that is Guayanás—the Gua, so common to the Guarani-Tupi tongue, having become corrupted into Oua. Porto Seguro says of the so-called Tupis, ‘at other times they gave themselves the name of Guayá or Guayaná, which probably means “brothers,” from which comes Guayazes and Guayanazes. . . . The latter occupied the country just south of Rio de Janeiro. . . . The masters of the Capitania of St Vincente called themselves Guianas.’ Guinila, referring to north-eastern South America (1745), speaks of five missions being formed to civilize the ‘Nacion Guayana.’ In view of the above, it may be thought reasonable to assume that the vast territory now known as Guayaná (British, Dutch, French, Brazilian and Venezuelan) derives its name from its aborigines who were found there at the time of the discovery, and whose original home was the region I have indicated.”
