GOEDON
GOULD
writer. B. 1744. Ed. Milan. Of an
ancient and noble family, he early became
a friend of Beccaria and joined a society
for the discussion of social and religious
questions. He published a Treatise on
Despotism (1770), and he was an ardent
humanitarian and friend of the Encyclo
paedists. At the outbreak of the Revolu
tion he sought to spread its more moderate
principles in Italy, and he was compelled
to fly to Switzerland. He wrote various
political and educational works. D.
Dec. 12, 1819.
GORDON, Adam Lindsay, Australian poet. B. 1833. Ed. Cheltenham College and Oxford (Merton) . He went to Austra lia in 1853 and became a trooper in the mounted police, then a horsebreaker. In 1865-66 he sat in the Legislative Assembly of South Australia. Passing to Victoria in 1867, he attracted great attention by a volume of poems, Sea Spray and Smoke. His two volumes of Bush Ballads (1870) sustained his reputation, but grave busi ness trouble caused him to take his life, June 24, 1870. His Rationalism is often expressed in his verse.
GORDON, Thomas, Scottish writer. B. about 1684. He seems to have been admitted to the Scottish Bar, but he went to London and took up teaching, later becoming clerk to Trenchard. He wrote a series of papers against the clergy, which D Holbach translated into French. Walpole made him First Commissioner of the Wine Licences. He translated Tacitus, Sallust, and Cicero, and wrote a preface to Bar- beyrac s Spirit of Ecclesiastics in All Ages, which he translated (1722), and The Pillars of Priestcraft and OrtJiodoxy Shaken (1752). D. July 28, 1750.
GORHAM, Charles Turner, writer. B. 1856. Ed. private schools. In 1899 Mr. Gorham, who was then engaged in business in London, assisted in the founding of the Rationalist Press Association. He succeeded Mr. C. E. Hooper as Secretary of 299
the Association in 1913, and is a regular
contributor to the Literary Guide and the
B. P. A. Annual. From 1917 to 1919
he was joint-editor of the Humanist, an
organ of the Ethical Movement. Mr.
Gorham s Agnostic views are chiefly ex
pressed in his Ethics of the Great Eeligions
(1904), The First Easter Dawn (1908),
Christianity and Civilization (1913), The
Spanish Inquisition (1916), and A Plain
Man s Plea for Rationalism (1919).
GORKY, Alexei Maximovitch PeshkoY
(" Maxim Gorky "), Russian novelist. B. Mar. 14, 1868. At the age of nine he began to work in a boot shop, and for many years he led a rough, wandering life, working successively as a painter of icons, cook s boy, baker, porter, hawker, railway watchman, and lawyer s clerk. He educated himself, and developed a drastic Rationalist and Socialist philosophy of life. His first story, Makar Chudra, was published in 1892, but it was chiefly Chelkash (1895) that attracted world- attention to his power. " Gorky " (the Russian word for " bitter ") is a character istic pseudonym. His name is (as above)
A. M. Peshkov. He has a Nietzschean contempt of Christianity and all religion, and is a Marxian Socialist (or Bolshevik). Gorky is one of the most serious construc tive humanitarians of the present ruling body in Russia.
GOULD, Frederick James, educationist.
B. (Brighton) Dec. 19, 1855. He was a choir boy at St. George s Chapel, Windsor Castle, then a village schoolmaster. In 1877 he began to teach under the London School Board, but in 1896 he resigned his profession rather than give religious lessons, and he became one of the most prominent workers of the Rationalist and Ethical Societies. He was secretary of the Leicester Secular Society, and member of the School Board and Town Council, 1899-1908. Of recent years Mr. Gould has worked also in the Positivist Church (of which he is a member) and the Moral
300
