the 1st of June 1815, and was buried in St James’s churchyard, Piccadilly.
The times in which Gillray lived were peculiarly favourable to the growth of a great school of caricature. Party warfare was carried on with great vigour and not a little bitterness; and personalities were freely indulged in on both sides. Gillray’s incomparable wit and humour, knowledge of life, fertility of resource, keen sense of the ludicrous, and beauty of execution, at once gave him the first place among caricaturists. He is honourably distinguished in the history of caricature by the fact that his sketches are real works of art. The ideas embodied in some of them are sublime and poetically magnificent in their intensity of meaning; while the coarseness by which others are disfigured is to be explained by the general freedom of treatment common in all intellectual departments in the 18th century. The historical value of Gillray’s work has been recognized by accurate students of history. As has been well remarked: “Lord Stanhope has turned Gillray to account as a veracious reporter of speeches, as well as a suggestive illustrator of events.” His contemporary political influence is borne witness to in a letter from Lord Bateman, dated November 3, 1798. “The Opposition,” he writes to Gillray, “are as low as we can wish them. You have been of infinite service in lowering them, and making them ridiculous.” Gillray’s extraordinary industry may be inferred from the fact that nearly 1000 caricatures have been attributed to him; while some consider him the author of 1600 or 1700. He is invaluable to the student of English manners as well as to the political student. He attacks the social follies of the time with scathing satire; and nothing escapes his notice, not even a trifling change of fashion in dress. The great tact Gillray displays in hitting on the ludicrous side of any subject is only equalled by the exquisite finish of his sketches—the finest of which reach an epic grandeur and Miltonic sublimity of conception.
Gillray’s caricatures are divided into two classes, the political series and the social. The political caricatures form really the best history extant of the latter part of the reign of George III. They were circulated not only over Britain but throughout Europe, and exerted a powerful influence. In this series, George III., the queen, the prince of Wales, Fox, Pitt, Burke and Napoleon are the most prominent figures. In 1788 appeared two fine caricatures by Gillray. “Blood on Thunder fording the Red Sea” represents Lord Thurlow carrying Warren Hastings through a sea of gore: Hastings looks very comfortable, and is carrying two large bags of money. “Market-Day” pictures the ministerialists of the time as horned cattle for sale. Among Gillray’s best satires on the king are: “Farmer George and his Wife,” two companion plates, in one of which the king is toasting muffins for breakfast, and in the other the queen is frying sprats; “The Anti-Saccharites,” where the royal pair propose to dispense with sugar, to the great horror of the family; “A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper”; “Temperance enjoying a Frugal Meal”; “Royal Affability”; “A Lesson in Apple Dumplings”; and “The Pigs Possessed.” Among his other political caricatures may be mentioned: “Britannia between Scylla and Charybdis,” a picture in which Pitt, so often Gillray’s butt, figures in a favourable light; “The Bridal Night”; “The Apotheosis of Hoche,” which concentrates the excesses of the French Revolution in one view; “The Nursery with Britannia reposing in Peace”; “The First Kiss these Ten Years” (1803), another satire on the peace, which is said to have greatly amused Napoleon; “The Handwriting upon the Wall”; “The Confederated Coalition,” a fling at the coalition which superseded the Addington ministry; “Uncorking Old Sherry”; “The Plum-Pudding in Danger”; “Making Decent,” i.e. “Broad-bottomites getting into the Grand Costume”; “Comforts of a Bed of Roses”; “View of the Hustings in Covent Garden”; “Phaëthon Alarmed”; and “Pandora opening her Box.” The miscellaneous series of caricatures, although they have scarcely the historical importance of the political series, are more readily intelligible, and are even more amusing. Among the finest are: “Shakespeare Sacrificed”; “Flemish Characters” (two plates); “Twopenny Whist”; “Oh! that this too solid flesh would melt”; “Sandwich Carrots”; “The Gout”; “Comfort to the Corns”; “Begone Dull Care”; “The Cow-Pock,” which gives humorous expression to the popular dread of vaccination; “Dilletanti Theatricals”; and “Harmony before Matrimony” and “Matrimonial Harmonics”—two exceedingly good sketches in violent contrast to each other.
A selection of Gillray’s works appeared in parts in 1818; but the first good edition was Thomas M‘Lean’s, which was published, with a key, in 1830. A somewhat bitter attack, not only on Gillray’s character, but even on his genius, appeared in the Athenaeum for October 1, 1831, which was successfully refuted by J. Landseer in the Athenaeum a fortnight later. In 1851 Henry G. Bohn put out an edition, from the original plates, in a handsome folio, the coarser sketches being published in a separate volume. For this edition Thomas Wright and R. H. Evans wrote a valuable commentary, which is a good history of the times embraced by the caricatures. The next edition, entitled The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist: with the Story of his Life and Times (Chatto & Windus, 1874), was the work of Thomas Wright, and, by its popular exposition and narrative, introduced Gillray to a very large circle formerly ignorant of him. This edition, which is complete in one volume, contains two portraits of Gillray, and upwards of 400 illustrations. Mr J. J. Cartwright, in a letter to the Academy (Feb. 28, 1874), drew attention to the existence of a MS. volume, in the British Museum, containing letters to and from Gillray, and other illustrative documents. The extracts he gave were used in a valuable article in the Quarterly Review for April 1874. See also the Academy for Feb. 21 and May 16, 1874.
There is a good account of Gillray in Wright’s History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art (1865); See also the article Caricature.
GILLYFLOWER, a popular name applied to various flowers,
but principally to the clove, Dianthus Caryophyllus, of which
the carnation is a cultivated variety, and to the stock, Matthiola
incana, a well-known garden favourite. The word is sometimes
written gilliflower or gilloflower, and is reputedly a corruption
of July-flower, “so called from the month they blow in.” Henry
Phillips (1775–1838), in his Flora historica, remarks that Turner
(1568) “calls it gelouer, to which he adds the word stock, as
we would say gelouers that grow on a stem or stock, to distinguish
them from the clove-gelouers and the wall-gelouers. Gerard,
who succeeded Turner, and after him Parkinson, calls it gilloflower,
and thus it travelled from its original orthography until
it was called July-flower by those who knew not whence it was
derived.” Dr Prior, in his useful volume on the Popular Names
of British Plants, very distinctly shows the origin of the name.
He remarks that it was “formerly spelt gyllofer and gilofre
with the o long, from the French giroflée, Italian garofalo (M. Lat.
gariofilum), corrupted from the Latin Caryophyllum, and referring
to the spicy odour of the flower, which seems to have been used
in flavouring wine and other liquors to replace the more costly
clove of India. The name was originally given in Italy to plants
of the pink tribe, especially the carnation, but has in England
been transferred of late years to several cruciferous plants.”
The gillyflower of Chaucer and Spenser and Shakespeare was,
as in Italy, Dianthus Caryophyllus; that of later writers and of
gardeners, Matthiola. Much of the confusion in the names of
plants has doubtless arisen from the vague use of the French
terms giroflée, œillet and violette, which were all applied to
flowers of the pink tribe, but in England were subsequently
extended and finally restricted to very different plants. The
use made of the flowers to impart a spicy flavour to ale and wine
is alluded to by Chaucer, who writes:
| “And many a clove gilofre |
| To put in ale”; |
also by Spenser, who refers to them by the name of sops in wine, which was applied in consequence of their being steeped in the liquor. In both these cases, however, it is the clove-gillyflower which is intended, as it is also in the passage from Gerard, in which he states that the conserve made of the flowers with sugar “is exceeding cordiall, and wonderfully above measure doth comfort the heart, being eaten now and then.” The principal other plants which bear the name are the wallflower, Cheiranthus Cheiri, called wall-gillyflower in old books; the dame’s violet, Hesperis matronalis, called variously the queen’s, the rogue’s and the winter gillyflower; the ragged-robin, Lychnis Flos-cuculi, called marsh-gillyflower and cuckoo-gillyflower; the water-violet, Hottonia palustris, called water-gillyflower; and the thrift, Armeria vulgaris, called sea-gillyflower. As a separate designation it is nowadays usually applied to the wallflower.
GILMAN, DANIEL COIT (1831–1908), American educationist, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on the 6th of July 1831. He graduated at Yale in 1852, studied in Berlin, was assistant librarian of Yale in 1856–1858 and librarian in 1858–1865, and was professor of physical and political geography in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University and a member of the
