GREYHOUND. See Dog, vol. vii. p. 327, and Coursing.
GREYTOWN, or more correctly San Juan del Norte, a small town of Nicaragua, worthy of note as the only port of the republic on the coast of the Atlantic and as the eastern terminus proposed for the Nicaraguan inter-oceanic canal. According to the survey of Commanders Hatfield and Lull, U.S.N., in 1872-3, the church is situated in 10° 55′ 14″ N. lat. and 83° 42′ 18″ W. long. The town lies along the seaward side of a narrow peninsula formed by the windings of the San Juan river, and most of its buildings are insignificant erections raised 2 or 3 feet on piles. Though it is still a port of call for mail steamers, and monopolizes the export and import trade of Nicaragua, Greytown is in a decadent condition. Its fine harbour has become almost useless. Between 1832 and 1848 the Arenas Point, which formed one of its boundaries, advanced westward nearly a nautical mile, and now the whole seaward frontage of the bay is a moving sand-bank. In 1853 the channel of entrance was still about one-third of a mile in width and had 23 to 25 feet of water in the bar, so that even vessels of war were able to take shelter within the harbour; but by 1801 the channel was only 100 yards wide and 12 feet deep, and in 1875 the passage was sometimes practically closed, with at the most only 5 feet of water. The inhabitants of the town, however, have increased from 955 in 1863 to about 1200 in 1875. As the vicinity of their town is unfitted for agriculture, they are almost entirely dependent for provisions on supplies from the interior or abroad, and sometimes the commonest articles of consumption are exceedingly scarce. In terms of the treaty of 1860 trial by jury is maintained in all civil and criminal cases, and there is perfect freedom of religious worship, both private and public. The seventh article, however, by which Greytown was to remain a free port has become a dead letter. A duty of 5 per cent. was allowed by the merchants on all imports consumed in the place in order to provide means for constructing a lighthouse; and in 1863 the central Government of the republic imposed another 5 per cent., so that all goods really pay 10 per cent, ad valorem. The imports in 1875 and 1876 respectively were £25,350 and £105,000, and the exports £60,500 and £145,000.
The harbour of San Juan, first discovered by Columbus, was brought into further notice by Captain Diego Machuca, who in 1529 sailed down the river from the Lake of Nicaragua. The date of the first Spanish settlement on the spot is not known, but in the 17th century there were fortifications at the mouth of the river. In 1796 San Juan was made a port of entry by royal charter, and new defences were erected in 1821. The patriots of Nicaragua seized the place at the revolution, but they were expelled in January 1848 by the British, who, claiming the district in name of the "king of the Mosquito Indians," continued in possession till the treaty of 1860. In 1854 the town was bombarded by the United States forces for an alleged insult.
GRIBOYEDOFF, Alexander Sergueevich (1795-1829), was born in 1795 at Moscow, where he studied at the university from 1810 to 1812. He then obtained a commission in a hussar regiment, but resigned it in 1816. Next year he entered the civil service, and in 1818 was appointed secretary of the Russian legation in Persia, whence he was transferred to Georgia. There he began the drama which has made him famous. He had commenced writing early, and had produced on the stage at St Petersburg in 1816 a comedy in verse, translated from the French, called The Young Spouses, which was followed by some other pieces of the same kind. But neither these, nor the essays and verses which he wrote for periodicals, would have been long remembered, but for the immense success gained by his comedy in verse, Goré ot uma, or "Misfortune from Intelligence." A satire upon Russian society, or, as a high official styled it, "A pasquinade on Moscow," its plot is slight, its merits consisting in its accurate representation of certain social and official types, such as Famousoff, the lover of old abuses, the hater of reforms; his secretary, Molchanin, servile fawner upon all in office; the aristocratic young liberal and Anglomaniac, Repetiloff; contrasted with whom is the hero of the piece, Tchatsky, the ironical satirist, just returned from the west of Europe, who exposes and ridicules the weaknesses of the rest, his words echoing that outcry of the young generation of 1820 which reached its climax in the military insurrection of 1825, and was then sternly silenced by Nicholas. Griboyedoff spent the summer of 1823 in Russia, completed his play, and took it to St Petersburg. There it was rejected by the censorship. Many copies were made and privately circulated, but Griboyedoff never saw it published. The first edition was printed in 1833, four years after his death. Only once did he see it on the stage, when it was acted by the officers of the garrison at Erivan. Soured by disappointment he returned to Georgia, made himself useful by his linguistic knowledge to his relative Count Paskievitch-Erivansky during a campaign against Persia, and was sent to St Petersburg with the treaty of 1828. Brilliantly received there, he thought of devoting himself to literature, and commenced a romantic drama, A Georgian Night. But he was suddenly sent to Persia as minister-plenipotentiary. Soon after his arrival at Teheran a tumult arose, caused by the anger of the populace against some Georgian and Armenian captives, Russian subjects, who had taken refuge in the Russian embassy. It was stormed, Griboyedoff was killed (February 11, 1829), and his body was for three days so ill-treated by the mob that it was at last recognized only by an old scar on the hand, due to a wound received in a duel. It was taken to Tiflis, and buried in the monastery of St David. There a monument was erected to his memory by his widow, to whom he had been but a few months married. But his memory is best preserved by his play Gore ot uma, which has since his death been repeatedly published and performed, and will always be quoted as one of the masterpieces of Russian literature. An English translation by N. Benardaky appeared in London in 1857.
GRIESBACH, Johann Jakob (1745-1812), one of the most distinguished of the band of scholars to whom the modern science of New Testament textual criticism owes its origin, was born at Butzbach, a small town of Hesse-Darmstadt, where his father was pastor, on the 4th of January 1745. He received his school education at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and carried on his university studies at Tubingen and Leipsic, but especially at Halle, where he became one of Semler's most ardent disciples. At the close of his undergraduate career, he undertook a literary tour which, apart from the advantages of stimulative contact with many of the most distinguished scholars of England, France, and Holland, as well as of his own country, was of great utility to him in providing him with materials for the great work of his subsequent life. On his return to Halle, he acted for some time as "privat-docent," but in 1773 was appointed to a professorial chair; in 1775 he was translated to Jena, where the remainder of his life was spent in ever-increasing usefulness and honour, and where he died 24th March 1812.
Griesbach's critical edition of the New Testament first appeared at Halle, in three volumes, in 1774-75. The first volume contained the first three gospels, synoptically arranged; the second, the fourth gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. All the historical books were reprinted in one volume in 1777, the synoptical arrangement of the gospels having been abandoned as inconvenient. Of the second edition, very considerably enlarged and improved, the first volume appeared in 1796 and the second in 1806 (Halle and London). Of a third edition, edited by Schulz, only the first volume, containing the four gospels, has appeared (1827).
For the construction of his critical text Griesbach took as his
