GELLI, Giovanni Battista, born at Florence in 1498. His father, who was a poor tailor, brought him up as his assistant in his own trade, at which he continued until he was twenty-five years of age. He then devoted himself with great energy to the study of Latin and Italian, of the latter of which languages he was in his time considered a master. Gelli was one of the founders of the Florentine Academy, of which he became the president in 1548. At the request of Duke Cosimo I. he delivered public lectures on Dante's Divina Commedia, and whilst thus honoured by princely favour, he continued to carry on his trade, having a numerous family to maintain. His principal works are, his lectures delivered before the academy, and those on Dante, and a large number of philological essays. Gelli died at Florence in 1563.—A. C. M
GELLIBRAND, Henry, an English mathematician, was born in London, on the 17th of November, 1597, and died there on the 26th of February, 1637. Having been bred to the church, he obtained the living of Chiddingstone in Kent, but quitted it in order to cultivate mathematics. After studying that science at Oxford, he was, through the recommendation of his friend Briggs, appointed in 1627 to the professorship of astronomy in Gresham college, London. About 1635 he discovered the secular variation of the magnetic declination. Briggs, having finished the first part of the Trigonometria Britannica, and finding himself at the point of death, left the completion of that celebrated work to Gellibrand, by whom the second part was written, and the whole edited.—W. J. M. R.
GELLIUS, Aulus. See Aulus.
GELO or GELON, Monarch of Syracuse from 485 to 478 b.c., was born at Gela, a city on the southern coast of Sicily, whither the family to which he belonged had emigrated from one of the Grecian isles with the first Rhodian colonists. Having inherited the privileges of a special priesthood, and risen to a high military command under Hippocrates, who then ruled Gela, he took the field at the death of the latter on pretext of maintaining the rights of his children; but the success which attended his arms was turned to his own advantage, and his townsmen were compelled to receive him as their sovereign, 491 b.c. Six years later, his assistance being entreated by the Gamori, the oligarchical landowners, of Syracuse, who had been expelled by the insurgent serfs and commonalty, he made himself master of that city, removed his court to it, and commenced a vigorous centralizing policy, in the course of which he drafted into his capital multitudes from the dependent and conquered towns around. His most dangerous neighbours were the Carthaginians who had established themselves on the western coasts of the island; and against them he attempted to form a powerful Greek confederacy. But the Peloponnesian states refused their co-operation, and he increased his fame by repelling the Punic aggressions with his own resources. When the Greeks in their turn requested his aid against the advancing armament of Xerxes, he offered to send them more than twenty thousand troops, on condition of being appointed generalissimo of their forces. Probably he anticipated and desired the refusal of his terms, being reluctant to engage in a distant and dubious contest, while the Carthaginians were still on the watch for a favourable opportunity of extending their possessions in Sicily. At all events he speedily found enough to occupy his attention and energies in a new conflict with these formidable opponents. In 480 b.c. Hamilcar at the head of a large army landed on the island and took possession of Himera, a principality on the northern coast recently conquered by Theron of Agrigentum, whose daughter Gelo had married. Collecting his troops, the Syracusan monarch hastened to succour his father-in-law, and in conjunction with the Agrigentines gained a signal victory. The Carthaginian general was slain, and his army so completely destroyed that only a single vessel reached Carthage with the tidings of the disaster. Gelo, on his return home, convened a public assembly at Syracuse, recounted what he had done, and submitted his conduct to the judgment of the citizens—an act of condescension which crowned his popularity, and the remembrance of which, more than a century later, caused his statue to be spared, when the enfranchised city destroyed the other memorials of despotic government. He died a year or two after the battle of Himera, and was succeeded by his brother Hiero; having displayed a simplicity of manners, an integrity of character, and a conciliatory spirit of regard for the well-being of his subjects, which prove him to have been only in the Hellenic sense of the phrase, a tyrant.—W. B.
GEMELLI-CARRERI, Giovanni Francesco, born at Naples in 1651; died in 1725; celebrated for his travels in Asia and America. At the age of forty he left the bar to devote himself to his new avocation; and after having visited Sicily, Malta, Turkey, the Holy Land, and Persia, he proceeded to India and China, and returned to Europe by the islands of the Pacific, California, and Mexico. In the very year of his return, 1699, he published an interesting account of his travels with the title of "Giro del mondo." The accuracy of his narrative has been acknowledged by all who have subsequently visited the same regions.—A. S., O.
GEMINIANI, Francesco, a celebrated musician, was born at Lucca about the year 1680. He received his first instructions in music from Alessandro Scarlatti, and afterwards became a pupil of Carlo Ambrosio Lunati, surnamed Il Gobbo, a celebrated performer on the violin. His studies were completed under Corelli. In 1714 he arrived in England, where in a short time his exquisite performance on the violin rendered him celebrated, and he ranked many of the nobility among his patrons. He published his first work, "Twelve Sonatas à Violino, Violone, e Cembalo," in 1716. These compositions produced such an effect upon the public that they were at a loss to determine whether his greater excellence was in his performance or in his compositions. Geminiani was an enthusiast in painting; and to gratify this propensity he not only suspended his studies and neglected his profession, but involved himself in pecuniary embarrassments, which a little prudence and foresight would have enabled him to avoid. To gratify his taste he bought pictures, and to supply his wants he sold them. The consequence of this kind of traffic may easily be conceived. In this dilemma Sir Robert Walpole stepped forward, and offered Geminiani the post of master and composer of the state music in Ireland. But on inquiry into the conditions of the office, it was found that it was not tenable by a member of the Romish communion. The place was therefore given to Matthew Dubourg, a young musician of great merit who had been Geminiani's pupil. In 1726 he arranged Corelli's first six solos and concertos, and soon after the last six, but with a success by no means equal to that which attended the first. He also similarly treated six of the same composer's sonatas, and in some additional parts imitated their style with an exactitude that at once manifested his flexible ingenuity and his judicious reverence for his originals. Encouraged, however, as he might be considered, by the success of this undertaking, to proceed in the exercise of his powers, six years elapsed before another work appeared, when he produced his first set of concertos; these were soon followed by a second set, and the merits of these two productions established his character as an eminent master in that species of composition. The opening concerto in the first of these two sets is distinguished for the charming minuet with which it closes, and the last concerto in the second set is esteemed one of the finest compositions known of its kind. His second set of solos (admired more than practised, and practised more than performed) was printed in 1739, and his third set of concertos in 1741. Soon after this he published his long-promised, and once impatiently-expected work, entitled "Lo Dizionário Armonico." In this work, after giving due commendation to Lully, Corelli, and Bononcini, as having been the first improvers of instrumental music, he endeavours to obviate an opinion that the vast foundations of universal harmony can be established upon the narrow and confined modulation of these authors, and makes many remarks on the uniformity of modulation apparent in the compositions that had appeared in different parts of Europe for several years back. This didactic production possessed many recommendatory qualities, many combinations, modulations, and cadences, calculated to create and to advance the science and taste of the musician. This work was succeeded by his "Treatise on Good Taste," and his "Rules for Playing in Good Taste;" and in 1748 he brought out his "Art of Playing on the Violin," at that time a highly useful work, and superior to any similar publication extant. It contained the most minute directions for holding the instrument and for the use of the bow, as well as the graces, the various shifts of the hand, and a great number of applicable examples. Shortly after the publication of this work, Geminiani was struck with a most curious and fantastic idea, that of a piece of music the performance of which should represent to the imagination all the events in the episode of the thirteenth book of Tasso's Jerusalem. It is needless to say that the chimera was too extravagant, of attempting to narrate and instruct,
