Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/770

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GÜTZLAFF—GUY OF WARWICK
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Menzel, who invited him to Stuttgart to assist in the editorship of the Literaturblatt. At the same time he continued his university studies at Jena, Heidelberg and Munich. In 1832 he published anonymously at Hamburg Briefe eines Narren an eine Närrin, and in 1833 appeared at Stuttgart Maha-Guru, Geschichte eines Gottes, a fantastic and satirical romance. In 1835 he went to Frankfort, where he founded the Deutsche Revue. In the same year appeared Wally, die Zweiflerin, from the publication of which may be said to date the school of writers who, from their opposition to the literary, social and religious traditions of romanticism, received the name of “Young Germany.” The work was directed specially against the institution of marriage and the belief in revelation; and whatever interest it might have attracted from its own merits was enhanced by the action of the German federal diet, which condemned Gutzkow to three months’ imprisonment, decreed the suppression of all he had written or might yet write, and prohibited him from exercising the functions of editor within the German confederation. During his term of imprisonment at Mannheim, Gutzkow employed himself in the composition of his treatise Zur Philosophie der Geschichte (1836). On obtaining his freedom he returned to Frankfort, whence he went in 1837 to Hamburg. Here he inaugurated a new epoch of his literary activity by bringing out his tragedy Richard Savage (1839), which immediately made the round of all the German theatres. Of his numerous other plays the majority are now neglected; but a few have obtained an established place in the repertory of the German theatre—especially the comedies Zopf und Schwert (1844), Das Urbild des Tartüffe (1847), Der Königsleutnant (1849) and the blank verse tragedy, Uriel Acosta (1847). In 1847 Gutzkow went to Dresden, where he succeeded Tieck as literary adviser to the court theatre. Meanwhile he had not neglected the novel. Seraphine (1838) was followed by Blasedow und seine Söhne, a satire on the educational theories of the time. Between 1850 and 1852 appeared Die Ritter vom Geiste, which may be regarded as the starting-point for the modern German social novel. Der Zauberer von Rom is a powerful study of Roman Catholic life in southern Germany. The success of Die Ritter vom Geiste suggested to Gutzkow the establishment of a journal on the model of Dickens’ Household Words, entitled Unterhaltungen am häuslichen Herd, which first appeared in 1852 and was continued till 1862. In 1864 he had an epileptic fit, and his productions show henceforth decided traces of failing powers. To this period belong the historical novels Hohenschwangau (1868) and Fritz Ellrodt (1872), Lebensbilder (1870–1872), consisting of autobiographic sketches, and Die Söhne Pestalozzis (1870), the plot of which is founded on the story of Kaspar Hauser. On account of a return of his nervous malady, Gutzkow in 1873 made a journey to Italy, and on his return took up his residence in the country near Heidelberg, whence he removed to Frankfort-on-Main, dying there on the 16th of December 1878. With the exception of one or two of his comedies, Gutzkow’s writings have fallen into neglect. But he exerted a powerful influence on the opinions of modern Germany; and his works will always be of interest as the mirror in which the intellectual and social struggles of his time are best reflected.

An edition of Gutzkow’s collected works appeared at Jena (1873–1876, new ed., 1879). E. Wolff has published critical editions of Gutzkow’s Meisterdramen (1892) and Wally die Zweiflerin (1905). His more important novels have been frequently reprinted. For Gutzkow’s life see his various autobiographical writings such as Aus der Knabenzeit (1852), Rückblicke auf mein Leben (1876), &c. For an estimate of his life and work see J. Proelss, Das junge Deutschland (1892); also H. H. Houben, Studien über die Dramen Gutzkows (1898) and Gutzkow-Funde (1901).


GÜTZLAFF, KARL FRIEDRICH AUGUST (1803–1851), German missionary to China, was born at Pyritz in Pomerania on the 8th of July 1803. When still apprenticed to a saddler in Stettin, he made known his missionary inclinations to the king of Prussia, through whom he went to the Pädagogium at Halle, and afterwards to the mission institute of Jänike in Berlin. In 1826, under the auspices of the Netherlands Missionary Society, he went to Java, where he was able to learn Chinese. Leaving the society in 1828, he went to Singapore, and in August of the same year removed to Bangkok, where he translated the Bible into Siamese. In 1829 he married an English lady, who aided him in the preparation of a dictionary of Cochin Chinese, but she died in August 1831 before its completion. Shortly after her death he sailed to Macao in China, where, and subsequently at Hong Kong, he worked at a translation of the Bible into Chinese, published a Chinese monthly magazine, and wrote in Chinese various books on subjects of useful knowledge. In 1834 he published at London a Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832 and 1833. He was appointed in 1835 joint Chinese secretary to the English commission, and during the opium war of 1840–42 and the negotiations connected with the peace that followed he rendered valuable service by his knowledge of the country and people. The Chinese authorities refusing to permit foreigners to penetrate into the interior, Gützlaff in 1844 founded an institute for training native missionaries, which was so successful that during the first four years as many as forty-eight Chinese were sent out from it to work among their fellow-countrymen. He died at Hong Kong on the 9th of August 1851.

Gützlaff also wrote A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern (London, 1834), and a similar work published in German at Stuttgart in 1847; China Opened (1838); and the Life of Taow-Kwang (1851; German edition published at Leipzig in 1852). A complete collection of his Chinese writings is contained in the library at Munich.


GUY OF WARWICK, English hero of romance. Guy, son of Siward or Seguard of Wallingford, by his prowess in foreign wars wins in marriage Félice (the Phyllis of the well-known ballad), daughter and heiress of Roalt, earl of Warwick. Soon after his marriage he is seized with remorse for the violence of his past life, and, by way of penance, leaves his wife and fortune to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. After years of absence he returns in time to deliver Winchester for King Æthelstan from the invading northern kings, Anelaph (Anlaf or Olaf) and Gonelaph, by slaying in single fight their champion the giant Colbrand. Local tradition fixes the duel at Hyde Mead near Winchester. Making his way to Warwick he becomes one of his wife’s bedesmen, and presently retires to a hermitage in Arden, only revealing his identity at the approach of death. The versions of the Middle English romance of Guy which we possess are adaptations from the French, and are cast in the form of a roman d’aventures, opening with a long recital of Guy’s wars in Lombardy, Germany and Constantinople, and embellished with fights with dragons and surprising feats of arms. The kernel of the tradition evidently lies in the fight with Colbrand, which represents, or at least is symbolic[1] of an historical fact. The religious side of the legend finds parallels in the stories of St Eustachius and St Alexius,[2] and makes it probable that the Guy-legend, as we have it, has passed through monastic hands. Tradition seems to be at fault in putting Guy’s adventures under Æthelstan. The Anlaf of the story is probably Olaf Tryggvason, who, with Sweyn of Denmark, harried the southern counties of England in 993 and pitched his winter quarters in Southampton. Winchester was saved, however, not by the valour of an English champion, but by the payment of money. This Olaf was not unnaturally confused with Anlaf Cuaran or Havelok (q.v.).

The name Guy (perhaps a Norman form of A. S. wig = war) may be fairly connected with the family of Wigod, lord of Wallingford under Edward the Confessor, and a Filicia, who belongs to the 12th century and was perhaps the Norman poet’s patroness, occurs in the pedigree of the Ardens, descended from Thurkill of Warwick and his son Siward. Guy’s Cliffe, near Warwick, where in the 14th century Richard de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, erected a chantry, with a statue of the hero, does not correspond with the site of the hermitage as described in the

  1. Some writers have supposed that the fight with Colbrand symbolizes the victory of Brunanburh. Anelaph and Gonelaph would then represent the cousins Anlaf Sihtricson and Anlaf Godfreyson (see Havelok).
  2. See the English legends in C. Horstmann, Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge (Heilbronn, 1881).