died in London of consumption in 1844. A very able executant, a good colourist, and a close student of character, he made his chief success as a portrait-painter, but he produced occasional figure subjects and landscapes, and executed some admirable copies of the old masters as well. He was also a good etcher. His portrait of his mother, and a portrait study, called “Summer,” are in the National Gallery of Scotland, and his portrait of Sir Walter Scott is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
See Art in Scotland: its Origin and Progress, by Robert Brydall (1889); The Scottish School of Painting, by William D. McKay, R.S.A. (1906).
GEDDES, JAMES LORRAINE (1827–1887), American soldier and writer, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 19th of March 1827. In his boyhood he was taken to Canada, but in 1843 he returned to Scotland; then studied at Calcutta in the military academy, entered the army, and after distinguishing
himself in the Punjab campaign, returned to Canada, whence in 1857 he removed to Vinton, Iowa. In the American Civil War he served in the Federal army first as lieutenant-colonel
and after February 1862 as colonel of volunteers, taking part
in the fighting at Shiloh, Vicksburg and Corinth. He was
captured at Shiloh and was imprisoned for a time at Madison,
Ga., and in Libby prison, Richmond, Va., and in 1865 was
brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers. He was principal
of the College for the Blind at Vinton after the war, and until
his death was connected with the Iowa College of Agriculture
at Ames, being military instructor and cashier in 1870–1882,
acting president in 1876–1877, librarian in 1877–1875, vice-president
and professor of military tactics in 1880–1882, and
treasurer in 1884–1887. He died at Ames on the 21st of
February 1887. He wrote a number of war songs, including
“The Soldiers’ Battle Prayer” and “The Stars and Stripes.”
GEDDES, SIR WILLIAM DUGUID (1828–1900), Scottish scholar and educationist, was born in Aberdeenshire. He was educated at Elgin academy and university and King’s College,
Aberdeen, and after having held various scholastic posts he was appointed in 1860 professor of Greek and in 1885 principal of the (united) university of Aberdeen. He was knighted in 1892. He died in Aberdeen on the 9th of February 1900. It is chiefly
as a teacher that Geddes will be remembered, and in his enthusiastic and successful efforts to raise the standard of Greek at the
Scottish universities he has been compared with the humanists
of the Renaissance. Amongst other works he was the author
of A Greek Grammar (1855; 17th edition, 1883; new and revised
edition, 1893); a meritorious edition of the Phaedo of Plato
(2nd ed., 1885); and The Problem of the Homeric Poems (1878),
in which, while supporting Grote’s view that the Iliad consisted
of an original Achilleïs with insertions or additions by later
hands, he maintains that these insertions are due to the author
of the Odyssey.
GEDYMIN (d. 1342), grand-duke of Lithuania, was supposed by the earlier chroniclers to have been the servant of Witen, prince of Lithuania, but more probably he was Witen’s younger brother and the son of Lutuwer, another Lithuanian prince. Gedymin inherited a vast domain, comprising Lithuania proper,
Samogitia, Red Russia, Polotsk and Minsk; but these possessions
were environed by powerful and greedy foes, the most dangerous
of them being the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian knights of
the Sword. The systematic raiding of Lithuania by the knights
under the pretext of converting it had long since united all the
Lithuanian tribes against the common enemy; but Gedymin
aimed at establishing a dynasty which should make Lithuania
not merely secure but mighty, and for this purpose he entered
into direct diplomatic negotiations with the Holy See. At the end of 1322 he sent letters to Pope John XXII. soliciting his protection against the persecution of the knights, informing him of the privileges already granted to the Dominicans and the Franciscans in Lithuania for the preaching of God’s Word, and desiring that legates should be sent to receive him also into the bosom of the church. On receiving a favourable reply from the
Holy See, Gedymin issued circular letters, dated 25th of January 1325, to the principal Hanse towns, offering a free access into his
domains to men of every order and profession from nobles and
knights to tillers of the soil. The immigrants were to choose their
own settlements and be governed by their own laws. Priests
and monks were also invited to come and build churches at
Vilna and Novogrodek. Similar letters were sent to the Wendish
or Baltic cities, and to the bishops and landowners of Livonia
and Esthonia. In short Gedymin, recognizing the superiority
of western civilization, anticipated Ivan the Terrible and Peter
the Great by throwing open the semi-savage Russian lands to
influences of culture.
In October 1323 representatives of the archbishop of Riga, the bishop of Dorpat, the king of Denmark, the Dominican and Franciscan orders, and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order assembled at Vilna, when Gedymin confirmed his promises and undertook to be baptized as soon as the papal legates arrived. A compact was then signed at Vilna, “in the name of the whole Christian World,” between Gedymin and the delegates, confirming the promised privileges. But the christianizing of Lithuania was by no means to the liking of the Teutonic Knights, and they used every effort to nullify Gedymin’s far-reaching design. This, unfortunately, it was easy to do. Gedymin’s chief object was to save Lithuania from destruction at the hands of the Germans. But he was still a pagan reigning over semi-pagan lands; he was equally bound to his pagan kinsmen in Samogitia, to his orthodox subjects in Red Russia, and to his Catholic allies in Masovia. His policy, therefore, was necessarily tentative and ambiguous, and might very readily be misinterpreted. Thus his raid upon Dobrzyn, the latest acquisition of the knights on Polish soil, speedily gave them a ready weapon against him. The Prussian bishops, who were devoted to the knights, at a synod at Elbing questioned the authority of Gedymin’s letters and denounced him as an enemy of the faith; his orthodox subjects reproached him with leaning towards the Latin heresy; while the pagan Lithuanians accused him of abandoning the ancient gods. Gedymin disentangled himself from his difficulties by repudiating his former promises; by refusing to receive the papal legates who arrived at Riga in September 1323; and by dismissing the Franciscans from his territories. These apparently retrogressive measures simply amounted to a statesmanlike recognition of the fact that the pagan element was still the strongest force in Lithuania, and could not yet be dispensed with in the coming struggle for nationality. At the same time Gedymin through his ambassadors privately informed the papal legates at Riga that his difficult position compelled him for a time to postpone his steadfast resolve of being baptized, and the legates showed their confidence in him by forbidding the neighbouring states to war against Lithuania for the next four years, besides ratifying the treaty made between Gedymin and the archbishop of Riga. Nevertheless in 1325 the Order, disregarding the censures of the church, resumed the war with Gedymin, who had in the meantime improved his position by an alliance with Wladislaus Lokietek, king of Poland, whose son Casimir now married Gedymin’s daughter Aldona.
While on his guard against his northern foes, Gedymin from 1316 to 1340 was aggrandizing himself at the expense of the numerous Russian principalities in the south and east, whose incessant conflicts with each other wrought the ruin of them all. Here Gedymin’s triumphal progress was irresistible; but the various stages of it are impossible to follow, the sources of its history being few and conflicting, and the date of every salient event exceedingly doubtful. One of his most important territorial accretions, the principality of Halicz-Vladimir, was obtained by the marriage of his son Lubart with the daughter of the Haliczian prince; the other, Kiev, apparently by conquest. Gedymin also secured an alliance with the grand-duchy of Muscovy by marrying his daughter, Anastasia, to the grand-duke Simeon. But he was strong enough to counterpoise the influence of Muscovy in northern Russia, and assisted the republic of Pskov, which acknowledged his overlordship, to break away from Great Novgorod. His internal administration bears all the marks of a wise ruler. He protected the Catholic as well as the orthodox clergy, encouraging them both to civilize his
