was descended from an ancient family. At the age of fifteen he entered as a student of civil and canon law at the university of Salamanca; but he obtained no academic distinctions and was content with an ordinary pass degree. He was already known as a poet in 1585 when Cervantes praised him in the Galatea; in this same year he took minor orders, and shortly afterwards was nominated to a canonry at Cordova. About 1605–1606 he was ordained priest, and thenceforth resided principally at Valladolid and Madrid, where, as a contemporary remarks, he “noted and stabbed at everything with his satirical pen.” His circle of admirers was now greatly enlarged; but the acknowledgment accorded to his singular genius was both slight and tardy. Ultimately indeed, through the influence of the duke of Sandoval, he obtained an appointment as honorary chaplain to Philip III., but even this slight honour he was not permitted long to enjoy. In 1626 a severe illness, which seriously impaired his memory, compelled his retirement to Cordova, where he died on the 24th of May 1627. An edition of his poems was published almost immediately after his death by Juan Lopez de Vicuña; the frequently reprinted edition by Hozes did not appear till 1633. The collection consists of numerous sonnets, odes, ballads, songs for the guitar, and of certain larger poems, such as the Soledades and the Polifemo. Too many of them exhibit that tortuous elaboration of style (estilo culto) with which the name of Góngora is inseparably associated; but though Góngora has been justly censured for affected Latinisms, unnatural transpositions, strained metaphors and frequent obscurity, it must be admitted that he was a man of rare genius,—a fact cordially acknowledged by those of his contemporaries who were most capable of judging. It was only in the hands of those who imitated Góngora’s style without inheriting his genius that culteranismo became absurd. Besides his lyrical poems Góngora is the author of a play entitled Las Firmezas de Isabel and of two incomplete dramas, the Comedia venatoria and El Doctor Carlino. The only satisfactory edition of his works is that published by R. Foulché-Delbose in the Bibliotheca Hispanica.
See Edward Churton, Góngora (London, 1862, 2 vols.); M. González y Francés, Góngora racionero (Córdoba, 1895); M. González y Francés, Don Luis de Góngora vindicando su fama ante el propio obispo (Córdoba, 1899); “Vingt-six Lettres de Góngora” in the Revue hispanique, vol. x. pp. 184–225 (Paris, 1903).
GONIOMETER (from Gr. γωνία, angle, and μέτρον, measure),
an instrument for measuring the angles of crystals; there are two
kinds—the contact goniometer and the reflecting goniometer.
Nicolaus Stena in 1669 determined the interfacial angles of
quartz crystals by cutting sections perpendicular to the edges,
the plane angles of the sections being then the angles between the
faces which are perpendicular to the sections. The earliest instrument
was the contact goniometer devised by Carangeot in 1783.
The Contact Goniometer (or Hand-Goniometer).—This consists of
two metal rules pivoted together at the centre of a graduated semicircle
(fig. 1). The instrument is placed with its plane perpendicular
to an edge between
two faces of the
crystal to be measured,
and the rules
are brought into
Fig. 1.—Contact Goniometer.
contact with the
faces; this is best
done by holding the
crystal up against
the light with the
edge in the line of
sight. The angle
between the rules,
as read on the
graduated semicircle,
then gives
the angle between
the two faces. The
rules are slotted, so that they may be shortened and their tips applied
to a crystal partly embedded in its matrix. The instrument
represented in fig. 1 is practically the same in all its details as that made
for Carangeot, and it is employed at the present day for the approximate
measurement of large crystals with dull and rough faces.
S. L. Penfield (1900) has devised some cheap and simple forms of
contact goniometer, consisting of jointed arms and protractors made
of cardboard or celluloid.
Fig. 2.—Vertical-Circle Goniometer.
The Reflecting Goniometer.—This is an instrument of far greater
precision, and is always used for the accurate measurement of the
angles when small crystals with bright faces are available. As a rule,
the smaller the crystal the more even are its faces, and when these are
smooth and bright they reflect sharply defined images of a bright
object. By turning the crystal
about an axis parallel to the
edge between two faces, the
image reflected from a second
face may be brought into the
same position as that formerly
occupied by the image reflected
from the first face; the angle
through which the crystal has
been rotated, as determined by
a graduated circle to which the
crystal is fixed, is the angle
between the normals to the
two faces.
Several forms of instruments depending on this principle have been devised, the earliest being the vertical-circle goniometer of W. H. Wollaston, made in 1809. This consists of a circle m (fig. 2), graduated to degrees of arc and reading with the vernier h to minutes, which turns with the milled head t about a horizontal axis. The crystal is attached with wax (a mixture of beeswax and pitch) to the holder q, and by means of the pivoted arcs it may be adjusted so that the edge between two faces (a zone-axis) is parallel to, and coincident with, the axis of the instrument. The crystal-holder and adjustment-arcs, together with the milled head s, are carried on an axis which passes through the hollow axis of the graduated circle, and may thus be rotated independently of the circle. In use, the goniometer is placed directly opposite to a window, with its axis parallel to the horizontal window-bars, and as far distant as possible. The eye is placed quite close to the crystal, and the image of an upper window-bar (or better still a slit in a dark screen) as seen in the crystal-face is made to coincide with a lower window-bar (or chalk mark on the floor) as seen directly: this is done by turning the milled head s, the reading of the graduated circle having previously been observed. Without moving the eye, the milled head t, together with the crystal, is then rotated until the image from a second face is brought into the same position; the difference between the first and second readings of the graduated circle will then give the angle between the normals of the two faces.
Several improvements have been made on Wollaston’s
goniometer. The adjustment-arcs have been modified; a mirror of black
glass fixed to the stand beneath the crystal gives a reflected image of
the signal, with
which the reflection
from the
crystal can be
more conveniently
Fig. 3.—Horizontal-Circle Goniometer.
made to coincide;
a telescope
provided with
cross-wires gives
greater precision
to the direction
of the reflected
rays of light; and
with the telescope
a collimator has
sometimes been
used.
A still greater improvement was effected by placing the graduated circle in a horizontal position, as in the instruments of E. L. Malus (1810), F. C. von Riese (1829) and J. Babinet (1839). Many forms of the horizontal-circle goniometer have been constructed; they are provided with a telescope and collimator, and in construction are essentially the same as a spectrometer, with the addition of arrangements for adjusting and centring the crystal. The instrument shown in fig. 3 is made by R. Fuess of Berlin. It has four concentric axes, which enable the crystal-holder A, together with the adjustment-arcs B and centring-slides D, to be raised or lowered, or to be rotated independently of the circle H; further, either the crystal-holder or the telescope T may be rotated with the circle, while the other
