he removed to Cork, where he died of typhus fever on the 12th of June 1840. Before adopting the monastic habit he burned all his manuscripts; but Gisippus, a tragedy which he had composed before he was twenty, accidentally escaped destruction, and in 1842 was put on the Drury Lane stage by Macready with great success.
The collected works of Gerald Griffin were published in 1842–1843 in eight volumes, with a Life by his brother William Griffin, M.D.; an edition of his Poetical and Dramatic Works (Dublin, 1895) by C. G. Duffy; and a selection of his lyrics, with a notice by George Sigerson, is included in the Treasury of Irish Poetry, edited by Stopford A. Brooke and T. W. Rolleston (London, 1900).
GRIFFIN, a city and the county-seat of Spalding county,
Georgia, U.S.A., 43 m. S. of Atlanta, and about 970 ft. above
the sea. Pop. (1890) 4503; (1900) 6857 (3258 negroes); (1910)
7478. It is served by the Southern and the Central of Georgia
railways, and is the southern terminus of the Griffin & Chattanooga
Division of the latter. The city is situated in a rich
agricultural region, and just outside the corporate limits is an
agricultural experiment station, established by the state but
maintained by the Federal government. Griffin has a large
trade in cotton and fruit. The principal industry is the manufacture
of cotton and cotton-seed oil. Buggies, wagons, chairs
and harness are among the other manufactures. The municipality
owns and operates the water and electric-lighting systems.
Griffin was founded in 1840 and was chartered as a city in 1846.
GRIFFIN, Griffon or Gryphon (from Fr. griffon, Lat.
gryphus, Gr. γρύψ), in the natural history of the ancients, the
name of an imaginary rapacious creature of the eagle species,
represented with four legs, wings and a beak,—the fore part
resembling an eagle and the hinder a lion. In addition, some
writers describe the tail as a serpent. This animal, which was
supposed to watch over gold mines and hidden treasures, and to
be the enemy of the horse, was consecrated to the Sun; and the
ancient painters represented the chariot of the Sun as drawn
by griffins. According to Spanheim, those of Jupiter and
Nemesis were similarly provided. The griffin of Scripture is
probably the osprey, and the name is now given to a species of
vulture. The griffin was said to inhabit Asiatic Scythia, where
gold and precious stones were abundant; and when strangers
approached to gather these the creatures leapt upon them and
tore them in pieces, thus chastising human avarice and greed.
The one-eyed Arimaspi waged constant war with them, according
to Herodotus (iii. 16). Sir John de Mandeville, in his Travels,
described a griffin as eight times larger than a lion.
The griffin is frequently seen as a charge in heraldry (see Heraldry, fig. 163); and in architectural decoration is usually represented as a four-footed beast with wings and the head of a leopard or tiger with horns, or with the head and beak of an eagle; in the latter case, but very rarely, with two legs. To what extent it owes its origin to Persian sculpture is not known, the capitals at Persepolis have sometimes leopard or lion heads with horns, and four-footed beasts with the beaks of eagles are represented in bas-reliefs. In the temple of Apollo Branchidae near Miletus in Asia Minor, the winged griffin of the capitals has leopards’ heads with horns. In the capitals of the so-called lesser propylaea at Eleusis conventional eagles with two feet support the angles of the abacus. The greater number of those in Rome have eagles’ beaks, as in the frieze of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, and their tails develop into conventional foliage. A similar device was found in the Forum of Trajan. The best decorative employment of the griffin is found in the vertical supports of tables, of which there are two or three examples in Pompeii and others in the Vatican and the museums in Rome. In some of these cases the head is that of a lion at one end of the support and an eagle at the other end, and there is only one strongly developed paw; the wings circling round at the top form conspicuous features on the sides of these supports, the surfaces below being filled with conventional Greek foliage.
GRIFFITH, SIR RICHARD JOHN (1784–1878), Irish geologist,
was born in Dublin on the 20th of September 1784. He obtained
in 1799 a commission in the Royal Irish Artillery, but a year
later, when the corps was incorporated with that of England,
he retired, and devoted his attention to civil engineering and
mining. He studied chemistry, mineralogy and mining for two
years in London under William Nicholson (editor of the Journal
of Nat. Phil.), and afterwards examined the mining districts
in various parts of England, Wales and Scotland. While in
Cornwall he discovered ores of nickel and cobalt in material that
had been rejected as worthless. He completed his studies under
Robert Jameson and others at Edinburgh, was elected a Fellow
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1807, a member of the
newly established Geological Society of London in 1808, and in
the same year he returned to Ireland. In 1809 he was appointed
by the commissioners to inquire into the nature and extent of
the bogs in Ireland, and the means of improving them. In 1812
he was elected professor of geology and mining engineer to the
Royal Dublin Society. During subsequent years he made many
surveys and issued many reports on mineral districts in Ireland,
and these formed the foundation of his first geological map of the
country (1815). In 1822 Griffith became engineer of public
works in Cork, Kerry and Limerick, and was occupied until 1830
in repairing old roads and in laying out many miles of new roads.
Meanwhile in 1825 he was appointed to carry out the perambulation
or boundary survey of Ireland, the object of which was to
ascertain and mark the boundaries of every county, barony,
parish and townland in preparation for the ordnance survey.
This work was finished in 1844. He was also called upon to assist
in preparing a bill for the general valuation of Ireland; the act
was passed in 1826, and he was appointed commissioner of
valuation, in which capacity he continued to act until 1868.
On “Griffith’s valuation” the various local and public assessments
were made. His extensive investigations furnished him
with ample material for improving his geological map, and the
second edition was published in 1835. A third edition on a
larger scale (1 in. to 4 m.) was issued under the Board of Ordnance
in 1839, and it was further revised in 1855. For this great work
and his other services to science he was awarded the Wollaston
medal by the Geological Society in 1854. In 1850 he was made
chairman of the Irish Board of Works, and in 1858 he was created
a baronet. He died in Dublin on the 22nd of September 1878.
Among his many geological works the following may be mentioned: Outline of the Geology of Ireland (1838); Notice respecting the Fossils of the Mountain Limestone of Ireland, as compared with those of Great Britain, and also with the Devonian System (1842); A Synopsis of the Characters of the Carboniferous Limestone Fossils of Ireland (1844) (with F. McCoy); A Synopsis of the Silurian Fossils of Ireland (1846) (with F. McCoy). See memoirs in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxv. 39; and Geol. Mag., 1878, p. 524, with bibliography.
GRILLE, a French term for an enclosure in either iron or
bronze; there is no equivalent in English, “grating” applying
more to a horizontal frame of bars over a sunk area, and “grate”
to the iron bars of an open fireplace. The finest examples of
the grille are those known as the rejas, which in Spanish churches
form the enclosures of the chapels, such as the reja in the Capilla
Real at Granada in wrought iron partly gilt (1522). Similar
grilles are employed to protect the ground-floor windows of
mansions not only in Spain but in Italy and Germany. In
England the most beautiful example is that in front of Queen
Eleanor’s tomb in Westminster Abbey, in wrought iron. The
finest grilles in Italy are the enclosures of the tombs of the
Della Scalas at Verona (end of 13th century), in Germany the
grille of the cenotaph of Maximilian at Innsbruck (early 16th
century) and in France those which enclose the Place Stanislaus,
the Place de la Carrière and the churches of Nancy, which were
wrought by Jean Lamour in the middle of the 18th century.
Generally, however, throughout Germany the wrought iron
grilles are fine examples of forging, and they are employed for
the enclosures of the numerous fountains, in the tympana of
gateways, and for the protection of windows. At Danzig in the
Marienkirche are some fine examples in brass.
GRILLPARZER, FRANZ (1791–1872), the greatest dramatic poet of Austria, was born in Vienna, on the 15th of January 1791. His father, severe, pedantic, a staunch upholder of the liberal traditions of the reign of Joseph II., was an advocate
