Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/255

 years at Modena as tutor to Almerico, second son to Duke Francis I, a post which ill-health obliged him to relinquish. His handsome face, wonderful power of mimicry, entertaining conversation, and mastery of six living languages, coupled with his medical skill, gained him a succession of patrons, viz. Cardinal Caponi, Cardinal Spada, in whose house he resided till Spada's death, and Prince Giustiniani, with whom Gibbes thenceforth resided. He composed several Latin eulogies on Pope Leo X, and enjoyed the favour of his three successors. Alexander VII in 1647 gave him a vacant professorship of rhetoric at Sapienza College worth 60l. a year, as well as a canonry at San Celso; to Clement IX he dedicated two odes, and Clement X seems to have given him a retiring pension. In 1667 the Emperor Leopold I sent him the diploma of poet laureate. In 1668 appeared at Rome in four books dedicated to Clement IX his ‘Carminum Pars Lyrica ad exemplum Q. Horatii Flacci,’ with the author's portrait prefixed. The rich gold chain and medal accompanying the emperor's diploma, Gibbes, after much deliberation and by the advice of Oxford scholars at Rome, presented to Oxford University. In a letter of 5 April 1670 to the vice-chancellor announcing the gift, he speaks of his father's connection with the university, and mentions his own thirty years' absence from England. In the following February, 1670–1, Oxford, at the suggestion of the Duke of Ormonde, chancellor, conferred the degree of M.D. on Gibbes, ‘the Horace of his age,’ as Wood styles him, but the diploma was not signed till August 1673. Gibbes, who valued the honour as one never before awarded to an English catholic, wrote twice meanwhile to inquire the cause of the delay. In 1673 appeared a second volume of his Latin verses, and in 1676 was published again at Rome ‘Carmina Marmoribus Arundelianis fortasse perenniora,’ in honour of Cardinal [q. v.] Wood, on the evidence of those who remembered Gibbes, describes him as ‘a very conceited man, a most compact body of vanity.’ His recently published will shows inordinate anxiety for the preservation of his four portraits, for the erection of a monument and bust over his tomb in the Pantheon, for the custody of his books as a separate collection at the English college at Rome, and for the publication of his manuscripts. His monument and portraits have disappeared; his manuscripts were apparently never published. The poet laureate medal is still at Oxford. He was a collector of art curiosities, and bequeathed to Prince Giustiniani a linnet with two cages of his own make. He left legacies to William Byam and to an English convent at Rome, where his sister had been educated. His residuary legatee was Benedetto Hercolani, whom he had trained as a physician and whom he directed to take the name of Ghibbesio. He died 26 June 1677. His heir slightly altered the epitaph appended by Gibbes to his will, and omitted the sixteen Latin verses with which it ended. His manuscripts, bequeathed to Sapienza College, consisted of Greek and Latin poems dedicated to the Emperor Leopold, epigrams dedicated to the Earl of Castlemaine, Latin letters ‘ad principes viros,’ and thirty-three orations dedicated to Oxford and Cambridge universities. The Alessandrina, Casanatense, and Vittorio Emanuele libraries at Rome possess fourteen of his published works. Besides the three volumes of Latin poems mentioned above, he issued ‘Epistolarum Selectarum Tres Centuriæ’ and ‘Pinacotheca Spadia sive Pontificorum Romanorum Series.’ No copy of his ‘De Medico,’ written, according to Wood, on the model of Cicero's ‘De Oratore,’ seems now known.



GIBBON, BENJAMIN PHELPS (1802–1851), line-engraver, son of the Rev. Benjamin Gibbon, vicar of Penally, Pembrokeshire, was born in 1802. He was educated at the Clergy Orphan School, and afterwards articled to Edward Scriven, the chalk-engraver. He inclined in early life to the stage, but on the expiration of his articles he placed himself under the line-engraver John Henry Robinson, and soon attained great proficiency. His plates, some of which are engraved in line and others in a mixed style, are distinguished by delicacy of touch. They are mostly from the works of Sir Edwin Landseer, after whom he engraved ‘The Twa Dogs,’ 1827; ‘The Travelled Monkey,’ 1828, a small plate engraved for the ‘Anniversary;’ ‘The Fireside Party,’ 1831; ‘Jack in Office,’ 1834; ‘Suspense,’ 1837; ‘The Shepherd's Grave,’ 1838; ‘The Shepherd's Chief Mourner,’ 1838; ‘Be it ever so humble, there's no place like Home,’ 1843; ‘The Highland Shepherd's Home,’ 1846; and ‘Roebuck and Rough Hounds,’ 1849. He engraved also ‘Wolves attacking Deer,’ 1834, after Friedrich Gauermann, in which the landscape was engraved by E. Webb; and ‘The Wolf and the Lamb,’ after Mulready. He, however, took more interest in portraits than in 