Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/795

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1em  GONG (Chinese, gong-gong or tam-tam), a sonorous or musical instrument of Chinese origin and manufacture, made in the form of a broad thin disc with a deep rim. Gongs vary in diameter from about 20 to 40 inches, and they are made of bronze containing a maximum of 22 parts of tin to 78 of copper ; but in many cases the pro- portion of tin is considerably less. Such an alloy, when east and allowed to cool slowly, is excessively brittle, but it can be tempered and annealed in a peculiar manner. If suddenly cooled from a cherry-red heat, the alloy becomes so soft that it can be hammered and worked on the lathe, and afterwards it may be hardened by re-heating and cool- ing it slowly. In these properties, it will be observed, the alloy behaves in a manner exactly opposite to steel, and the Chinese avail themselves of the known peculiarities for pre- paring the thin sheets of which gongs are made. They cool their castings of bronze in water, and after hammering out the alloy in the soft state, the ﬁnished gongs are hardened by heating them to a cherry red, and allowing them to cool slowly. The gong is beaten with a round, hard, leather-covered pad, ﬁtted on a short stick or handle. It emits a peculiarly sonorous sound, its complex vibrations bursting into a wave-like succession of tones, sometimes shrill, sometimes deep. In China and Japan it is used in religious ceremonies, state processions, marriages, and other festivals; and it is said that the Chinese can modify its tone variously by particular ways of striking the disc. Among Western communities it is only employed as a substitute for a dinner bell or a general household signal.  GÓNGORA Y ARGOTE, (–1627), Spanish lyric poet, was born at Cordova, on the 11th of July. His father, Don Francisco de Argote, was Corregldor of that city ; and his mother, Dona Leonora de (lengora, was descended from an ancient and noble family of Navarre. Having been sent, at the age of ﬁfteen, as a student of civil and canon law to the university of Sala- manea, he soon took a prominent place among his fellow- students 3 but the great talent which be exhibited did not point in the direction either of legal or of diplomatic em- ployments. Leaving the university some years afterwards (the exact date is unknown) without a degree, but already with a considerable literary reputation, be returned to Cordova, where he had succeeded to a moderate property, and where he was able to associate on terms of intimacy and equality with the best society of the city and province. Lope de Vega, writing about, speaks of him as surrounded there by a literary society, and acknowledged as its chief. In, when past his fortieth year, he took the tonsure, and accepted a prebendal stall in the cathedral of Cordova,—steps which have usually been attributed to worldly or sordid motives, but which really cannot be regarded as unnatural or unbecoming in a man circumstanced as he was. From this time he began to spend a portion of each year at the seat of the court, ﬁrst at Valladolid and afterwards at Madrid, where as Pellicer, his contemporary, remarks, he “noted everything and pecked at everything with his satirical pen.” His circle of literary and other dis- tinguished admirers was now greatly enlarged; but the acknowledgment which the court accorded to his singular genius was both slight and tardy. Ultimately indeed, through the inﬂuence of the duke of Lerma and the marquis of Siete Iglesias, he obtained an appointment as honorary chaplain to Philip III., but even this slight honour he was not permitted long to wear. A severe illness, which had seriously impaired his memory, compelled his retirement to Cordova, where, after a period of deepseclusion, he peacefully breathed his last on the 23d of May 1627. An edition of his poems was published almost immediately after his death by Juan Lopez de Vicuﬁa 3 but the frequently reprinted edition by Hozes did not appear till 1633. The collection consists of numerous sonnets, heroical, amorous, satirical, humorous, elegiac, and “ miscellaneous,” of various odes, ballads, songs for the guitar, of a few uncompleted comedies, and of certain larger poems, such as the Soledades (“ Solitary Musings ”) and the Polzfemo, which hardly admit of classi- ﬁcation. They all exhibit that learned and polished elabor- ation of style (estilo culto) with which the name of Gengora is inseparably associated ; but if, since the days of Lope de Vega, they have been justly censured for their affected Latinisms, unnatural transpositions, strained metaphors, and frequent obscurity, it must never be forgotten that their author was a man of genius,-—a fact cordially acknowledged by those of his contemporaries who were most capable of judging, and indeed a fact capable of direct veriﬁcation by any one who chooses to take the trouble of reading him even in an imperfect translation. It was only in the hands of those who served themselves heirs to Gongora’s style, without inheriting his genius, that“ cul- tismo ” became really laughable ; but it is manifestly unjust to charge the memory of the master with the follies of his weaker disciples.

1em  GONIOMETER. Strictly speaking this name is applicable to any instrument, such as a mural circle, a theodolite, and so on, used for measuring an angle ; it is in reality, however, applied exclusively to instruments used for measur- ing the angles between the faces of crystals. The oldest instrument of the kind was invented by Carangeot, and consisted simply of a pair of rulers jointed together and ﬁtted with a graduated circle for measuring the angle between their edges. A carpenter uses a somewhat similar instru- ment, not, it is true, for measuring, but for transferring angles. The application of the principle of reﬂexion by \Vollaston in 1809 converted the goniometer into an instrument of precision. His form, with a vertical divided circle, is still much used. The principle of reﬂexion is brieﬂy this. The crystal is mounted so that it can be rotated about an axis parallel to the edge in which its two faces meet. It is ﬁrst placed so that a ray of light coming in some fixed direction (say, along the axis of a collimator), when reflected frOm one face, passes in another ﬁxed direction (say, along the axis of a telescope). The crystal is then turned till the ray reﬂected from the other face passes