and decurions of the town. He was now solely intent upon returning to Rome; but made his will first, as if he had. foreseen what was shortly to happen to him. Upon his arrival there, he applied himself to a versification of six homilies of the Pope, which he caused to be magnificently printed, and would have presented it to the pontiff, who was then at Castel-Gandolfe. With this view he set out from Rome in June 1712, and arrived at Frescati, where he was seized with an apoplectic fit, of which he died in a few hours, aged almost sixty-two. His body was carried back to Rome, and interred in the church of St. Onuphrius, near Tasso.

In

Though nature had been very kind to his inner-man, yet she had not been so to his outer; for he was deformed both before and behind; bis head, which was unreasonably large, did not bear a just proportion to his body, which was small; and he was blind of his right eye. recompense, however, for these bodily defects, he possessed very largely the faculties of the mind. He was not learned, but he had a great deal of wit and judgment. His taste lay for heroic poetry, and he had an aversion to any thing free or satirical. His taste is original, though we may sometimes perceive that Dante, Petrarch, and Chiabrara, were his models.

Though the writers of his life tell us of some prose piece before it, yet the first production we know of is "Poësie Liriche," Parma, 1681; which, with "L'Amalasunta," an opera, printed there the same year, he afterwards made no account of, they being written during the depravity of his taste. In 1687 he published at Rome," Accademia per musica;" written by order of Christina of Sweden, for an entertainment, which that princess gave to the earl of Castlemain, whom James II. of England sent ambassador to Innocent XI. to notify his accession to the throne, and to implore his holiness's assistance in reconciling his three. kingdoms to Popery. "L'Endimione di Erilo Cleoneo, pas tor Arcade, con un discorso di Bione Crateo al cardinale Albano. In Roma, 1692." The queen of Sweden formed the plan of this species of pastoral, and furnished the author with some sentiments, as well as with some lines, which are marked with commas to distinguish them from the rest. The discourse annexed, to point out the beauties of the piece, was written by John Vincent. Gravina. "Le Rime," Roma, 1704. In this he declares, that he rejects all his

works, which had appeared before these poems, except his "L'Endimione." "Sei Omelie di M. S. Clemente XI. Spiegate in versi," Roma, 1712, folio, a very magnificent work, and adorned with cuts, but not properly either a version or a paraphrase, the author having only taken occasion, from some passages in these homilies, to compose verses according to his own genius and taste.

In 1726 was published at Verona, in 12mo, "Poësie d'Alessandro Guidi non piu raccolte. Con la sua vita novamente scritta dal signor Canonico Crescimbeni. E con due Ragionamenti di Vincenzo Gravina, non piu divulgati." This is a collection of his printed poems and MSS. including the pieces which he had recited before the academy of the Arcadi upon various subjects.1

GUIDICCIONI (JOHN), an Italian poet, was born at Lucca in 1550. Having received an excellent education, he was introduced to the service of cardinal Alexander Farnese, afterwards pope Paul III. He became very intimate with Annibal Caro, and with many other men of letters at Rome. When his patron was elevated to the popedom, he was made governor of the city, and bishop of Fossombrone. In 1535 he was sent nuncio to the emperor Charles V. whom he accompanied in his expedition to Tunis, and on other journeys. He was, about 1539, made president of Romagna, and afterwards commissary-general of the pontifical army, and governor of the Marche. So well did he act his part in all these employments, that he would have been raised to the dignity of cardinal had he not been carried off by a disease in 1541. He was author of an oration to the republic of Lucca, of many letters, and of a number of poems which gave him a high reputation. His works have been several times printed. The best edition is that of 1749-50, 2 vols. 4to. 2

GUIDO (RENI), a very celebrated artist, was born at Bologna in 1574, and early in life became the pupil of Denis Calvert, a Fleming; but he afterwards entered the school of the Carracci at Bologna, and is by many considered as their principal pupil, and none but Domenichino would have been entitled to dispute that praise with him, if his astonishing work of the communion of St. Jerome had been equally supported by his other labours. The

1 Niceron, vol. XXVII.-Tiraboschi.-Fabroni Vitæ Italorum. 2 Tiraboschi. Moreri.

Carracci, however, were too jealous to rejoice in the extraordinary progress of Guido, who threatened to rival at least, if not surpass, their own claims to public applause, and Ludovico disgracefully attempted to depreciate his pupil by opposing Guercino to him, while Annibal himself is said to have censured Aibani for having conducted Guido thither, alarmed at his aspiring talents, his graceful manner, and ambitious desire to excel.

It is not, however, in their style that he wrought, but he chose for himself his objects and manner of imitation; and his various styles exhibit how anxiously he sought for fame: at one time imitating Passerotti, at another Carravaggio, and then, stimulated by a remark of A. Carracci, framing one for himself; the reverse of Carravaggio's, all gentleness and softness. Skilful in execution, he had no difficulty in imitating whatever he desired: his pencil was light, and his touch free and delicate; and he took great pains to finish his pictures; not with minute detail, but with great roundness in the figures, correct arrangement of the folds of his draperies, which he perfectly understood, and made great use of in filling up his canvas, aud the most careful management of all the inferior parts. The beauty he gave to his females, he sought for in the antique, and the group of Niobe particularly. He has frequently expressed the pathetic and the tender. One of his heads, formerly the property of earl Moira, and now in possession of the venerable president of the royal academy, exhibits our Saviour with the crown of thorns upon his head, and has been admirably engraved by Sharp. It is not possible for painting to go beyond it in the perfect attainment of its object, the expression of pious resignation under acute suffering of mind and body, with beauty and truth of character. Mr. Fuseli, in his late edition of Pilkington, has given justly the character of the generality of Guido's works; he says, "his attitudes seldom elevate themselves to the fine expression and graceful simplicity of the face: the grace of Guido is the grace of theatre; the mode, not the motive, determines the action: his Magdalens weep to be seen, his Hero throws herself over Leander, Herodias holds the head of her victim, his Lucretias stab themselves, with the studied airs, and ambitious postures, of buskined heroines; it would, however, be unjust not to allow there are exceptions from this affectation in his works. Helen departing with Paris, is one which alone might atone for

every other blemish. In her divine face, the Sublime purity of the Niobe is mixed with the charms of the Venus; the wife, the mother, give indeed way to the lover; but spread a soft melancholy which tempers her fervour with dignity. This expression is supported by the careless unconscious elegance of her attitude, whilst that of Paris, stately, courteous, insipid, gives him more the air of an ambassador, attending her as proxy, than that of a lover carrying her off for himself."

Many of Guido's latter performances are not to be placed in competition with those which he painted before he unhappily fell into distressed circumstances, by an insatiable appetite to gaming, when his necessities compelled him to work for immediate subsistence, and he contracted a habit of painting in a more slight and negligent manner, without any attention to his honour or his fame. In the church of St. Philip Neri, at Fano, there is a grand altar-piece by Guido, representing Christ delivering the keys to St. Peter. The head of our Saviour is exceedingly fine, that of St. John admirable; and the other apostles are in a grand. style, full of elegance, with a strong expression; and it is well preserved. In the archiepiscopal gallery at Milan, is a St. John, wonderfully tender in the colouring, and the graces diffused through the design excite the admiration of every beholder. At Bologna, in the Palazzo Tanaro, is a most beautiful picture of the Virgin, the infant Jesus, and St. John; in which the heads are exquisitely graceful, and the draperies in a grand style. But in the Palazzo Zampieri is preserved one of the most capital paintings of Guido the subject is, the Penitence of St. Peter after denying Christ, with one of the apostles seeming to comfort him. The figures are as large as life, and the whole is of an astonishing beauty; the painter having shewn, in that single performance, the art of painting carried to its highest perfection. The heads are nobly designed, the colouring clear and precious, and the expression inimitably just and natural.

Great were the honours this painter received from Paul V. from all the cardinals and princes of Italy, from Lewis XIII. of France, Philip IV. of Spain, and from the king of Poland and Sweden, who, besides a noble reward, made him a compliment, in a letter under his own hand, for an Europa he had sent him. He was extremely handsome and graceful in his person; and so very beautiful in his

per

younger days, that his master Ludovico, in painting his angels, took him always for his model. Nor was he an angel only in his looks, if we may believe what Gioseppino told the pope, when he asked his opinion of Guido's p fórmances in the Capella Quirinale, "Our pictures," said he," are the works of men's hands, but these are made by hands divine." In his behaviour he was modest, gentle, and very obliging; lived in great splendour both at Bologna and Rome; and was only unhappy in his immoderate love of gaming. To this in his latter days he abandoned himself so entirely, that all the money he could get by his pencil, or borrow upon interest, was too little to supply his losses and he was at last reduced to so poor and mean a condition, that the consideration of his present circumstances, together with reflections on his former reputation and high manner of living, brought a languishing distemper on him, of which he died in 1642.'

GUIGNES (JOSEPH DE), an eminent oriental scholar in France, was born at Pointoise, Oct. 19, 1721. He studied the oriental languages under the celebrated Stephen Fourmont, and was appointed king's interpreter in 1741, and a member of the academy of belles lettres in 1753. Having minutely investigated the Chinese characters, and compared them with those of other languages, he fancied he had discovered that they were only monograms formed of three Egyptian letters, and deduced from this that China had been originally peopled by an Egyptian colony. The same notion had been adopted before his time by Huet, Kircher, and Moiran; but other learned men, Deshauteraies, Paw, and the Chinese missionaries, have fully refuted it. De Guignes was for thirty-five years engaged in the "Journal des Sçavans," which, as well as the Memoirs of the academy of belles lettres, he enriched with a great number of learned papers on the religion, history, and philosophy, of the Egyptians and Chinese Indians, &c. very important service he rendered his country by discovering the punches and matrices of the oriental types which Savary de Breves, ambassador from Henry IV. at Constan- tinople, had brought into France, but which were now in such a state that Guignes was the only person who could put them in order, and give instructions for using them.

One

1 Argenville, vol. II.-Pilkington.-Rees's Cyclopædia.-Sir J. Reynolds's Works; see Index.