GUY, Thomas (1644-1724), founder of Guy’s Hospital, London, was the son of a lighterman and coal-dealer at Southwark. After serving an apprenticeship of eight years with a bookseller, he in 1668 began business on his own account. He dealt largely in Bibles, which had for many years been poorly and incorrectly printed in England. These he at first imported from Holland, but subsequently obtained from the university of Oxford the privilege of printing. Thus, and by an extremely thrifty mode of life, and more particularly by investment in Government securities, the subscription of these into the South Sea Company, and the subsequent sale of his stock in 1720, he became master of an immense fortune. He died unmarried, December 17, 1724. In 1707 he built three wards of St Thomas’s Hospital, which institution he otherwise subsequently benefited; and at a cost of £ 18,793, 16s. he erected Guy’s Hospital, leaving for its endowment £219,499; he also endowed Christ’s Hospital with £400 a year, and in 1705 built almshouses at Tam worth, his mother’s birthplace, which wa≡ represented by him in parliament. The residue of his estate, which went to distant relatives, amounted to about £80,000.

See A True Copy of the Last Will and Testament of Thomas Guy, Esq., London, 1725; J. Noorthouck, A New Hist, of London, bk. iii., chap. i.,p. 684,1773; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 599, 1812; and Charles Knight, Shadoιvs of the Old Booksellers, pp. 3-23, 1865.

GUY OF WARWICK, an old English metrical romance which is known to have existed in French as early as the end of the 13th century. Its authorship has been assigned to Walter of Exeter, a Franciscan monk of the 13th century, and, although this supposition has been generally disputed, Tanner regards it as probable. The romance has been retouched by some French or Anglo-Norman minstrel, but is evidently of Saxon origin, and is allied to the story of Guido Tyrius in the Gesta Romanorum, and probably to the romance Sir Guy, quoted by Chaucer in his Rime of Sir Topas. The hero of the story is Sir Guy of Warwick, who is said to have been the son of Siward, baron of Wallingford, to have married Felicia, the only daughter of Rohand, a famous Saxon warrior, to have become earl of Warwick in his wife’s right, and after conquering Colbrond the Dane to have lived as a hermit till his death in 929. The earliest English chronicler who mentions the story as historical is John Harding. Tanner is of opinion that the first germ of the romance dates from the battle of Brunanburgh, the “Vinheide” of the Egilssaga, but though the story has some basis in tradition, the chief events of the hero’s life are plainly mythical. Although the romance had once great popularity, it now appears dull and tedious, and has no other than an antiquarian interest...

GUYON, or Guion, Jeanne Marie Bouvières de la Mothe (1648-1717), a leading exponent of the quietistic mysticism of the 17th century, was born of wealthy and aristocratic parents at Montargis (dep. Loiret), on the 13th of April 1648. From infancy a sickly and excitable child, she was at the age of two years and a half placed for a short time under the charge of the Ursuline nuns of Montargis, andin 1652 she became resident in the Benedictine convent for a somewhat longer period; but the state of her health rendered it neβessary that she should again be taken home, where for a time she was left almost exclusively to the care of domestics. From her seventh to her tenth year she was once more with the Ursulines, and after another short interval at home she next passed eight months in the Dominican cloister, where she spent much time in reading the Bible, and in committing large portions of it to memory. In her 12th year she communicated for the first time, and also began to form some acquaintance with the writings of St Francis de Sales and of his disciple Madame de Chantal, “la Sainte de Monthélon.” In imitation of the latter, she tells us in her autobiography that she at this time carried the name of the Saviour visibly inscribed on her person, subjected herself to severe bodily austerities, and made a solemn vow ever to aim at the highest perfection in an absolute surrender of her will to God. She earnestly wished also to take the veil, and in fact made an attempt, by means of a forged letter purporting to be signed by her mother, to gain admission into the order of the Visitation of Mary, but her father interfered. In 1663 she removed along with her parents to Paris, and went much into society, where her youth, beauty, and talent secured for her a very flattering ...

GUYTON DE MORVEAU, Louis Bernard, Baron (1737-1816), a distinguished French chemist, was born January 4, 1737, at Dijon, in the university of which town his father was professor of civil law. As a boy he evinced a remarkable aptitude for practical mechanics. On leaving college at the age of sixteen he became a law student in the university of Dijon, and after three years he was sent to Paris to acquire a knowledge of practice at the bar. He obtained in his twenty-fourth year the office of advocate-general in the parliament of Dijon, of which he fulfilled the duties till 1782. Before long, piqued by a slighting remark of Dr Chardenon of Dijon, made in reply to a criticism at the close of a lecture on chemistry, De Morveau set himself to acquire a thorough knowledge of that science. With “practice for his master, and melted crucibles and retorts for tutors,” as he once observed to Baumé, he speedily obtained such a mastery over his subject as to draw from Chardenon the public acknowledgment that he was “born to be an honour to chemistry.” In 1772 he published at Dijon the Digressions Academiques, in which were set forth his views with respect to phlogiston and the phenomena of crystallization; and in 1773 he discovered the efficacy of hydrochloric acid gas as an atmospheric disinfectant. 1 He was the means, in 1774, of founding in Dijon courses of public lectures on mineralogy, materia medica, and chemistry, the last of which he himself during thirteen years gratuitously delivered. It would appear that his fellow-citizens were as yet far from holding exalted views with regard to the prerogatives of science. Accusing him of “presumptuously disarming the hand of the Supreme Being,” they about this time sought to destroy his lightning conductors at the house of ...