Of George Granville, or, as others write, Greenville, or Grenville,
afterwards lord Lansdowne, of Bideford, in the county of Devon, less is
known than his name and high rank might give reason to expect. He was
born about 1667, the son of Bernard Greenville, who was entrusted, by
Monk, with the most private transactions of the restoration, and the
grandson of sir Bevil Greenville, who died, in the king's cause, at the
battle of Lansdowne.
His early education was superintended by sir William Ellis; and his
progress was such, that, before the age of twelve, he was sent to
Cambridge[37], where he pronounced a copy of his own verses to the
princess Mary d'Este, of Modena, then dutchess of York, when she visited
the university.
At the accession of king James, being now at eighteen, he again exerted
his poetical powers, and addressed the new monarch in three short
pieces, of which the first is profane, and the two others such as a boy
might be expected to produce; but he was commended by old Waller, who,
perhaps, was pleased to find himself imitated, in six lines, which
though they begin with nonsense and end with dulness, excited in the
young author a rapture of acknowledgment.
In numbers such as Waller's self might use.
It was probably about this time that he wrote the poem to the earl of
Peterborough, upon his accomplishment of the duke of York's marriage
with the princess of Modena, whose charms appear to have gained a strong
prevalence over his imagination, and upon whom nothing ever has been
charged but imprudent piety, an intemperate and misguided zeal for the
propagation of popery.
However faithful Granville might have been to the king, or however
enamoured of the queen, he has left no reason for supposing that he
approved either the artifices or the violence with which the king's
religion was insinuated or obtruded. He endeavoured to be true, at once,
to the king and to the church.
Of this regulated loyalty he has transmitted to posterity a sufficient
proof, in the letter which he wrote to his father, about a month before
the prince of Orange landed.
"Mar, near Doncaster, Oct. 6, 1688.
"To the honourable Mr. Barnard Granville, at the earl of Bathe's,
St. James's.
"SIR,
"Your having no prospect of obtaining a commission for me, can no
way alter or cool my desire at this important juncture to venture
my life, in some manner or other, for my king and my country.
"I cannot bear living under the reproach of lying obscure and idle
in a country retirement, when every man who has the least sense of
honour should be preparing for the field.
"You may remember, sir, with what reluctance I submitted to your
commands upon Monmouth's rebellion, when no importunity could
prevail with you to permit me to leave the academy: I was too young
to be hazarded; but, give me leave to say, it is glorious at any
age to die for one's country; and the sooner, the nobler the
sacrifice.
"I am now older by three years. My uncle Bathe was not so old when
he was left among the slain at the battle of Newbury; nor you
yourself, sir, when you made your escape from your tutors, to join
your brother at the defence of Scilly.
"The same cause is now come round about again. The king has been
misled; let those who have misled him be answerable for it. Nobody
can deny but he is sacred in his own person; and it is every honest
man's duty to defend it.
"You are pleased to say, it is yet doubtful if the Hollanders are
rash enough to make such an attempt; but, be that as it will, I beg
leave to insist upon it, that I may be presented to his majesty, as
one whose utmost ambition it is to devote his life to his service,
and my country's, after the example of all my ancestors.
"The gentry assembled at York, to agree upon the choice of
representatives for the county, have prepared an address, to assure
his majesty they are ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes
for him upon this and all other occasions; but, at the same time,
they humbly beseech him to give them such magistrates as may be
agreeable to the laws of the land; for, at present, there is no
authority to which they can legally submit.
"They have been beating up for volunteers at York, and the towns
adjacent, to supply the regiments at Hull; but nobody will list.
"By what I can hear, every body wishes well to the king; but they
would be glad his ministers were hanged.
"The winds continue so contrary, that no landing can be so soon as
was apprehended; therefore I may hope, with your leave and
assistance, to be in readiness before any action can begin. I
beseech you, sir, most humbly and most earnestly, to add this one
act of indulgence more to so many other testimonies which I have
constantly received of your goodness; and be pleased to believe me
always, with the utmost duty and submission, sir,
"Your most dutiful son,
"and most obedient servant,
"Geo. Granville."
Through the whole reign of king William he is supposed to have lived in
literary retirement, and indeed had, for some time, few other pleasures
but those, of study in his power. He was, as the biographers observe,
the younger son of a younger brother; a denomination by which our
ancestors proverbially expressed the lowest state of penury and
dependence. He is said, however, to have preserved himself at this time
from disgrace and difficulties by economy, which he forgot or neglected
in life more advanced, and in better fortune.
About this time he became enamoured of the countess of Newburgh, whom he
has celebrated with so much ardour by the name of Mira. He wrote verses
to her, before he was three-and-twenty, and may be forgiven if he
regarded the face more than the mind. Poets are sometimes in too much
haste to praise.
In the time of his retirement it is probable that he composed his
dramatick pieces, the She-Gallants, acted 1696, which he revised, and
called Once a Lover and always a Lover; the Jew of Venice, altered from
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1698; Heroick Love, a tragedy, 1701;
the British Enchanters, 1706, a dramatick poem; and Peleus and Thetis, a
mask, written to accompany the Jew of Venice.
The comedies, which he has not printed in his own edition of his works,
I never saw; Once a Lover and always a Lover, is said to be, in a great
degree, indecent and gross. Granville could not admire without bigotry;
he copied the wrong, as well as the right, from his masters, and may be
supposed to have learned obscenity from Wycherley, as he learned
mythology from Waller.
In his Jew of Venice, as Rowe remarks, the character of Shylock is made
comick, and we are prompted to laughter, instead of detestation.
It is evident that Heroick Love was written, and presented on the stage,
before the death of Dryden. It is a mythological tragedy, upon the love
of Agamemnon and Chryseis, and, therefore, easily sunk into neglect,
though praised in verse by Dryden, and in prose by Pope.
It is concluded by the wise Ulysses with this speech:
Fate holds the strings, and men like children move
But as they're led; success is from above.
At the accession of queen Anne, having his fortune improved by bequests
from his father, and his uncle the earl of Bath, he was chosen into
parliament for Fowey. He soon after engaged in a joint translation of
the Invectives against Philip, with a design, surely weak and puerile,
of turning the thunder of Demosthenes upon the head of Lewis.
He afterwards, in 1706, had his estate again augmented by an inheritance
from his elder brother, sir Bevil Granville, who, as he returned from
the government of Barbadoes, died at sea. He continued to serve in
parliament; and, in the ninth year of queen Anne, was chosen knight of
the shire for Cornwall.
At the memorable change of the ministry, 1710, he was made secretary at
war, in the place of Mr. Robert Walpole.
Next year, when the violence of party made twelve peers in a day, Mr.
Granville became lord Lansdowne baron Bideford, by a promotion justly
remarked to be not invidious, because he was the heir of a family in
which two peerages, that of the earl of Bath, and lord Granville of
Potheridge, had lately become extinct. Being now high in the queen's
favour, he, 1712, was appointed comptroller of the household, and a
privy counsellor; and to his other honours was added the dedication of
Pope's Windsor Forest. He was advanced, next year, to be treasurer of
the household.
Of these favours he soon lost all but his title; for, at the accession
of king George, his place was given to the earl Cholmondeley, and he was
persecuted with the rest of his party. Having protested against the bill
for attainting Ormond and Bolingbroke, he was, after the insurrection in
Scotland, seized, Sept. 26, 1715, as a suspected man, and confined in
the Tower, till Feb. 8, 1717, when he was at last released, and restored
to his seat in parliament; where, 1719, he made a very ardent and
animated speech against the repeal of the bill to prevent occasional
conformity, which, however, though it was then printed, he has not
inserted into his works.
Some time afterwards, about 1722, being, perhaps, embarrassed by his
profusion, he went into foreign countries, with the usual pretence of
recovering his health. In this state of leisure and retirement, he
received the first volume of Burnet's History, of which he cannot be
supposed to have approved the general tendency, and where he thought
himself able to detect some particular falsehoods. He, therefore,
undertook the vindication of general Monk from some calumnies of Dr.
Burnet, and some misrepresentations of Mr. Echard. This was answered
civilly by Mr. Thomas Burnet, and Oldmixon; and more roughly by Dr.
Colbatch.
His other historical performance is a defence of his relation, sir
Richard Greenville, whom lord Clarendon has shown in a form very
unamiable. So much is urged in this apology to justify many actions that
have been represented as culpable, and to palliate the rest, that the
reader is reconciled for the greater part; and it is made very probable
that Clarendon was by personal enmity disposed to think the worst of
Greenville, as Greenville was also very willing to think the worst of
Clarendon. These pieces were published at his return to England.
Being now desirous to conclude his labours, and enjoy his reputation, he
published, 1732, a very beautiful and splendid edition of his works, in
which he omitted what he disapproved, and enlarged what seemed
deficient.
He now went to court, and was kindly received by queen Caroline; to whom
and to the princess Anne, he presented his works, with verses on the
blank leaves, with which he concluded his poetical labours.
He died in Hanover-square, Jan. 30, 1735, having a few days before
buried his wife, the lady Anne Villiers, widow to Mr. Thynne, by whom he
had four daughters, but no son.
Writers commonly derive their reputation from their works; but there are
works which owe their reputation to the character of the writer. The
publick sometimes has its favourites, whom it rewards for one species of
excellence with the honours due to another. From him whom we reverence
for his beneficence we do not willingly withhold the praise of genius; a
man of exalted merit becomes, at once, an accomplished writer, as a
beauty finds no great difficulty in passing for a wit.
Granville was a man illustrious by his birth, and, therefore, attracted
notice: since he is by Pope styled "the polite," he must be supposed
elegant in his manners, and generally loved: he was, in times of contest
and turbulence, steady to his party, and obtained that esteem which is
always conferred upon firmness and consistency. With those advantages
having learned the art of versifying, he declared himself a poet; and
his claim to the laurel was allowed.
But by a critick of a later generation, who takes up his book without
any favourable prejudices, the praise already received will be thought
sufficient; for his works do not show him to have had much comprehension
from nature, or illumination from learning. He seems to have had no
ambition above the imitation of Waller, of whom he has copied the
faults, and very little more. He is for ever amusing himself with the
puerilities of mythology; his king is Jupiter, who, if the queen brings
no children, has a barren Juno. The queen is compounded of Juno, Venus,
and Minerva. His poem on the dutchess of Grafton's lawsuit, after having
rattled awhile with Juno and Pallas, Mars and Alcides, Cassiope, Niobe,
and the Propetides, Hercules, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, at last concludes
its folly with profaneness.
His verses to Mira, which are most frequently mentioned, have little in
them of either art or nature, of the sentiments of a lover, or the
language of a poet: there may be found, now and then, a happier effort;
but they are commonly feeble and unaffecting, or forced and extravagant.
His little pieces are seldom either sprightly or elegant, either keen or
weighty. They are trifles written by idleness, and published by vanity.
But his prologues and epilogues have a just claim to praise.
The Progress of Beauty seems one of his most elaborate pieces, and is
not deficient in splendour and gaiety; but the merit of original thought
is wanting. Its highest praise is the spirit with which he celebrates
king James's consort, when she was a queen no longer.
The Essay on unnatural Flights in Poetry, is not inelegant nor
injudicious, and has something of vigour beyond most of his other
performances: his precepts are just, and his cautions proper; they are,
indeed, not new, but in a didactick poem novelty is to be expected only
in the ornaments and illustrations. His poetical precepts are
accompanied with agreeable and instructive notes.
The Mask of Peleus and Thetis has here and there a pretty line; but it
is not always melodious, and the conclusion is wretched.
In his British Enchanters he has bidden defiance to all chronology, by
confounding the inconsistent manners of different ages; but the dialogue
has often the air of Dryden's rhyming plays; and the songs are lively,
though not very correct. This is, I think, far the best of his works;
for, if it has many faults, it has, likewise, passages which are, at
least, pretty, though they do not rise to any high degree of excellence.
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[Footnote 37: To Trinity college. By the university register it appears,
that he was admitted to his master's degree in 1679; we must, therefore,
set the year of his birth some years back. H.]