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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.

18 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 3 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*.

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Some time afterwards (about 1722) 5, being perhaps embarrassed by his profusion 6, 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

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Ante, HALIFAX, 9; Parl. Hist. vii. 576.

5 According to Mrs. Delany (Auto. i. pp. 57,81), he went abroad in 1719. He was,' Mrs. Delany writes, 'fond of his wife to excess, generous to extravagance, allowing her the command of all his fortune.... She was extravagant, and given up to dissipation, and my uncle's open, unsuspecting temper gave her full liberty to indulge the unbounded vanity of her heart.' Ib. p. 82.

' Granville's Works, 1732, i. 457–

502.

'Be as impartial as you can,' wrote Gray to Walpole, and after all, the world will not believe you are so, though you should make as many protestations as Bishop Burnet.' Letters, i. 213. See also ante, MILTON, 101 n. 5.

Laurence Echard, in 1707-18, published a History of England.

by Mr. Thomas Burnet and Oldmixon, and more roughly by Dr. Colbatch 3.

His other historical performance is a defence of his relation 20 Sir Richard Greenville, whom lord Clarendon has shewn in a form very unamiable 5. 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 21 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 22 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 23 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; 24 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 was Princess Royal.

1 Post, POPE, 122. His reply is not in the British Museum.

2 Ante, SMITH, 57; ADDISON, 83. 3 One of Bentley's chief opponents among the Fellows of Trinity College. Pope wished joy to him of Bentley's Milton-joy because by it Bentley's reputation would be lowered. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 293. Colbatch's reply is entitled An Examination of the late Archdeacon Echard's Account of the Marriage Treaty between Charles II and Queen Catherine, 1733.

4 A Letter to the Author of Reflexions Historical and Political, &c., 1732, Works, i. 503-60.

Hist. of Rebellion, iv. 563, v. 203, 210, 309.

Eng. Poets, xxxviii. 137-8. She

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Lady Mary Villiers, to whom he addressed some poor lines. Ib. p. 116. She died on Jan. 15. Gent. Mag. 1735, p. 51. Swift wrote of a dinner of his Society on Jan. 3. 1711-12 :-' The Secretary grew brisk, and would not let me go, nor Lord Lansdowne, who would fain have gone home to his lady, being newly married to Lady Mary Thynne.' Works, ii. 446. 'She was,' writes Mrs. Delany (Auto. i. 103), a woman of unbounded extravagance in every respect,' and had a venomous tongue.'

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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 1' 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.

26 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 shew 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 3: his King is Jupiter, who, if the Queen brings no children, has a barren Juno'. The Queen is compounded of Juno, Venus, and Minerva 5. His poem on the dutchess of Grafton's law-suit 6, after having rattled a while with Juno and Pallas, Mars and Alcides, Cassiope, Niobe, and the Propetides', Hercules, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, at last concludes its folly with profaneness 3.

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His verses to Mira, which are most frequently mentioned, have 27 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 spritely or elegant, either 28 keen or weighty. They are trifles written by idleness, and published by vanity 2. But his Prologues and Epilogues have a just claim to praise 3.

The Progress of Beauty seems one of his most elaborate pieces, 29 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 *.

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The Essay on [upon] unnatural Flights in Poetry is not in- 30 elegant 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 6.

'Ante, GRANVILLE, 8.

'Here noble Surrey felt the sacred

rage,

Surrey, the Granville of a former age.

Fair Geraldine, bright object of his
Vow,

Then filled the groves, as heav'nly
Mira now.'

POPE, Windsor Forest, 1. 291.
Bolingbroke says of Granville's

verses:

'For after ages shall with rapture read

What we with rapture hear.' Nichols's Select Collection of Poems, 1780, iv. 321.

'The Countess of Newburgh, who was Granville's Mira, will live as long as the English language.' Biog. Brit. p. 2348.

For Thomson's 'Mira' see post, THOMSON, 13.

2 When Langton and Beauclerk knocked Johnson at three in the up morning, they repaired to one of the neighbouring taverns, and made

a bowl of that liquor called Bishop, which Johnson had always liked; while in joyous contempt of sleep, from which he had been roused, he repeated the festive lines,

"Short, O short then be thy reign,
And give us to the world again."'
Boswell's Johnson, i. 251.
The lines are in Lord Lansdowne's
Drinking Song to Sleep, and run
thus:-
:-

'Short, very short be then thy reign,
For I'm in haste to laugh and drink
again.' Eng. Poets, xxxviii. 115.
Eng. Poets, xxxviii. 122-30.
'Princess ador'd and lov'd! If verse
can give

4 6

3

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The Masque of Peleus and Thetis 1 has here and there a pretty line; but it is not always melodious, and the conclusion is wretched. 32 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.

wrote to Nichols, the printer of the Lives: In examining this book I find it necessary to add to the life the preface to the British Enchanters, and you may add, if you will, the notes on Unnatural Flights. John. Letters, ii. 131. Later on he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:-'What do you scold so

for about Granville's life; do you not see that the appendage neither gains nor saves anything to me?' Ib. p. 190. In the second edition the appendage was omitted, being transferred to Eng. Poets.

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Ante, GRANVILLE, 9. 2 lb.

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