of the Italians and of Gay is equally tragical. There is something in the poetical Arcadia so remote from known reality and speculative possibility, that we can never support its representation through a long work. A pastoral of an hundred lines may be endured; but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers and purling nvulets, through five acts? Such scenes please Barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life; but will be for the most part thrown away, as men

grow wise, and nations grow learned,

VOL. X.

Ff

THE

LIFE OF GRANVILLE,

BY DR. JOHNSON.

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', where he pronounced a copy of his own verses to the princess Mary d'Esté 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 acknowledgement,

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.

1 To Trinity College. By the university register it apppears, that he was admitted to his master's degree in 1679; we must, therefore, set the year of his birth some years back. H.