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 tutor's, to join your brother at the defence of Scilly.

"The same cause has 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

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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 dependance. 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 dramatic 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); "Heroic Love," a tragedy (1701); "The British Enchanters" (1706,) a dramatic 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

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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 comic, and we are prompted to laughter instead of detestation.

It is evident that "Heroic 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 par liament 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 Louis.

He afterwards (in 1706) had his estate again augmented by an inheritance from his elder brother, Sir Bevil Grenville, 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
Landsdown Baron Bideford, by a promotion just-
ly 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 comptrol-
ler 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 of Cholmondeley, and he was
persecuted with the rest of his party. Having pro-
tested against the bill for attainting Ormond and
Bolingbroke, he was, after the insurrection in Scot-
land, 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 him-
self 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 Old-
mixon; and more roughly by Dr. Colbatch.

His other historical performance is a defence of
his relation Sir Richard Greenville, whom Lord

Clarendon has shewn 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 public 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