151 



GREEN, VALENTINE. 



GREENE, ROBEHT. 



1S2 



censures; one in reply to the Marquis de Custine'a 'Travels;' another 

 to Konig's ' Litterarische Bilder aus Russland ; ' the latter, though i 

 contains some valuable facts, is very feeble in style, and it may be 

 remarked that Grech's writings are in general very unequal, probabb 

 owing to their multiplicity. The whole of his works are full of i 

 spirit of attachment to Russian institutions, not very enlarged, nor 

 of course very enlightened, but not of a vehement or repulsive kind 

 In 1830 he was named Councillor of State, a nominal title intendec 

 to show that the government appreciated his services. His position 

 as an influential critic naturally brought him in contact with many 

 of the literary notabilities of St. Petersburg, and he boasts in his 

 answer to Kbnig of having enjoyed the friendship of Karamzin 

 Dmitrier, Batyushkov, Zhukovsky, and latterly of Pushkin; but his 

 closest union was with Bulgarin, from whose biography of his friend, 

 prefixed to the fifth volume of a collection of Grech's miscellaneous 

 works, published about 1837, most of the dates in this article are 

 taken. One of Grech's sons assists him in his literary undertakings. 



GREEN, VALENTINE, a celebrated English mezzotint engraver, 

 was born in Warwickshire in 1739. After serving a short time with 

 a line engraver at Worcester, he came to London in 1765, and turned 

 his attention to engraving in mezzotint. He acquired a great repu- 

 tation by his many prints after West, especially two large plates pub- 

 lished a few years after his arrival in London, of the ' Return ol 

 Rcgulus to Carthage,' and ' Hannibal swearing eternal enmity to the 

 Romans,' two of West's most celebrated pictures now at Hampton 

 Court, and originally painted for George IIL Tho 'Stoning of St. 

 Stephen' after West is one of Green's masterpieces. He engraved 

 also many of the pictures of the Diisaeldorf Gallery, for which he was 

 granted an exclusive privilege by the Elector of Bavaria in 1789, who 

 afterwards conferred on him the title of Hof Kupfersticher (court 

 engraver). He executed also several great plates after Rubens, 

 including the ' Descent from the Cross ' at Antwerp, and other master- 

 pieces. In all he engraved upwards of 300 plates. He wag elected 

 an associate engraver of the Royal Academy in 1774. He died in 

 1813, aged seventy-four. 



GREENE, MAURICE, Mus. Doc., who as a composer of English 

 Church music is second to none, and indeed has scarcely a rival, was 

 the son of the vicar of St Olave Jewry, London, and born at the latter 

 end of the 17th century. He received his education in St. Paul's 

 choir, under Brind, the organist, from whose instructions, aided by his 

 own strong genius and remarkable industry, ha profited so well that 

 he was elected organist of St. Dunstan's in the West before he bad 

 completed his twentieth year. In 1713 he succeeded his master in 

 the important situation of organist to St. Paul's cathedral. On the 

 death of Dr. Croft, in 1 726, he was appointed organist and composer 

 to the Chapels Royal; and in 1736 was presented to the office of 

 Master of hi Majesty's Band, on the decease of Eccles, a name 

 familiar to all who are acquainted with the dramatic history of this 

 country during the conclusion of the 17th and the beginning of the 

 18th century. Previous to the latter promotion, the degree of Doctor 

 in Music was conferred ou him at Cambridge, his exercise for which 

 was Pope's ' Ode on St. Cecilia's Day,' the author having, at the request 

 of Greene, made considerable alterations in his poem, and added a new 

 stanza, which however forms no part of the oilc in any edition of the 

 poet's works. The university shortly after elected the composer 

 professor of music, on the death of Dr. Tudway. 



Dr. Greene took an active part in all musical affairs, and when 

 Handel finally settled in this country, the English musician courted 

 hia acquaintance assiduously ; but having taken some offence, he 

 oon became one of the great master's bitterest enemies. He sup- 

 ported Bonoocini (the same person who is immortalised in Swift's 

 epigram), who was enabled, through the influence of Henrietta, 

 duchess of Marlborough, and a strong party of the nobility, to get 

 elevated to the rank of one of Handel's ephemeral rivals. Greene 

 introduced him at the Academy of Ancient Music, where the Italian 

 practised a deception which caused his expulsion, ou which Greene 

 retired, and established another concert at the Devil Tavern. Greene's 

 enmity to Handel is said to have arisen from some contemptuous 

 expressions which tl.e great German uttered respecting Greene's com- 

 position*. Hi* sarcasm* were perhaps directed at Greene's lighter 

 works ; of hi* church music he could never have thought con- 

 temptuously. 



In 1750 Dr. Greene came into possession of a good estate in Essex, 

 left him by his paternal uncle, a serjeant-at-law. He then resolved to 

 digest and publuh a collection of the best English cathedral music, 

 and in five years made considerable progress in his favourite under- 

 taking ; bat his health beginning to fail, he delivered his materials to 

 the care of hi* friend and disciple Dr. Boyce, who completed the work, 

 and gave to the world the matchless volumes so well known to every 

 real amateur of rlMtiViil English music. Dr. Greene died in 1755, 

 leaving one daughter, married to Dr. Michael Festing, rector of Wyke- 

 Regu>, Dorsetshire. He was, as Dr. Burney, who knew him, informs 

 as, in figure " much below the common size, and had the misfortune 

 to be deformed ; but his address and exterior manners were those of a 

 man of the world, mild, attentive, and well-bred." He enjoyed the 

 friendship of Bishop Hoadlcy, at whose table he was always a welcome 

 guest; and his interest with the Duke of Newcastle, of political 

 memory, was strong. Among his compositions are some charming 



cantatas and songs ; but his fame is built on his ' Forty Authems for 

 one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight voices," in two folio 

 volumes. "These," says a writer in ' The Harnionicon,' " place him 

 at the head of the list of English ecclesiastical composers, for they 

 combine the science and vigour of our earlier writers with the melody 

 of the best Italian masters who flourished in the first half of the 18th 

 century." To Greene our cathedral establishments owe a great debt 

 of gratitude; his works constitute a very large portion of their 

 musical wealth ; and as the harmony heard in those venerable edifices 

 attracts numbers to them, Dr. Greene, as well as some few other com- 

 posers for our church, ought perhaps in strict justice to be ranked 

 not only as skilful musicians, but among the promoters of the national 

 religion. 



GREENE, ROBERT, was a native of Ipswich. The date of his 

 birth was probably a few years later than the middle of the 16th. 

 century. He was educated at St. John's College. Cambridge, where, 

 in 1578, he took his Bachelor's degree, and his Master's iu 1583 ; aud 

 he was incorporated at Oxford in 1588. Between 1578 aud 1583 he 

 travelled on the Continent, visiting Italy and Spain ; and it has been 

 asserted, on the evidence of concurring probabilities, that at some 

 time or other in the early part of his life he took holy orders ; but his 

 academical degrees are almost the only facts in hia history that can be 

 ascertained with exactness. From about 1584 he was a frequent 

 writer for the press and for the stage ; and from some of his 

 pamphlets, which make a half-poetical kind of confessions not unlike 

 those of Byron, a few particulars of his melancholy career may be 

 doubtfully gathered. It thus appears that he married the daughter of 

 a gentleman iu Lincolnshire, but that after she had borne a child to 

 him he abandoned her for a mistress ; and his subsequent life seems 

 to have been spent in alternate fits of reckless debauchery and of the 

 distresses and remorse which his excesses caused. In August 1592 a 

 surfeit at a tavern in London threw him into an illness, which proved 

 fatal. He was then in a state of abject poverty; and in a letter which 

 he wrote to his wife the day before his death, cbargiug her to pay a 

 debt of ten pounds owing by him to his host, a poor shoemaker near 

 Dowgate, he declared that if this man and his wife had not succoured 

 him he must have died in the street. His death-bed was attended by 

 the shoemaker's wife, and by another woman who was the sister of a 

 hanged malefactor, and by whom he had had a sou. He expired ou 

 the 3rd of September 1592; next day he was buried iu the new 

 churchyard near Bedlam. 



The name of this unhappy man is very important in the early 

 history of the English drama. Marlowe was the moat distinguished 

 of those poets who took the great steps which heralded the rise of 

 Shakspere. Greene and Peele held the second rank among the pre- 

 cursors of the golden ago of our dramatic poetry. Greene uowhero 

 exhibits either the glowing passion or the overflowing imagination of 

 Marlowe, and hia works are not only unequal, but in all respects 

 irregular and anomalous; yet they show much sweetness of fancy, 

 many touches of nature in incident as well as in character, and a poetic 

 spirit which, if not lofty, is far above the range of the prosaic or ordi- 

 nary. He was a man of decided genius, and his plays are valuable monu- 

 ments of this interesting period in dramatic history. None of them. 

 were printed till after his death. Five have come down to us that are 

 certainly his : ' The History of Orlando Furioso,' 1594, 1599, au 

 eccentric but imaginative and not uninteresting performance ; ' A 

 Lookicg-Glass for London and England,' 1594, 1598, 1602, 1617, 

 written by Greene and Thomas Lodge jointly, a dramatic version of 

 the prophecy of Jonah against Nineveh, aud, amidst its whimsicalities, 

 the most dramatic of Greene's works ; ' The Honourable History of 

 Friar Bacou and Friar Bungay,' 1594, 1599, 1630, 1655, a legendary 

 play, natural and poetical, and on the whole the most pleasing of the 

 series; 'The Comical History of Alphousus, King of Aragou,' 1599, 

 a group of heroic pictures, in which the poet emulates with tolerable 

 success, the swelling vein of Marlowe ; ' The Scottish History of 

 James the Fourth," 1598, a most extravagant yet not uupoetical 

 nvention, having nothing of history in it but the names. There has 

 )een attributed to Greene, upon very doubtful evidence, the lively 

 drama of ' George a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield," printed in 1599. 

 ;t has likewise been asserted that he wrote, or had a share in writing, 

 one or both of the plays which are the groundwork of ' Henry VI.,' 

 Tarts ii. and iii. The opposite and sounder opinion is maintained, and 

 he state of the controversy set forth, iu Mr. Kuight's editions of 

 Shakspere. (' Essay on Henry VI. and Richard III.') 



' George a-Greene ' is in all the editions of Dodsley'a Old Plays : 



Friar ISacon' is in Mr. Collier's edition of that collection. Two 



jxcellent editions of Greene's dramatic works, with all his other com- 



xwitions in verse, have been published by Mr. Dyoe, 2 vpls. 12mo, 



irst printed in 1831. In these volumes Mr. Dyce has given a full 



account of Greene's life, with copious specimens of his prose works, 



and a list of them which is complete, or almost so. The list embraces 



hirty-four pieces, which are undoubtedly his. Their matter is very 



various. In his gayer hours he wrote love-stories and other novels, 



ketches of society, chiefly in its disreputable walks, and miscellaneous 



Assays ; in his moments of remorse he wrote warnings to debauched 



routh, and ample but exaggerated and romantic confessions of his owu 



ollies. Pieces of this last class are the following : ' Greene's Never 



Too Late; or, a Powder of Experience sent to all Youthful Gentle- 



