137 



GREUZE, JEAN-BAPTISTE. 



GREY, CHARLES, EARL. 



193 



a second edition of the work. These essays are ingenious, rather than 

 entertaining, and exhibit much good musical criticism; but they 

 betray no inconsiderable share of vanity, aa well aa a want of know- 

 ledge of what had already been written on the subject. 



GREUZE, JEAN BAPTISTE, a celebrated French painter, waa 

 born at Tournus in Burgundy in 1726. He was first instructed by 

 Landun at Lyon; he studied also in the Royal Academy at Paris, and 

 later at Rome. Nearly all Greuze's pictures are illustrations of the 

 affections or domestic duties : he painted but one historical piece 

 ' Severus reprimanding his Son Caracalla : ' portraits he painted 

 frequently. Greuze is unique in the French school, and he is some- 

 times termed the Lachau-e'e of Painting, and also less appropriately, 

 the French Hogarth. He was fond of exciting and pathetic scenes ; 

 the following are some of his most celebrated pictures : A Father 

 explaining the Bible to his Family; The Blind Man Cheated; 

 The Good Mother; The Paralytic Father; The Unnatural Father; 

 The Village Bride ; The Huntsman's Return; The Broken Pitcher; 

 The Little Girl and the Dog, ' La Petite Fille au Chien,' by some 

 considered his best picture; TEnfant au Capucin;' 'La Dame de 

 Charite;' 'Le Gateau des Rois;' 'La Fille Honteuse;' 'La Bonne 

 Education;' 'La Paix du Menage;' 'La Pri6re k 1' Amour;' 

 ' Le Fils Puni,' ic. &c., all of which have been engraved, and 

 many ^by J. J. Flipart and the elder Massard ; ' La Petite Fille an 

 Chien,' has been engraved by Ch. Porporati. But he also painted 

 many figures and portraits of ladies in a semi-nude and very mere- 

 tricious style. 



Greoze waa long an associate or agree of the French academy of 

 painting, but as he was placed in the class of genre (du genre has) 

 painters, when he was elected a member, he considered it an indignity, 

 and he retired altogether from the academy. He died March 21, 1805. 



There are several pictures by Greuze in the Louvre among them 

 two of his most celebrated works, The Broken Pitcher ; The 

 Village Bride, 'L'Accordee du Village,' which was purchased for 

 the royal collection at the sale of the Marquis de Menars for 16,050 

 francs. In the National Gallery London there is a ' Head of a Girl,' 

 by him. Greuze's pictures are very popular with collectors, and very 

 large sums are paid for them ; yet he cannot be considered a great 

 painter. His work* have much truth of character, but not only nearly 

 all his subjects are chosen from common life, there is something 

 generally theatrical and meretricious in his treatment. They are 

 however better as illustrations of character than as paintings ; his 

 drawings, at least the contours, are generally correct and vigorous, 

 but the intermediate modelling, except in the hear), is feeble : he was 

 deficient in light and shade and colour, aud his draperies want 

 character, or indeed common truth : his heads are well modelled but 

 generally extravagant in expression. 



GREVILE, SIK FULKE, afterwards LORD BROOKE, was bom 

 in 1554. He was the only eon of Sir Fulke Grevile of Beauchamp 

 Court in Warwickshire, and his mother was a daughter of Ralph 

 Neville, earl of Westmorland. He became a fellow-commoner of Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, but afterwards studied at Oxford. Having then 

 travelled on the continent, he was introduced at court on bin return, 

 and soon appointed to a lucrative office in the Court of the Marches 

 of Wale*. P(MM*sed however by the adventurous spirit of the times, 

 ha made several attempts to escape into foreign service, which were 

 always defeated by Queen Elizabeth's refusal of leave. In 1585 like- 

 wise he and Sir Philip Sidney, his distant kinsman and most cherished 

 friend, were brought back by a royal messenger when they had already 

 embarked to accompany Drake to the West Indies. Next year Sir 

 Philip was killed at Zutphen. Grevile, knighted in 1597, sat repeatedly 

 for hU native county in parliament, and continued to receive tokens of 

 the royal favour till the queen's death. King James was equally well 

 disposed, bestowing on him Warwick Castle (which he repaired at a 

 large expense) ; but he is said to have disagreed with Secretary Cecil, 

 and did not obtain any new advancement till after that minister's 

 death. In 1615 he was appointed unrler-treasurer and chancellor of 

 the exchequer, and in 1620 he was raised to the peerage by the title 

 of Baron Brooke of Beauchamp Court. Next year, resigning his post in 

 the exchequer, he became a lord of the bed-chamber. Soou afterwards 

 he founded a history-lecture in the University of Cambridge, endowing 

 it with lOOi a year. On the 80th of September 1628, being in his 

 mansion in Hoi born, he had an altercation with an old serving-man, 

 who, irritated by what passed, stabbed him mortally in the back, and 

 then destroyed himself. Lord Brooke was buried in St. Mary's church, 

 Warwick, under a monument which he bad himself erected, with this 

 inscription : ' Fulke Grevile, servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor 

 to King James, im<l friend to Sir Philip Sidney. Trophamm Peccati.' 

 He was never married. 



Three volumes of his writings were printed after his death : 1. 

 ' Certain Learned and Elegant Worked of the Right Honorable Fulke 

 Lord Brooke, written in hia youth and familiar exercise with Sir Philip 

 ' 1633, small folio. This volume contains three didactic poems, 



Fame and 

 1 of Seneca 



. ,. .- - - L of 109 small 



poems, called sonnets, though not answering to the name), and two 

 proie letters, one of which is really a long moral essay. 2. 'The 

 Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney : with the True Interest of 



England, aa it then stood in relation to all Foreign Princes,' &c. &c- 

 1652, 12mo. 3. 'The Remains of Sir Fulke Grevile, Lord Brooke, 

 being poema of Monarchy and Religion, never before published,' 1670, 

 8vo. All known copies of the volume of 1633 want the first twenty- 

 two paes, and it has been conjectured that these contained the 

 ' Treatise on Religion,' and were cancelled as objectionable probably 

 by order of Laud. Short specimens of his poetry are selected by 

 Campbell and Ellis; his didactic poema are given at full length in 

 Sputhey's ' Select Works of the British Poets,' 1831 ; and his ' Life of 

 Sidney ' was reprinted by Sir Egerton Brydges. 



Lord Brooke was alike proud of being Sidney's friend and of being 

 the patron of Camden, Daverant, and other men of letters. His own 

 literary fame, ia modern times, has scarcely been equal to his merits. 

 He ia more remarkable however for power and subtlety of thought 

 than for originality of imagery or for felicity of language. Hia prose 

 is lumbering and disaertative : his life of Sidney is a commentary, not 

 a narrative. Hia rhymed tragedies too, in form aa uudramatio as 

 those of his contemporary Sir William Alexander (to which they bear 

 some resemblance), are not less undramatic in substance. Indeed they 

 are hardly so much as intelligible, as representations either of incident 

 or of character. But even in them there ia much of that which 

 constitutes the charm of hia didactic poema the pointed enunciation 

 of elevated moral sentiments or of refined metaphysical reflections. 

 There could be culled from his worka, and most abundantly from hia 

 noble ' Treatise on Human Learning,' a rich store of seuteutioua and 

 finely-thought apophthegms, of the kind which sparkle in the lines of 

 Pope. This poet indeed owes to Lord Brooke several obligations. 

 One of the lines ofteueat quoted from the ' Easay on Man ' is but an 

 alt-ration of his line, " Men would be tyrants, tyrants would be gods." 

 The prevailing fault is obscurity of language, caused partly by an 

 anxious straining after conciseness, partly by want of mastery over 

 the mechanism of verse, and partly perhaps by indistinctness in some 

 of the conceptions which flowed in with such variety aud swiftness 

 upon his active and searching intellect. Southey had good reason for 

 calling Lord Brooke the most difficult of our poets, but equally good 

 reason for recalling attention to his didactic poems. 



GREY, CHARLES, SECOND EARL GREY, was born on March 13th 

 1764 at Fallowden, near Alnwick, in Northumberland. His family 

 was ennobled in the reign of Edward VI., and, although the peerage 

 became extinct, the family had for eight or nine generations been of 

 consideration. In 1802 Sir Charles Grey, the father of the second 

 earl, was raised to the peerage for his military services, with the title 

 of Baron Grey de Howick, and in 1806 he waa created Earl Grey. He 

 died in November 1807 in his seventy-ninth year. 



Charles Grey was sent to Eton, and before he had attained his 

 sixteenth year he proceeded to Cambridge, where he remained about 

 two years, and then passed over to the Continent, and made the tour 

 of France, Spain, and Italy, which occupied him about two years. 



Mr. Grey's parliamentary career began in 1786, whea he waa returned 

 as member for the county of Northumberland. He attached himself 

 to the party, and still mora to the person, of Mr. Fox. His maiden 

 speech in the House of Commons, iu 1787, was in opposition to Mr. 

 Pitt's liberal commercial treaty with France. In 1788, at the age of 

 only twenty-four, Mr. Grey was selected aa one of the managers to 

 conduct the trial of Warren Hastings ; and iu the following year he 

 took a prominent part in the discussions on the Regency Bill. Not- 

 withstanding his youth, and the short time that he had been in parlia- 

 ment, he bad already obtained a position in his party of considerable 

 eminence, chiefly no doubt from his ariatocratical position and family 

 connections, but he had also acquired a high reputation as a speaker 

 at a time when Fox, Burke, and Sheridan were at the height of their 

 fame as orators. 



The opening scenes of the French revolution, and still more the 

 future progress of that event, exercised for many years au absorbing 

 influence over both the foreign and domeatic policy of England. The 

 Whigs were agitated by differences of opinion, which destroyed party 

 ties and even broke up private friendships. Fox and Mr. Grey were 

 the leaders of the small but able party which constituted the opposition 

 during the first period of the French revolutionary war. Their object 

 waa first to prevent the war, and after it had commenced their earnest 

 desire waa to bring it to a close. 



The first acts of the French revolution were favourable to popular 

 liberty ; and the association called the Society of the Friends of the 

 People, which was formed in England early in 1792, with the object 

 of obtaining a reform in parliament, was joined by the more liberal 

 men of the Whig party, and Mr. Grey was one of the founders and 

 moat active members of the society. On April 30th 1792, at the 

 request of the society, he gave notice of a motion for the following 

 session on the subject of parliamentary reform. The motion waa to 

 the effect that " the evils which threatened the constitution could only 

 b corrected by timely and temperate reform." Before the motion 

 could be brought forward in 1793, the stata of parties had undergone 

 considerable change. The Whigs, at least the more timid or con- 

 servative amongst them, had become alarmists, and a section of them 

 under the Duke of Portland were preparing already for the coalition 

 with Mr. Pitt which finally took place in 1794. Fox not only withheld 

 his name from the Society of the Friends of the People, but privately 

 exerted himself to check its proceedings ; and it had become popular 



