These

served himself from those embarrassments, which in more advanced life he is said to have incurred, and his father, who was just dead, had made some provision for him, which was increased by a small annuity left him by his uncle the earl of Bath, who died not long after. advantages, added to the favours which his cousin John Grenville had received from her majesty in being raised to the peerage by the title of lord Grenville of Potheridge, and his brother being made governor of Barbadoes, with a fixed salary of 2000l. the same enabled him to come into the house of commons, as member for Fowey in Cornwall, in the first parliament of the queen. In 1706, his fortune was improved farther by the loss of his eldest brother, sir Bevil, who died that year, in his passage from Barbadoes, in the flower of his age, unmarried, and universally lamented. Hence our younger brother stood now as the head-branch of his family, and he still held his seat in the house of commons, both in the second and third parliaments of the queen. But the administration being taken out of the hands of his friends, with whom he remained steadily connected in the same principles, he was cut off from any prospect of being preferred at court.

In this situation he diverted himself among his brother poets; and we find him at this time introducing Wycherley and Pope to the acquaintance of Henry St. John, esq. afterwards lord viscount Bolingbroke. This friend, then displaced, having formed a design of celebrating such of the poets of that age as he thought deserved any notice, had applied for a character of the former to our author, who, in reply, having done justice to Mr. Wycherley's merit, concludes his letter thus: "In short, Sir, I'll have you judge for yourself. I am not satisfied with this imperfect sketch; name your day, and I will bring you together; I shall have both your thanks; let it be at my lodging. I can give you no Falernian that has out-lived twenty consulships, but I can promise you a bottle of good claret, that has seen two reigns. Horatian wit will not be wanting when you meet. He shall bring with him, if you will, a young poet newly inspired in the neighbourhood of Cooper'shill, whom he and Walsh have taken under their wing. His name is Pope, he is not above seventeen or eighteen years of age, and promises miracles. If he goes on as he has begun in the pastoral way, as Virgil first tried his strength, we may hope to see English poetry vie with the

Roman, and this Swan of Windsor sing as sweetly as the Mantuan. I expect your answer.”

Sacheverell's trial, which happened not long after, brought on that remarkable change in the ministry in 1710, when Mr. Granville's friends came again into power. He was elected for the borough of Helston, but, being returned at the same time for the county of Cornwall, he chose to represent the latter; and on September 29, he was declared secretary at war, in the room of Robert Walpole, esq. afterwards the celebrated minister. He continued in

this office for some time, and discharged it with reputation; and, towards the close of the next year, 1711, he married the lady Mary, daughter of Edward Villiers, earl of Jersey, at that time possessed of a considerable jointure, as widow of Thomas Thynne, esq. He had just before succeeded to the estate of the elder branch of his family, at Stow; and December 31, he was created a peer of Great Britain, by the title of lord Lansdowne, baron of Bideford, in the county of Devon. In this promotion he was one of the twelve peers who were all created at the same time; and so numerous a creation, being unprecedented, gave much offence, although but little in his case. His lordship was now the next male-issue in that noble family, in which two peerages, that of the earl of Bath, and that of lord Grenville of Potheridge, had been extinguished almost together his personal merit was universally allowed; and as to his political sentiments, those who thought him most mistaken, allowed him to be open, candid, and uniform. He stood always high in the favour of queen Anne; and with great reason, having upon every occasion testified the greatest zeal for her government, and the most profound respect for her person. For these reasons, in the succeeding year, 1712, he was sworn of her majesty's privy-council, made controller of her household, about a year after advanced to the post of treasurer in the same office; and to his other honours, says Dr. Johnson, was added the dedication of Pope's "Windsor Forest." His lordship continued in his office of treasurer to the queen, until her death, when he kept company with his friends in falling a sacrifice to party-violence, being removed from his treasurer's place by George I. Oct. 11, 1714.

His lordship still continued steady to his former connections, and in that spirit entered his protest with them against the bills for attainting lord Bolingbroke and the

duke of Ormond, in 1715. He even entered deeply into the scheme for raising an insurrection in the West of England, and was at the head of it, if we may believe lord Bolingbroke, who represents him possessed now with the same political fire and frenzy for the Pretender as he had shewn in his youth for the father. In consequence, however, of being suspected, he was apprehended September 26, 1715, and committed prisoner to the Tower of London, where he continued until February 8, 1716-17, when he was released without any form of trial or acquittal. However sensible he might be at this time of the mistake in his conduct, which had deprived him of his liberty, yet he was far from running into the other extreme. He seems, in

deed, to be one of those tories, who are said to have been driven by the violent persecutions against that party into jacobitism, and who returned to their former principles as soon as that violence ceased. Hence we find him, in 1719, as warm as ever in defence of those principles, the first time of his speaking in the house of lords, in the debates about repealing the act against occasional conformity.

His lordship continued steady in the same sentiments, which were so opposite to those of the court, and inconsistent with the measures taken by the administration, that he must needs be sensible a watchful eye was kept ever upon him. Accordingly, when the flame broke out against his friends, on account of what is sometimes called Atterbury's plot, in 1722, his lordship, as some say, to avoid a second imprisonment in the Tower, withdrew to France, but others attribute his going thither to a degree of profusion which had embarrassed his circumstances. He had been at Paris but a little while, when the first volume of Burnet's "History of his own Times" was published. Great expectations had been raised of this work, which accordingly he perused with attention; and finding the characters of the duke of Albemarle and the earl of Bath treated in a manner he thought they did not deserve, he formed the design of doing them justice. This led him to consider what had been said by other historians concerning his family; and, as Clarendon and Echard had treated his uncle sir Richard Granville more roughly, his lordship, being possessed of memoirs from which his conduct might be set in a fairer light, resolved to follow the dictates of duty and inclination, by publishing his sentiments upon these

heads. These pieces are printed in his works, under the title of "A Vindication of General Monk," &c. and "A Vindication of Sir Richard Greenville, General of the West to King Charles I." &c. They were answered by Oldmixon, in a piece entitled "Reflections historical and politic," &c. 1732, 4to, and by judge Burnet, in "Remarks," &c. a pamphlet. His lordship replied, in “A Letter to the author of the Reflections," &c. 1732, 4to, and the spring following, there came out a very rough answer in defence of Echard, by Dr. Colbatch, entitled "An Examination of Echard's Account of the Marriage Treaty," &c.

He continued abroad at Paris almost the space of ten years; and, being sensible that many juvenilities had escaped his pen in his poetical pieces, made use of the opportunity furnished by this retirement, to revise and correct them, in order to republication. Accordingly, at his return to England in 1732, he published these, together with a vindication of his kinsman just mentioned, in two volumes, 4to. To these may be added a tract in lord Somers's collection, entitled "A Letter from a nobleman abroad to his friend in England," 1722. The late queen Caroline having honoured him with her protection, the last verses he wrote were to inscribe two copies of his poems, one of which was presented to her majesty, and the other to the princess royal Anne, late princess dowager of Orange. The remaining years of his life were passed in privacy and retirement, to the day of his death, which happened January 30, 1735, in his sixty-eighth year; having lost his lady a few days before, by whom having no male issue, the title of Lansdowne became in him extinct.

His character, as drawn by Dr. Johnson, seems now uncontested. He was, says that eminent critic, a man illustrious by birth, and therefore attracted notice; since he is styled by Pope "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 upon firmness and consistency. As a poet, Dr. Johnson has appreciated his merit with equal justice. He was indeed but a feeble imitator of the feeblest parts of Waller, and is far more to be praised for his patronage of poets, and the judgment he shewed in the case of Pope, than for any pretensions to rank among them. His prose style, however, is excellent,

and far beyond that of his early contemporaries. Dr. Warton notices, as proofs of this, his "Letter to a young man on his taking orders;" his "Observations on Burnet," his "Defence of his relation sir Richard Greenville," his translation of some parts of Demosthenes, and his Letter to his father on the Revolution, written in 1688. The same critic, who must have been acquainted with some who knew him intimately, adds that his conversation was most pleasing and polite; and his affability, and universal benevolence and gentleness, captivating.'

GRASSWINKEL (THEODORE or THIERRI), a learned lawyer, was born at Delft in 1600. He wrote various works upon legal and political subjects, by which he acquired a considerable reputation. Among these are "Libertas Veneta, seu Venetorum in se et suos imperandi Jus." This was published in 1634, and in 1644 he defended the republic of Venice, in a dispute with the duke. of Savoy concerning precedence; for which service, that republic created him a knight of St. Mark. He had also before this, attempted to confute Buchanan's treatise "De Jure Majestatis," in a work dedicated to Christina, queen of Sweden, who was known to be a great assertor of regal privileges. Grasswinkel defended the liberty of the seas against Selden, and Burgus, a native of Genoa, in his work "Maris Liberi Vindicia," and with so much judgment, in their opinion, that the States of Holland gave him a pension of 500 florins, with the title of Advocate-general of the marine, until an opportunity offered of rewarding his merit with a more honourable employment; which was afterwards that of advocate of the exchequer, and register and secretary of the chambre-mi-partie. He was author, likewise, of a treatise in two volumes, 4to, "On the Sovereignty of the States of Holland." He died of an apoplexy at Mechlin, Oct. 12, 1666.2

GRATAROLUS (WILLIAM), a learned physician of the sixteenth century, was born at Bergamo in Italy in 1510, and was educated at Padua, where he took his degrees with great reputation; but having embraced the doctrines of the reformers, with which Peter Martyr made him. acquainted, he was obliged to make his escape, and went into Germany, that he might live undisturbed in the

1 Biog Brit.-John::on and Chalmers's Poets, 1810.-Bowles's edition of Pope; see Index.-Park's edition of Lord Orford's Royal and Noble Authors. 2 Moreri.-Gen. Dict.-Foppen Bibl. Belg.