GEORGE GRANVILLE, LORD LANSDOWNE. BORN 1667.-DIED 1735. SONG. LOVE is by fancy led about From hope to fear, from joy to doubt; Whom we now an angel call, Divinely grac'd in every feature, Straight's a deform'd, a perjur'd creature; Love and hate are fancy all. Objects of grief, or of content, That the lover's blest, or dies: Visions of mighty pain, or pleasure, Imagin'd want, imagin'd treasure, All in powerful fancy lies. T MATTHEW GREEN. BORN 1696.-DIED 1737. MATTHEW GREEN was educated among the dissenters; but left them in disgust at their precision, probably without reverting to the mother church. All that we are told of him is, that he had a post at the custom-house, which he discharged with great fidelity, and died at a lodging in Nag's-head court, Gracechurch-street, aged forty-one. His strong powers of mind had received little advantage from education, and were occasionally subject to depression from hypochondria; but his conversation is said to have abounded in wit and shrewdness. One day his friend Sylvanus Bevan complained to him that while he was bathing in the river he had been saluted by a waterman with the cry of 'Quaker Quirl,' and wondered how he should have been known to be a quaker without his clothes. Green replied, "by your swimming against the stream." His poem, "the Spleen," was never published in his life-time. Glover, his warm friend, presented it to the world after his death, and it is much to be regretted did not prefix any account of its interesting author. It was originally a very short copy of verses, and was gradually and piecemeal increased. Pope speedily noticed its merit, Melmoth praised its strong VOL. IV. E originality in Fitzosborne's Letters, and Gray duly commended it in his correspondence with Lord Orford, when it appeared in Dodsley's collection. In that walk of poetry, where Fancy aspires no farther than to go hand in hand with common sense, its merit is certainly unrivalled. FROM THE SPLEEN. CONTENTMENT, parent of delight, They turn to pleasure all they find; To feign a joy, and hide distress; But place their bliss in mental rest, Forc'd by soft violence of pray'r, And thus she models my desire. Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid, A farm some twenty miles from town, A pond before full to the brim, Where cows may cool, and geese may swim; Behind, a green like velvet neat, Soft to the eye, and to the feet; Where od'rous plants in evening fair And woods impervious to the breeze, From hills through plains in dusk array Here stillness, height, and solemn shade Invite, and contemplation aid: Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate And dreams beneath the spreading beech Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep, Brown fields their fallow sabbaths keep, |