formed by Vulcan. The appearance of Cloa cina is naufeous and fuperfluous; a fhoeboy could have been produced by the cafual coha bitation of mere mortals. Horace's rule is broken in both cafes; there is no dignus vindice nodus, no difficulty that required any fupernatural interpofition. A patten may be made by the hammer of a mortal; and a baftard may be dropped by a human ftrumpet: On great occafions, and on fmall, the mind is repelled by. ufelefs and apparent falsehood.

Of his little Poems the public judgement feems to be right; they are neither much efteemed, nor totally defpifed. The story of the Apparition is borrowed from one of the tales of Poggio. Thofe that please leaft are the pieces to which Gulliver gave occafion; for who can much delight in the echo of an unnatural fiction?

Dione is à counterpart to Amynta, and Paftor Fido, and other trifles of the fame kind, eafily imitated, and unworthy of imitation. What the Italians call comedies from a happy conclufion, Gay calls a tragedy from a mournful event; but the style of the Italians and of Gay is equally tragical. There is fomething in the

poetical

E

et

a poetical Arcadia fo remote from known reality and fpeculative poffibility, that we can never fupport its representation through a long work. A Paftoral of an hundred lines may be endured; but who will hear of fheep and goats, and myrtle bowers and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please Barbarians in the

a dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life; but will be for the most part thrown ed away, as men grow wife, and nations grow learned..

to

GRANVILLE.

F GEORGE GRANVILLE,.

or as others write Greenville, or Grenville, afterwards lord Landfdown of Biddeford in the county of Devon, lefs is known than his name and rank might give reafon to expect. He was born about 1667, the fon of Bernard Greenville, who was entrusted by Monk with the most private tranfactions of the Restoration, and the grandfon of Sir Bevil Greenville, who died in the King's caufe, at the battle of Landf downe.

His early education was fuperintended by Sir William Ellis; and his progrefs was fuch that before the age of twelve he was fent to

Cam

Cambridge, where he pronounced a copy of his own verfes to the princefs Mary d'Eftè of Modena, then dutchefs of York, when the vifited the university.

At the acceffion of king James, being now at eighteen, he again exerted his poetical powers, and addrefled the new monarch in three fhort pieces, of which the first is profane, and the two others fuch as a boy might be expected to produce; but he was commended by old Waller, who perhaps was pleased to find himfelf imitated, in fix lines, which, though they begin with nonfenfe and end with duluefs, excited in the young author a rapture of acknowledgement,

In numbers fuch as Waller's felf might use.

It was probably about this time that he wrote the poem to the earl of Peterborough, L upon his accomplishment of the duke of York's 5 marriage with the princess of Modena, whose charms appear to have gained a strong preva

* To Trinity College. By the university register, it appears, that he was admitted to his Master's Degree in 1679: we must, therefore, fet the year of his birth some years back.

lence over his imagination, and upon whom nothing ever has been charged but imprudent piety, an intemperate and mifguided zeal for the propagation of popery.

However faithful Granville might have been to the King, or however enamoured of the Queen, he has left no reafon for fuppofing that he approved either the artifices or the violence with which the King's religion was infinuated or obtruded. He endeavoured to be true at once to the King and to the Church. Of this regulated loyalty he has tranfmitted to pofterity a fufficient proof, in the letter which he wrote to his father about a month before the prince of Orange landed.

"Mar, near Doncaster, Oct. 6, 1688.

"To the honourable Mr. Barnard Granville, "at the earl of Bathe's, St. James's.

"SIR,

Your having no profpect of obtaining' a "commiffion for me, can no way alter or cool my defire at this important juncture to ven

66

ture my life, in fome manner or other, for "my King and my Country.