[* A noble imitator, in its aristocratic sense, of Waller; and better known as Granville the polite than Granville the poet.] MATTHEW GREEN. [orn, 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-honse, 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 lifetime. 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 originality in Fitzosborne's Letters, and Gray duly commended it in his correspondence with Walpole, 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 its certainly unrivalled †. FROM "THE SPLEEN." CONTENTMENT, parent of delight, [* He was a clerk in the Custom House, on, it is thought, a small salary; but the writer of this note has hunted over official books in vain for a notice of his appointment, and of obituaries for the time of his death.] Thy gracious auspices impart, And for thy temple choose my heart. [There is a profusion of wit everywhere in Green; reading would have formed his judgment and harmonized his verse, for even his wood-notes often break out into strains of real poetry and music.-GRAY.] By happy alchemy of mind They turn to pleasure all they find ; The whizzing shafts that round them fly: Forced by soft violence of pray'r, And thus she models my desire. A farm some twenty miles from town, And drive, while t'other holds the plough; Where cows may cool, and geese may swim; And woods impervious to the breeze, Here stillness, height, and solemn shade While soft as breezy breath of wind, Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep, And lesser Nymphs on side of hills Thus shelter'd, free from care and strife, But now more serious see me grow, And what I think, my Memmius, know. Th' enthusiast's hope, and raptures wild, Have never yet my reason foil'd. His springy soul dilates like air, When free from weight of ambient care, And, hush'd in meditation deep, Slides into dreams, as when asleep ; Then, fond of new discoveries grown, Proves a Columbus of her own, Disdains the narrow bounds of place, And through the wilds of endless space, Borne up on metaphysic wings, Chases light forms and shadowy things, And, in the vague excursion caught, Brings home some rare exotic thought. The melancholy man such dreams, For who, though bribed by gain to lie, That superstition mayn't create, To thee, Creator uncreate, O Entium Ens! divinely great !- On quicksands swallowing shipwreck'd thought; Mute praise, and humble negatives. Who can't be cruel, or unjust, Through life's foul way, like vagrant, pass'd, He'll grant a settlement at last; And with sweet ease the wearied crown By leave to lay his being down. If doom'd to dance th' eternal round And dissolution soon to come, Like spunge, wipes out life's present sum, An endless series to receive; Then, if hard dealt with here by fate, And consciousness must go along, And sign th' acquittance for the wrong. Curious to try, what 'tis to hate : Thus, thus I steer my bark, and sail At helm I make my reason sit, I make (may heaven propitious send GEORGE LILLO. [Born, 1693. Died, 1743.] GEORGE LILLO was the son of a Dutch jeweller, who married an English woman, and settled in London. Our poet was born near Moorfields, was bred to his father's business, and followed it for many years. The story of his dying in distress was a fiction of Hammond, the poet; for he bequeathed a considerable property to his nephew, whom he made his heir. It has been said that this bequest was in consequence of his finding the young man disposed to lend him a sum of money at a time when he thought proper to feign pecuniary distress, in order that he might discover the sincerity of those calling themselves his friends. Thomas Davies, his biographer and editor, professes to have got this anecdote from a surviving partner of Lillo. It bears, however, an intrinsic air of improbability. It is not usual for sensible tradesmen to affect being on the verge of bankruptcy, and Lillo's character was that of an uncommonly sensible man. Fielding, his intimate friend, ascribes to him a manly simplicity of mind, that is extremely unlike such a stratagem. Lillo is the tragic poet of middling and familiar life. Instead of heroes from romance and history, he gives the merchant and his apprentice; and the Macbeth of his "Fatal Curiosity" is a private gentleman, who has been reduced by his poverty to dispose of his copy of Seneca for a morsel of bread. The mind will be apt, after reading his works, to suggest to itself the question, how far the graver drama would gain or lose by a more general adoption of this plebeian principle. The cares, it may be said, that are most familiar to our existence, and the distresses of those nearest to ourselves in situation, ought to lay the strongest hold upon our sympathies, and the general mass of society ought to furnish a more express image of man than any detached or elevated portion of the species. Lillo is certainly a master of potent effect in the exhibition of human suffering. His representation of actual or intended murder seems to assume a deeper terror from the familiar circumstances of life with which it is invested. Such indeed is said to have been the effect of a scene in his "Arden of Feversham," that the audience rose up with one accord and interrupted it. The anecdote, whether true or false, must recall to the mind of every one who has perused that piece, the harrowing sympathy which it is calculated to excite. But, notwithstanding the power of Lillo's works, we entirely miss in them that romantic attraction which invites to repeated perusal of them. They give us life in a close and dreadful semblance of reality, but not arrayed in the magic illusion of poetry. His strength lies in conception of situations, not in beauty of dialogue, or in the eloquence of the passions. Yet the effect of his plain and homely subjects was so strikingly superior to that of the vapid and heroic productions of the day, as to induce some of his contemporary admirers to pronounce that he had reached the acme of dramatic excellence, and struck into the best and most genuine path of tragedy. George Barnwell, it was observed, drew more tears than the rants of Alexander. This might be true, but it did not bring the comparison of humble and heroic subjects to a fair test; for the tragedy of Alexander is bad not from its subject, but from the incapacity of the poet who composed it. It does not prove that heroes drawn from history or romance are not at least as susceptible of high and poetical effect as a wicked apprentice, or a distressed gentleman pawning his moveables. It is one question whether Lillo has given to his subjects from private life the degree of beauty of which they are susceptible. He is a master of terrific, but not of tender impressions. We feel a harshness and gloom in his genius even while we are compelled to admire its force and originality. The peculiar choice of his subjects was happy and commendable as far as it regarded himself, for his talents never succeeded so well when he ventured out of them. But it is another question, whether the familiar cast of those subjects was fitted to constitute a more genuine, or only a subordinate, walk in tragedy. Undoubtedly the genuine delineation of the human heart will please us, from whatever station or circumstances of life it is derived. In the simple pathos of tragedy probably very little difference will be felt from the choice of characters being pitched above or below the line of mediocrity in station. But something more than pathos is required in tragedy; and the very pain that attends our sympathy requires agreeable and romantic associations of the fancy to be blended with its poignancy. Whatever attaches ideas of importance, publicity, and elevation to the object of pity, forms a brightening and alluring medium to the imagination. Athens herself, with all her simplicity and democracy, delighted on the stage to "let gorgeous Tragedy "In sceptred pall come sweeping by." Even situations far depressed beneath the familiar mediocrity of life are more picturesque and poetical than its ordinary level. It is certainly on the virtues of the middling rank of life that the strength and comforts of society chiefly depend, in the same manner as we look for the harvest not on cliffs and precipices, but on the easy slope and the uniform plain. But the painter does not in general fix on level countries for the subjects of his noblest landscapes. There is an analogy, I conceive, to this in the moral painting of tragedy. Disparities of station give it boldness of outline. The commanding situations of life are its mountain scenery-the region where its storm and sunshine may be portrayed in their strongest contrast and colouring. FROM "THE FATAL CURIOSITY." ACT II. SCENE 1. Persons-MARIA, CHARLOTTE, and YOUNG WILMOT. Enter CHARLOTTE, thoughtful; and soon after MARIA from the other side. Mar. MADAM, a stranger in a foreign habit Desires to see you. Char. In a foreign habit 'Tis strange, and unexpected-But admit him. [Exit MARIA. Who can this stranger be? I know no foreigner, Enter YOUNG WILMOT. Nor any man like this. [Going to embrace her. Char. You are rude, sir-Pray forbear, and let me know What business brought you here, or leave the place. Y. Wilm. She knows me not, or will not seem to know me. [Aside. Perfidious maid! Am I forgot or scorn'd? Char. Strange questions from a man I never knew! Y. Wilm. With what aversion and contempt she views me! My fears are true; some other has her heart : O gentle stranger! ease my swelling heart Y. Wilm. This I know, When all the winds of heaven seem'd to conspire And his last breath press'd t'wards his trembling lips, The neighbouring rocks, that echoed to his moan, Return'd no sound articulate, but Charlotte ! Char. The fatal tempest whose description strikes The hearer with astonishment is ceased; And Wilmot is at rest. The fiercer storm Of swelling passions that o'erwhelms the soul, And rages worse than the mad foaming seas In which he perish'd, ne'er shall vex him more. Y. Wilm. Thou seem'st to think he's dead: enjoy that thought; Persuade yourself that what you wish is true, Forgetting all her vows to him and heaven, died; Detested falsehood now has done its worst. For one thou thought'st unjust?—Thou soul of truth! Perhaps I dream, and this is all illusion. Char. If, as some teach, the mind intuitive, |