ship of St. Paul's, which bishop Egerton vacated on bis translation to the see of Durham. He now removed to his residentiary-house in Amen-corner, and took a small country-house at Tottenham. It has often been noticed as a circumstance conducing to our prelate's honour, that, in May 1772, when the bill for relief of protestant dissenters, &c. after having passed the house of commons, was rejected, on the second reading, by the house of lords (102 to 27), he dissented from his brethren, and was the only bishop who voted in its favour. Without any particular previous indisposition, his lordship died suddenly in his chair at Bath, on Sunday, April 25, 1779. This elegant scholar was one of the writers of the celebrated "Athenian Letters," published by the earl of Hardwicke in 1798, 2 vols. 4to.'

GREEN (MATTHEW), an ingenious English poet, was descended from a family in good repute among the dissenters, and had his education in some of the sects into which that body is divided. He was a man of approved probity, and sweetness of temper and manners. His wit abounded in conversation, and was never known to give offence. He had a post in the custom-house, where he discharged his duty with the utmost diligence and ability, and died at the age of forty-one years, at a lodging in Nag's-head-court, Gracechurch-street, in 1737.

Mr. Green, it is added, had not much learning, but knew a little Latin. He was very subject to the hip, had some free notions on religious subjects, and, though bred amongst the dissenters, grew disgusted at the preciseness and formality of the sect. He was nephew to Mr. Tanner, clerk of fishmongers'-hall. His poem entitled "The Spleen," was written by piece-meal, and would never have been completed, had he not been pressed to it by his friend Glover, the celebrated author of "Leonidas," &c. By this gentleman it was committed to the press soon after Green's death.

This very amusing author published nothing in his lifetime. In 1732 he printed a few copies of "The Grotto," which was afterwards inserted in the 5th volume of Dousley's Collection.

The following anecdotes are given from indisputable

i Gent. Mag. 1779; see Index.-Cole's MS Athene in the British Museum. --Nichols's Poems, vol. VIII.-See also Mr. Tyson's Letters in the "Literary Anecdotes," vol. VIII.

authority:Mr. Sylvanus Bevan, a quaker and a friend of Mr. Green, was mentioning, at Batson's coffee-house, that, while he was bathing in the river, a waterman saluted him with the usual insult of the lower class of people, by calling out, "A quaker, a quaker, quirl!" He at the same expressed his wonder, how his profession could be known while he was without his cloaths. Green immediately replied, that the waterman might discover him by his swimming against the stream.-The department in the customhouse to which Mr. Green belonged was under the controul of the duke of Manchester, who used to treat those immediately under him once a year. After one of these entertainments, Mr. Green, seeing a range of servants in the hall, said to the first of them, "Pray, sir, do you give tickets at your turnpike ?"-In a reform which took place in the custom-house, amongst other articles, a few pence, paid weekly for providing the cats with milk, were ordered to be struck off. On this occasion, Mr. Green wrote a humourous petition as from the cats, which prevented the regulation in that particular from taking place.-Mr. Green's conversation was as novel as his writings, which occasioned one of the commissioners of the customs, a very dull man, to observe, that he did not know how it was, but Green always expressed himself in a different manner from other people.

Such is the only information which the friends of this poet have thought proper to hand down to posterity, if we except Glover, the author of the preface to the first edi tion of "The Spleen," who introduces the poem in these words:

"The author of the following poem had the greatest part of his time taken up in business; but was accustomed at his leisure hours to amuse himself with striking out small sketches of wit or humour for the entertainment of his friends, sometimes in verse, at other times in prose. The greatest part of these alluded to incidents known only within the circle of his acquaintance. The subject of the following poem will be more generally understood. It was at first a very short copy of verses; but at the desire of the person to whom it is addressed, the author enlarged it to its present state. As it was writ without any design of its passing beyond the hands of his acquaintance, so the author's unexpected death soon after disappointed many of his most intimate friends in their design of pre

vailing on him to review and prepare it for the sight of the public. It therefore now appears under all the disadvantages that can attend a posthumous work. But it is presumed every imperfection of this kind is abundantly overbalanced by the peculiar and unborrowed cast of thought and expression, which manifests itself throughout, and secures to this performance the first and principal character necessary to recommend a work of genius, that of being an original."

"The Spleen" had not been long published before it was admired by those whose opinion was at that time decisive. Pope said there was a great deal of originality in it; and Gray, in his private correspondence with the late lord Orford, observes of Green's poems, then published in Dodsley's Collection, "There is a profusion of wit every where; 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." "The Spleen" was first printed in 1737, a short time after the author's death, and afterwards was taken, with his other poems, into Dodsley's volumes, where they remained until the publication of the second edition of Dr. Johnson's Poets. In 1796 a very elegant edition was published by Messrs. Cadell and Davies, which, besides some beautiful engrav ings, is enriched with a prefatory essay from the pen of Dr. Aikin. '

GREENE (MAURICE, Dr.), an eminent English musician, was the son of the Rev. Thomas Greene, vicar of St. Olave Jewry, in London, and nephew of John Greene, serjeant at law. He was brought up in the choir of St. Paul, and when his voice broke was bound apprentice to Brind, the organist of that cathedral. He was early noticed as an elegant organ-player and composer for the church, and obtained the place of organist of St. Dunstan in the West before he was twenty years of age. In 1717, on the death of Daniel Purcell, he was likewise elected organist of St. Andrew's, Holborn; but the next year, his master, Brind, dying, Greene was appointed his successor by the dean and chapter of St. Paul's; upon which event he quitted both the places he had previously obtained. In 1726, on the death of Dr. Crofts, he was appointed organist and composer to the chapel royal; and on the death of

1 Johnson and Chalmers's English Poets, 1810.

Eccles, 1735, master of his majesty's band. In 1730 he obtained the degree of doctor in music at Cambridge, and was appointed public music professor in the same university, in the room of Dr. Tudway. Greene was an intelligent man, a constant attendant at the opera, and an acute observer of the improvements in composition and performance, which Handel and the Italian singers employed in his dramas, had introduced into this country. His melody is therefore more elegant, and harmony more pure, than those of his predecessors, though less nervous and original. Greene had the misfortune to live in the age and neighbourhood of a musical giant, with whom he was utterly unable to contend, but by cabal and alliance with his enemies. Handel was but too prone to treat inferior artists with contempt; and for many years of his life never spoke of Greene without some injurious epithet. Greene's figure was below the common size, and he had the misfortune to be very much deformed; yet his address and exterior manners were those of a man of the world, mild, attentive, and well-bred.

Greene had the honour, early in life, to teach the du chess of Newcastle, which, joined to his professional merit, and the propriety of his conduct, was the foundation of his favour with the prime minister and the nobility. In 1730, when the duke of Newcastle was installed chancellor of the university of Cambridge, he was appointed to set the ode, and then not only obtained his doctor's degree, but, on the death of Dr. Tudway, he was honoured with the title of professor of music in that university. As an exercise for his degree, he set Pope's ode for St. Cecilia's day; having first had interest sufficient to prevail on the author to make new arrangements in the poem to render it more fit for music, and even to add an entire new stanza, between the second and third, which had never appeared in any of the printed editions.

Greene had sense and knowledge sufficient, in his younger days, to admire and respect the abilities of the two great musical champions, Handel and Bononcini, but owing probably to Handel's contemptuous treatment of him, became a partizan on the side of Bononcini. Greene's merit and connections were such, that he soon arrived at the most honourable appointments in his profession: for besides being organist of St. Paul's, in 1727, on the death of Dr. Croft, he was appointed organist and composer of

the chapel royal; and in 1735 he succeeded Eccles as composer to his majesty, and master of his band, in which station he set all the odes of the laureat Colley Cibber, as long as he lived.

The compositions of Dr. Greene were very numerous, particularly for the church. Early in his career he set a Te Deum, and part of the Song of Deborah, which were never printed; but the anthems and services which he produced for St. Paul's and the king's chapel he collected and published in two vols. folio; and of these the merit is so various as to leave them open to much discrimination and fair criticism. There is considerable merit of various kinds in his catches, canons, and two-part songs; the composition is clear, correct, and masterly; the melodies, for the times when they were produced, are elegant, and designs intelligent and ingenious. The collection of harpsichord lessons, which he published late in his life, though they discovered no great powers of invention, or hand, had its day of favour, as a boarding-school book; for being neither so elaborate as those of Handel, nor so difficult as the lessons of Scarlatti, or the sonatas of Alberti, they gave but little trouble either to the master or the scholar. During the last years of his life he began to collect the services and anthems of our old church composers, from the single parts used in the several cathedrals of the kingdom, in order to correct and publish them in score; a plan which he did not live to accomplish, but as he bequeathed his papers to Dr. Boyce, it was afterwards executed in a very splendid and ample manner. Dr. Greene died in 1755.1

GREENE (ROBERT), an English poet and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan age, and memorable for his talents and imprudence, was a native of Norwich, and born about 1560. His father appears to have been a citizen of Norwich, the fabricator of his own fortune, which it is thought he had accumulated by all the tricks of selfishness and narrow prudence. He educated his son, however, as a scholar, at St. John's college, Cambridge. Here he took the degree of A. B. in 1578, and for some time travelled into Italy and Spain. On his return, he took his master's degree at Clare-hall, in 1583, and was incorporated in the same at Oxford in 1588, no inconsiderable proof that his

1 Burney and Hawkins's Hist. of Music.-Rees's Cyclopædia by Burney, VOL. XVI.

R