A New General Biographical Dictionary/Granville, George
GRANVILLE, GREENVILE, or GRENVILLE, (George,) viscount Lansdowne, an English poet, was born in 1667, and in his childhood was sent to France, under the tuition of Sir William Ellys, a pupil of Busby, from whom he imbibed a taste for classical learning. At the age of ten he was sent to Trinity college, Cambridge; and on account of his extraordinary merit he was created M. A. at the age of thirteen, and left the university soon after. He had a strong passion for a military life, which discovered itself on the duke of Monmouth’s rebellion, and he requested his father to let him arm in defence of his sovereign; but being then only eighteen years of age, he was thought too young for such an enterprize. It was not without extreme reluctance that he submitted to the tenderness of paternal restraint. He took up his pen after the rebellion was crushed, and addressed some congratulatory lines to the king. When the prince of Orange declared his intended expedition to England, he made a fresh application, in the most importunate terms, to be permitted to prove his loyalty. His letter to his father on this occasion, which is printed by Dr. Johnson, is an elegant composition; but this was likewise unavailing, as the danger was increased in a greater proportion than his age. He now sat down a quiet spectator of the revolution, in which most of his family acquiesced; and resolving to lay aside all thoughts of pushing his fortune either in the court or the camp, he endeavoured to divert his melancholy in the company and conversation of the softer sex. His adopted favourite was the countess of Newburgh, and he exerted all his powers of verse in singing the charms of this inexorable enchantress, and the sweets of his own captivity. In this temper he passed the course of king William’s reign in private life, employing his muse in celebrating the reigning beauties of that age, as Waller, whom he strove to imitate, had celebrated those of the preceding. He wrote also several dramatic pieces, and his British Enchanters was introduced by Betterton upon the stage, where it obtained general applause for at least forty successive nights. Addison joined with Dryden in sounding his praises; the former in the epilogue to the British Enchanters, and the latter, in some verses addressed to him upon his tragedy of Heroic Love. Upon the accession of queen Anne he made his court to her in the politest manner in Urganda’s prophecy, spoken by way of epilogue at the first representation of the British Enchanters. He entered heartily into the measures for carrying on the war against France; and, with a view to excite a proper spirit in the nation, he translated the second Olynthiac of Demosthenes, in 1702. And when the design upon Cadiz was projected the same year, he presented to Harley, afterwards earl of Oxford, an authentic journal of Wimbledon’s expedition thither in 1625; in order that, by avoiding the errors committed in a former attempt upon that place, a more successful plan might be formed. But, little attention being given to it, the same mistakes were committed, and the same disappointment ensued; though Vigo fell into the hands of the duke of Ormond. After the death of his father he was returned to 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 decease of his eldest brother, who died that year, in his passage from Barbadoes. Hence he now stood at the head of his family, with the possession of an ample fortune. A change of administration, however, cut off his prospects of advancement at court. About this time he introduced Wycherley and Pope, then about eighteen years of age, to the acquaintance of Henry St. John, afterwards lord Bolingbroke. Sacheverell’s trial (1710) brought Granville’s friends again into power, and 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 Walpole. In December 1711 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, as already two peerages, that of the earl of Bath, and that of lord Grenville of Potheridge, had been extinguished almost at the same time in his family. In the succeeding year (1712) he was sworn of her majesty’s privy-council, made controller of her household, and about a year after was 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.” The death of the queen removed him from his office; but he did not forget his friends, and therefore vehemently protested against the attainting of Ormond and Bolingbroke. 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 as possessed now with the same political fire and frenzy for the Pretender, as he had shown in his youth for the father. In consequence, however, of being suspected, he was apprehended September 26, 1715, and committed prisoner to the Tower, where he continued until February 8, 1717, when he was released without any form of trial or acquittal. He continued steady to his former principles, which were so opposite to those of the court, and so inconsistent with the measures taken by the administration, that a watchful eye was kept upon him. Accordingly, when, in 1722, the flame broke out against his friends, on account of what is sometimes called Atterbury’s plot, he withdrew to France. He continued at Paris for about ten years, and at his return to England, in 1732, he published his poems, together with a vindication of his uncle, Sir Richard Greenville, against the misrepresentations of Clarendon, Echard, and Burnet, in 2 vols, 4 to. 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. 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, afterwards princess of Orange. His remaining years were passed in retirement, to the day of his death, which happened January 30, 1735, in his sixty-eighth year. He had no male issue by his lady, Mary, daughter of Edward Villiers, earl of Jersey, who died a few days before him. The title of Lansdowne, therefore, became in him extinct.