fails to obtain admirers. “La Jeune Fille à l’agneau” fetched, indeed, at the Pourtalès sale in 1865, no less than 1,000,200 francs. One of Greuze’s pupils, Madame Le Doux, imitated with success the manner of her master; his daughter and granddaughter, Madame de Valory, also inherited some traditions of his talent. Madame de Valory published in 1813 a comédie-vaudeville, Greuze, ou l’accordée de village, to which she prefixed a notice of her grandfather’s life and works, and the Salons of Diderot also contain, besides many other particulars, the story at full length of Greuze’s quarrel with the Academy. Four of the most distinguished engravers of that date, Massard père, Flipart, Gaillard and Levasseur, were specially entrusted by Greuze with the reproduction of his subjects, but there are also excellent prints by other engravers, notably by Cars and Le Bas.
See also Normand, J. B. Greuze (1892). (E. F. S. D.)
GREVILLE, CHARLES CAVENDISH FULKE (1794–1865),
English diarist, a great-grandson by his father of the 5th earl of
Warwick, and son of Lady Charlotte Bentinck, daughter of the
duke of Portland, formerly a leader of the Whig party, and
first minister of the crown, was born on the 2nd of April 1794.
Much of his childhood was spent at his grandfather’s house
at Bulstrode. He was one of the pages of George III., and was
educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford; but he left the
university early, having been appointed private secretary to
Earl Bathurst before he was twenty. The interest of the duke
of Portland had secured for him the secretaryship of the island
of Jamaica, which was a sinecure office, the duties being performed
by a deputy, and the reversion of the clerkship of the
council. Greville entered upon the discharge of the duties of
clerk of the council in ordinary in 1821, and continued to perform
them for nearly forty years. He therefore served under three
successive sovereigns,—George IV., William IV. and Victoria,—and
although no political or confidential functions are attached
to that office, it is one which brings a man into habitual intercourse
with the chiefs of all the parties in the state. Well-born,
well-bred, handsome and accomplished, Greville led the easy
life of a man of fashion, taking an occasional part in the transactions
of his day and much consulted in the affairs of private life.
Until 1855 when he sold his stud he was an active member of
the turf, and he trained successively with Lord George Bentinck,
and with the duke of Portland. But the celebrity which now
attaches to his name is entirely due to the posthumous publication
of a portion of a Journal or Diary which it was his practice to
keep during the greater part of his life. These papers were
given by him to his friend Mr Henry Reeve a short time before
his death (which took place on the 18th of January 1865), with
an injunction that they should be published, as far as was
feasible, at not too remote a period after the writer’s death. The
journals of the reigns of George IV. and William IV. (extending
from 1820 to 1837) were accordingly so published in obedience
to his directions about ten years after that event. Few publications
have been received with greater interest by the public;
five large editions were sold in little more than a year, and the
demand in America was as great as in England. These journals
were regarded as a faithful record of the impressions made on
the mind of a competent observer, at the time, by the events he
witnessed and the persons with whom he associated. Greville
did not stoop to collect or record private scandal. His object
appears to have been to leave behind him some of the materials
of history, by which the men and actions of his own time would
be judged. He records not so much public events as the private
causes which led to them; and perhaps no English memoir-writer
has left behind him a more valuable contribution to the
history of the 19th century. Greville published anonymously, in
1845, a volume on the Past and Present Policy of England to
Ireland, in which he advocated the payment of the Roman
Catholic clergy; and he was also the author of several pamphlets
on the events of his day.
His brother, Henry Greville (1801–1872), attaché to the British embassy in Paris from 1834 to 1844, also kept a diary, of which part was published by Viscountess Enfield, Leaves from the Diary of Henry Greville (London, 1883–1884).
See the preface and notes to the Greville Memoirs by Henry Reeve. The memoirs appeared in three sets—one from 1817 to 1837 (London, 1875, 3 vols.), and two for the period from 1837 to 1860, three volumes in 1885 and two in 1887. When the first series appeared in 1875 some passages caused extreme offence. The copies issued were as far as possible recalled and passages suppressed.
GRÉVIN, JACQUES (c. 1539–1570), French dramatist, was born
at Clermont about 1539. He studied medicine at the university
of Paris. He became a disciple of Ronsard, and was one of the
band of dramatists who sought to introduce the classical drama
in France. As Sainte-Beuve points out, the comedies of Grévin
show considerable affinity with the farces and soties that preceded
them. His first play, La Maubertine, was lost, and formed the
basis of a new comedy, La Trésorière, first performed at the
college of Beauvais in 1558, though it had been originally composed
at the desire of Henry II. to celebrate the marriage of
Claude, duchess of Lorraine. In 1560 followed the tragedy of
Jules César, imitated from the Latin of Muret, and a comedy,
Les Ébahis, the most important but also the most indecent of
his works. Grévin was also the author of some medical works
and of miscellaneous poems, which were praised by Ronsard
until the friends were separated by religious differences. Grévin became in 1561 physician and counsellor to Margaret of Savoy, and died at her court in Turin in 1570.
The Théâtre of Jacques Grévin was printed in 1562, and in the Ancien Théâtre français, vol. iv. (1855–1856). See L. Pinvert, Jacques Grévin (1899).
GRÈVY, FRANÇOIS PAUL JULES (1813–1891). President
of the French Republic, was born at Mont-sous-Vaudrey in the
Jura, on the 15th of August 1813. He became an advocate in
1837, and, having steadily maintained republican principles
under the Orleans monarchy, was elected by his native department
to the Constituent Assembly of 1848. Foreseeing that
Louis Bonaparte would be elected president by the people, he
proposed to vest the chief authority in a president of the Council
elected and removable by the Assembly, or in other words, to
suppress the Presidency of the Republic. After the coup d’état
this proposition gained Grévy a reputation for sagacity, and upon
his return to public life in 1868 he took a prominent place in
the republican party. After the fall of the Empire he was
chosen president of the Assembly on the 16th of February 1871,
and occupied this position till the 2nd of April 1876, when he
resigned on account of the opposition of the Right, which
blamed him for having called one of its members to order in the
session of the previous day. On the 8th of March 1876 he was
elected president of the Chamber of Deputies, a post which he
filled with such efficiency that upon the resignation of Marshal
MacMahon he seemed to step naturally into the Presidency of
the Republic (30th January 1879), and was elected without
opposition by the republican parties (see France: History).
Quiet, shrewd, attentive to the public interest and his own,
but without any particular distinction, he would have left an
unblemished reputation if he had not unfortunately accepted
a second term (18th December 1885). Shortly afterwards the
traffic of his son-in-law (Daniel Wilson) in the decorations of the
Legion of Honour came to light. Grévy was not accused of
personal participation in these scandals, but he was somewhat
obstinate in refusing to realize that he was responsible indirectly
for the use which his relative had made of the Élysée, and it had
to be unpleasantly impressed upon him that his resignation was
inevitable (2nd December 1887). He died at Mont-sous-Vaudrey
on the 9th of September 1891. He owed both his success and
his failure to the completeness with which he represented the
particular type of the thrifty, generally sensible and patriotic,
but narrow-minded and frequently egoistic bourgeois.
See his Discours politiques et judiciaires, rapports et messages . . . accompagnés de notices historiques et précédés d’une introduction par L. Delabrousse (2 vols., 1888).
GREW, NEHEMIAH (1641–1712), English vegetable anatomist
and physiologist, was the only son of Obadiah Grew (1607–1688),
Nonconformist divine and vicar of St Michael’s, Coventry, and
was born in Warwickshire in 1641. He graduated at Cambridge
in 1661, and ten years later took the degree of M.D. at Leiden,
