Chapter 14

The best edition of his poems is A. A. Rénouard’s (1811). See Jules Wogue,J. B. L. Gresset(1894).

GRETNA GREEN,orGraitney Green, a village in the south-east of Dumfriesshire, Scotland, about 8 m. E. of Annan, 9 m. N.N.W. of Carlisle, and ¾ m. from the river Sark, here the dividing-line between England and Scotland, with a station on the Glasgow & South-Western railway. The Caledonian and North British railways have a station at Gretna on the English side of the Border. As the nearest village on the Scottish side, Gretna Green was notorious as the resort of eloping couples, who had failed to obtain the consent of parents or guardians to their union. Up till 1754, when Lord Hardwicke’s act abolishing clandestine marriages came into force, the ceremony had commonly been performed in the Fleet prison in London. After that date runaway couples were compelled to seek the hospitality of a country where it sufficed for them to declare their wish to marry in the presence of witnesses. At Gretna Green the ceremony was usually performed by the blacksmith, but the toll-keeper, ferryman or in fact any person might officiate, and the toll-house, the inn, or, after 1826, Gretna Hall was the scene of many such weddings, the fees varying from half a guinea to a sum as large as impudence could extort or extravagance bestow. As many as two hundred couples were married at the toll-house in a year. The romantic traffic was practically, though not necessarily, put an end to in 1856, when the law required one of the contracting parties to reside in Scotland three weeks previous to the event.

GRÉTRY, ANDRÉ ERNEST MODESTE(1741-1813), French composer, was born at Liége on the 8th of February 1741, his father being a poor musician. He was a choir boy at the church of St Denis. In 1753 he became a pupil of Leclerc and later of Renekin and Moreau. But of greater importance was the practical tuition he received by attending the performance of an Italian opera company. Here he heard the operas of Galuppi, Pergolesi and other masters; and the desire of completing his own studies in Italy was the immediate result. To find the necessary means he composed in 1759 a mass which he dedicated to the canons of the Liége cathedral, and it was at the cost of Canon Hurley that he went to Italy in the March of 1759. In Rome he went to the Collège de Liége. Here Grétry resided for five years, studiously employed in completing his musical education under Casali. His proficiency in harmony and counterpoint was, however, according to his own confession, at all times very moderate. His first great success was achieved byLa Vendemmiatrice, an Italian intermezzo or operetta, composed for the Aliberti theatre in Rome and received with universalapplause. It is said that the study of the score of one of Monsigny’s operas, lent to him by a secretary of the French embassy in Rome, decided Grétry to devote himself to French comic opera. On New Year’s day 1767 he accordingly left Rome, and after a short stay at Geneva (where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire, and produced another operetta) went to Paris. There for two years he had to contend with the difficulties incident to poverty and obscurity. He was, however, not without friends, and by the intercession of Count Creutz, the Swedish ambassador, Grétry obtained a libretto from Marmontel, which he set to music in less than six weeks, and which, on its performance in August 1768, met with unparalleled success. The name of the opera wasLe Huron. Two others,LucileandLe Tableau parlant, soon followed, and thenceforth Grétry’s position as the leading composer of comic opera was safely established. Altogether he composed some fifty operas. His masterpieces areZémire et AzorandRichard Cœur de Lion,—the first produced in 1771, the second in 1784. The latter in an indirect way became connected with a great historic event. In it occurs the celebrated romance,O Richard, ô mon roi, l’univers t’abandonne, which was sung at the banquet—“fatal as that of Thyestes,” remarks Carlyle—given by the bodyguard to the officers of the Versailles garrison on October 3, 1789. TheMarseillaisenot long afterwards became the reply of the people to the expression of loyalty borrowed from Grétry’s opera. The composer himself was not uninfluenced by the great events he witnessed, and the titles of some of his operas, such asLa Rosière républicaineandLa Fête de la raison, sufficiently indicate the epoch to which they belong; but they are merepièces de circonstance, and the republican enthusiasm displayed is not genuine. Little more successful was Grétry in his dealings with classical subjects. His genuine power lay in the delineation of character and in the expression of tender and typically French sentiment. The structure of his concerted pieces on the other hand is frequently flimsy, and his instrumentation so feeble that the orchestral parts of some of his works had to be rewritten by other composers, in order to make them acceptable to modern audiences. During the revolution Grétry lost much of his property, but the successive governments of France vied in favouring the composer, regardless of political differences. From the old court he received distinctions and rewards of all kinds; the republic made him an inspector of the conservatoire; Napoleon granted him the cross of the legion of honour and a pension. Grétry died on the 24th of September 1813, at the Hermitage in Montmorency, formerly the house of Rousseau. Fifteen years after his death Grétry’s heart was transferred to his birthplace, permission having been obtained after a tedious lawsuit. In 1842 a colossal bronze statue of the composer was set up at Liége.

See Michael Brenet,Vie de Grétry(Paris, 1884); Joach. le Breton,Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de Grétry(Paris, 1814); A. Grétry (his nephew),Grétry en famille(Paris, 1814); Felix van Hulst,Grétry(Liége, 1842); L. D. S.Notice biographique sur Grétry(Bruxelles, 1859).

GREUZE, JEAN BAPTISTE(1725-1805), French painter, was born at Tournus, in Burgundy, on the 21st of August 1725, and is generally said to have formed his own talent; this is, however, true only in the most limited sense, for at an early age his inclinations, though thwarted by his father, were encouraged by a Lyonnese artist named Grandon, or Grondom, who enjoyed during his lifetime considerable reputation as a portrait-painter. Grandon not only persuaded the father of Greuze to give way to his son’s wishes, and permit the lad to accompany him as his pupil to Lyons, but, when at a later date he himself left Lyons for Paris—where his son-in-law Grétry the celebrated composer enjoyed the height of favour—Grandon carried young Greuze with him. Settled in Paris, Greuze worked from the living model in the school of the Royal Academy, but did not attract the attention of his teachers; and when he produced his first picture, “Le Père de famille expliquant la Bible à ses enfants,” considerable doubt was felt and shown as to his share in its production. By other and more remarkable works of the same class Greuze soon established his claims beyond contest, and won for himself the notice and support of the well-known connoisseur La Live de Jully, the brother-in-law of Madame d’Épinay. In 1755 Greuze exhibited his “Aveugle trompé,” upon which, presented by Pigalle the sculptor, he was immediatelyagrééby the Academy. Towards the close of the same year he left France for Italy, in company with the Abbé Louis Gougenot, who had deserted from the magistrature—although he had obtained the post of “conseillier au Châtelet”—in order to take the “petit collet.” Gougenot had some acquaintance with the arts, and was highly valued by the Academicians, who, during his journey with Greuze, elected him an honorary member of their body on account of his studies in mythology and allegory; his acquirements in these respects are said to have been largely utilized by them, but to Greuze they were of doubtful advantage, and he lost rather than gained by this visit to Italy in Gougenot’s company. He had undertaken it probably in order to silence those who taxed him with ignorance of “great models of style,” but the Italian subjects which formed the entirety of his contributions to the Salon of 1757 showed that he had been put on a false track, and he speedily returned to the source of his first inspiration. In 1759, 1761 (“L’Accordée de village”—Louvre), and 1763 Greuze exhibited with ever-increasing success; in 1765 he reached the zenith of his powers and reputation. In that year he was represented with no less than thirteen works, amongst which may be cited “La Jeune Fille qui pleure son oiseau mort,” “La Bonne Mère,” “Le Mauvais fils puni” (Louvre) and “La Malédiction paternelle” (Louvre). The Academy took occasion to press Greuze for his diploma picture, the execution of which had been long delayed, and forbade him to exhibit on their walls until he had complied with their regulations. “J’ai vu la lettre,” says Diderot, “qui est un modèle d’honnêteté et d’estime; j’ai vu la réponse de Greuze, qui est un modèle de vanité et d’impertinence: il fallait appuyer cela d’un chef-d’œuvre, et c’est ce que Greuze n’a pas fait.” Greuze wished to be received as a historical painter, and produced a work which he intended to vindicate his right to despise his qualifications as apeintre de genre. This unfortunate canvas—“Sevère et Caracalla” (Louvre)—was exhibited in 1769 side by side with Greuze’s portrait of Jeaurat (Louvre) and his admirable “Petite Fille au chien noir.” The Academicians received their new member with all due honours, but at the close of the ceremonies the Director addressed Greuze in these words—“Monsieur, l’Académie vous a reçu, mais c’est comme peintre de genre; elle a eu égard à vos anciennes productions, qui sont excellentes, et elle a fermé les yeux sur celle-ci, qui n’est digne ni d’elle ni de vous.” Greuze, greatly incensed, quarrelled with hisconfrères, and ceased to exhibit until, in 1804, the Revolution had thrown open the doors of the Academy to all the world. In the following year, on the 4th of March 1805, he died in the Louvre in great poverty. He had been in receipt of considerable wealth, which he had dissipated by extravagance and bad management, so that during his closing years he was forced even to solicit commissions which his enfeebled powers no longer enabled him to carry out with success. The brilliant reputation which Greuze acquired seems to have been due, not to his acquirements as a painter—for his practice is evidently that current in his own day—but to the character of the subjects which he treated. That return to nature which inspired Rousseau’s attacks upon an artificial civilization demanded expression in art. Diderot, inLe Fils naturel et le père de famille, tried to turn the vein of domestic drama to account on the stage; that which he tried and failed to do Greuze, in painting, achieved with extraordinary success, although his works, like the plays of Diderot, were affected by that very artificiality against which they protested. The touch of melodramatic exaggeration, however, which runs through them finds an apology in the firm and brilliant play of line, in the freshness and vigour of the flesh tints, in the enticing softness of expression (often obtained by almost an abuse ofméplats), by the alluring air of health and youth, by the sensuous attractions, in short, with which Greuze invests his lessons of bourgeois morality. As Diderot said of “La Bonne Mère,” “ça prêche la population;” and a certain piquancy of contrast is the result which neverfails 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 theSalonsof 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 thePast 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 theGreville Memoirsby 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 andsotiesthat 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 ofJules 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.

TheThéâtreof Jacques Grévin was printed in 1562, and in theAncien 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 thecoup d’étatthis 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 (seeFrance: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 egoisticbourgeois.

See hisDiscours 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,his thesis beingDisputatio medico-physica ... de liquore nervoso. He began observations on the anatomy of plants in 1664, and in 1670 his essay,The Anatomy of Vegetables begun, was communicated to the Royal Society by Bishop Wilkins, on whose recommendation he was in the following year elected a fellow. In 1672, when the essay was published, he settled in London, and soon acquired an extensive practice as a physician. In 1673 he published hisIdea of a Phytological History, which consisted of papers he had communicated to the Royal Society in the preceding year, and in 1677 he succeeded Henry Oldenburg as secretary of the society. He edited thePhilosophical Transactionsin 1678-1679, and in 1681 he published “by request” a descriptive catalogue of the rarities preserved at Gresham College, with which were printed some papers he had read to the Royal Society on theComparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts. In 1682 appeared his great work on theAnatomy of Plants, which also was largely a collection of previous publications. It was divided into four books,Anatomy of Vegetables begun,Anatomy of Roots,Anatomy of TrunksandAnatomy of Leaves, Flowers, Fruits and Seeds, and was illustrated with eighty-two plates, while appended to it were seven papers mostly of a chemical character. Among his other publications wereSea-water made Fresh(1684), theNature and Use of the Salt contained in Epsom and such other Waters(1697), which was a rendering of hisTractatus de salis ... usu(1695), andCosmologia sacra(1701). He died suddenly on the 25th of March 1712. Linnaeus named a genus of treesGrewia(nat. ord. Tiliaceae) in his honour.

GREY, CHARLES GREY,2nd Earl(1764-1845), English statesman, was the eldest surviving son of General Sir Charles Grey, afterwards 1st Earl Grey. He was born at his father’s residence, Fallodon, near Alnwick, on the 13th of March 1764. General Grey (1729-1807), who was a younger son of the house of Grey of Howick, one of the most considerable territorial families in Northumberland, had already begun a career of active service which, like the political career of his son, covered nearly half a century. Before the latter was born, General Grey had served on the staff of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick in the Seven Years’ War and had been wounded at Minden. While the son was making verses at Eton, the father was serving against the revolted colonists in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and while the young member for Northumberland was denouncing Pitt’s war against the Convention, the veteran soldier was destroying the remnant of the French colonial empire by the capture of Martinique and Guadeloupe. When Napoleon threatened an invasion, General Grey took the command of the southern district, and at the peace of Amiens he was rewarded with a peerage, as Baron Grey of Alnwick, being created in 1806 Earl Grey and Viscount Howick. His elder brother, Sir Henry Grey of Howick, the head of the family, had supported the government in parliament. But the political career of young Grey, who was heir-presumptive to the family estates, took a different complexion.

Young Grey expected to reoccupy the seat which had been his uncle’s; and his early years were spent in preparation for a parliamentary career. He was sent to Eton, and proceeded thence to Cambridge. William Pitt, a youth five years older, was then in residence as a master of arts, studiously paying court to the Whigs of the university; and at the general election of 1780 he came forward as a candidate for the academical seat. His name stood last on the poll, but he was brought in elsewhere, and his first speech proved him a man of the first mark. The unparalleled successes which followed portended grave changes. Pitt’s elevation to the premiership, his brilliant and hard-fought battle in the house, and his complete rout of the Whig party at the general election of 1784, when he came in for Cambridge at the head of the poll, threatened the great territorial interest with nothing less than extinction. It was to this interest that Grey belonged; and hence, when at length returned for Northumberland in 1786, he at once came forward as a vigorous assailant of the government of Pitt. He was hailed by the opposition, and associated with Fox, Burke and Sheridan as a manager in the Hastings impeachment. During the nineteen years which remained of the career of Fox, he followed the great Whig statesman with absolute fidelity, and succeeded him as leader of the party. The shortcomings of Fox’s statesmanship were inherited by Grey. Both were equally devoid of political originality, shunned the severer labours of the politician, and instinctively feared any deviation from the traditions of their party. Such men cannot save a party in its decadence, and the history of Fox and Grey has been aptly termed the history of the decline and fall of Whiggism.

The stunning blow of 1784 was the first incident in this history. Its full significance was not at once perceived. An opposition, however weak in the beginning, generally has a tendency to revive, and Grey’s early successes in the house helped to revive the Foxites. The European situation became favourable to this revival. The struggle in France for popular rights, culminating in the great Revolution, was watched by Fox with interested sympathy. He affected to regard the domination of Pitt as the domination of the crown, and as leading logically to absolutism, and saw in that popular sympathy for the French Revolution which naturally arose in England an instrument which might be employed to overthrow this domination.

But Pitt gathered the fruits of the windfall. The spread of “Jacobinism,” or “French principles,” became the pretext on which the stronger half of the opposition went over to the government. Burke led the movement in the Commons, the duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam in the Lords, and with this second incident in the Whig decline began the difficulties of Grey’s career. The domination of the premier had already stirred the keenest resentment in the younger and more ambitious members of the Whig party. Freed from the restraint of the steadier politicians under Burke and Portland, the residuum under Fox fell into a series of grave mistakes. Of this residuum Grey became the moving spirit, for though Fox did not check their activity, he disclaimed the responsibility of their policy. Fox had refused to condemn “French principles,” and denounced the war with France; but he would take no part in exciting agitation in England. It was otherwise with the restless spirits among whom Grey was found. Enraged by the attitude of Pitt, which was grounded on the support of the constituencies as they then stood, the residuum plotted an ill-timed agitation for parliamentary reform.

The demand for parliamentary reform was as yet in a rudimentary stage. Forty years later it had become the demand of an unenfranchised nation, disabused by a sudden spread of political and economical knowledge. It was as yet but the occasional instrument of the scheming politician. Chatham had employed the cry in this sense. The Middlesex agitators had done the same; even the premier of the time, after his accession to power, had sought to strengthen his hands in the same way. But Pitt’s hands were now strengthened abundantly; whereas the opposition had nothing to lose and much to gain by such a measure. The cry for reform thus became their natural expedient. Powerless to carry reform in the House, they sought to overawe parliament by external agitation, and formed the Society of the Friends of the People, destined to unite the forces of all the “patriotic” societies which already existed in the country, and to pour their violence irresistibly on a terrified parliament. Grey and his friends were enrolled in this portentous association, and presented in parliament its menacing petitions. Such petitions, which were in fact violent impeachments of parliament itself, proceeding from voluntary associations having no corporate existence, had been hitherto unknown in the English parliament. They had been well known in the French assembly. They had heralded and furthered the victory of the Jacobins, the dissolution of the constitution, the calling of the Convention and the fall of the monarchy.

The Society of the Friends of the People was originally an after-dinner folly, extemporized at the house of a man who afterwards gained an earldom by denouncing it as seditious. Fox discountenanced it, though he did not directly condemn it; but Grey was overborne by the fierce Jacobinism of Lauderdale, and avowed himself the parliamentary mouthpiece of this dangerousagitation. But Pitt, strong in his position, cut the ground from under Grey’s feet by suppressing the agitation with a strong hand. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the Gagging Acts and the state prosecutions form a painful historical episode. But the discredit belongs as much to Grey and Lauderdale as to Pitt. Grey always spoke regretfully of his share in the movement. “One word from Fox,” he said, “would have kept me out of all the mess of the Friends of the People. But he never spoke it.”

It was Grey who moved the impeachment of Pitt, and he next promoted the equally foolish “Secession.” Since the parliament did not properly represent the nation, and refused to reform itself or to impeach the minister, nothing remained but to disown it; and the opposition announced their intention of “seceding,” or systematically absenting themselves from their places in parliament. This futile movement was originated by Grey, Lauderdale and the duke of Bedford. It obtained a somewhat wider support. It suited the languor of some dispirited politicians like Fox, and the avarice of some lawyers in large practice like Erskine; but sensible politicians at once condemned it. It directly ignored parliamentary government, and amounted to nothing but a pettish threat of revolution. “Secession,” said Lord Lansdowne, with characteristic shrewdness, “either means rebellion, or it is nonsense.” Pitt easily dashed this feeble weapon from the hands of his opponents. He roused jealousy in the absent by praising the parts and the patriotism of the rest, and thus gradually brought them back. Grey himself reappeared to protest against the union with Ireland.

When Pitt died in 1806 nothing could prevent the reunited opposition from coming into power, and thus the Broad-bottom ministry was formed under Fox. On his death Grenville became premier, and Grey, now Lord Howick, foreign secretary, and leader of the House of Commons. Disunion, always the bane of English Liberalism, lurked in the coalition, and the Foxites and Grenvillites were only ostensibly at one. Grey opposed the war policy of Grenville; and this policy was not more successful than it had been in the hands of Pitt. And the change from the leadership of Fox to that of Grenville was only too perceptible. Both in court and country Grenville affected the role of Pitt, and assumed a stiff and peremptory attitude which ill became him. An ill-advised dissolution weakened their majority; they lost ground by the “delicate investigation” into the conduct of the princess of Wales; Lord Henry Petty’s budget was too specious to command confidence; and the king, fully aware of their weak situation, resolved to get rid of them. When they proposed to concede a portion of the Catholic claims, George refused and demanded of them an undertaking never to propose such a measure again. This was refused, and the Grenville-Grey cabinet retired in March 1807. In the same year Grey’s father died, and Grey went to the Upper House. Opposition united Grey and Grenville for a time, but the parties finally split on the old war question. When Napoleon returned from Elba in 1815, and once more seized the government of France, the same question arose which had arisen in 1792, Was England to go to war for the restoration of the Bourbons? Grenville followed the traditions of Pitt, and supported the ministry in at once renewing hostilities. Grey followed those of Fox, and maintained the right of France to choose her own governors, and the impossibility of checking the reaction in the emperor’s favour. The victory of Waterloo put an end to the dispute, but the disruption became permanent. The termination of the war, and the cessation of all action in common, reduced the power of the opposition to nothing. Grenville retired from public life, and his adherents reinforced the ministry. Little remained for the Whigs to do. But the persecution of the queen afforded an opportunity of showing that the ministry were not omnipotent; and the part taken on that occasion by Grey won him at once the increased respect of the nation and the undying aversion of George IV. It sealed the exclusion of himself and his few friends from office during the king’s life; and when in 1827 Grey came forth to denounce the ministry of Canning, he declared that he stood alone in the political world. His words were soon justified, for when Lord Goderich resigned, the remnant which had hitherto supported Grey, hastened to support the ministry of the duke of Wellington.

We now reach the principal episode in Grey’s career. In 1827 he seemed to stand forth the solitary and powerless relic of an extinct party. In 1832 we find that party restored to its old numbers and activity, supreme in parliament, popular in the nation, and Lord Grey at its head. The duke of Wellington’s foolish declaration against parliamentary reform, made in a season of great popular excitement, suddenly deprived him of the confidence of the country, and a coalition of the Whigs and Canningites became inevitable. The Whigs had in 1827 supported the Canningites; the latter now supported the Whigs, of whom Grey remained the traditional head. George IV. was dead, and no obstacle existed to Grey’s elevation. Grey was sent for by William IV. in November 1830, and formed a coalition cabinet, pledged to carry on the work in which the duke of Wellington had faltered. But Grey himself was the mere instrument of the times. An old-fashioned Whig, he had little personal sympathy with the popular cause, though he had sometimes indicated a certain measure of reform as necessary. When he took office, he guessed neither the extent to which the Reform Act would go, nor the means by which it would be carried. That he procured for the country a measure of constitutional reform for which he had agitated in his youth was little more than a coincidence. In his youth he had put himself at the head of a frantic agitation against parliament, because he there found himself powerless. In his old age the case was reversed. Suddenly raised to a position of authority in the country, he boldly stood between parliament, as then constituted, and the formidable agitation which now threatened it and by a forced reform saved it from revolution. In his youth he had assailed Pitt’s administration because Pitt’s administration threatened with extinction the political monopoly of that landed interest to which he belonged. In his old age, on the contrary, unable to check the progress of the wave, he swam with it, and headed the movement which compelled that landed interest to surrender its monopoly.

The second reading of the first Reform Bill was carried in the Commons by a majority of one. This was equivalent to a defeat, and further failures precipitated a dissolution. The confidence which the bold action of the ministry had won was soon plainly proved, for the second reading was carried in the new parliament by a majority of 136. When the bill had at length passed the Commons after months of debate, it was Grey’s task to introduce it to the Lords. It was rejected by a majority of 41. The safety of the country now depended on the prudence and courage of the ministry. The resignation of Grey and his colleagues was dreaded even by the opposition, and they remained in office with the intention of introducing a third Reform Bill in the next session. The last months of 1831 were the beginning of a political crisis such as England had not seen since 1688. The two extreme parties, the Ultra-Radicals and the Ultra-Tories, were ready for civil war. Between them stood the ministry and the majority of intelligent peace-loving Englishmen; and their course of action was soon decided. The bill must be passed, and there were but two ways of passing it. One was to declare the consent of the House of Lords unnecessary to the measure, the other to create, if necessary, new peers in sufficient number to outvote the opposition. These two expedients did not in reality differ. To swamp the house in the way proposed would have been to destroy it. The question whether the ministry should demand the king’s consent to such a creation, if necessary, was debated in the cabinet in September. Brougham proposed it, and gradually a majority of the cabinet were won over. Grey had at first refused to employ even the threat of so unconstitutional a device as a means to the proposed end. But his continued refusal would have broken up the ministry, and the breaking up of the ministry must now have been the signal for revolution. The second reading in the Commons was passed in December by a majority of 162, and on New-Year’s day 1832 the majority of the cabinet resolved on demanding power to carry it in the Lords by a creation of peers. Grey carried the resolution to the king.Some time still remained before the bill could be committed and read a third time. It was not until the 9th of April that Grey moved the second reading in the Lords. A sufficient number of the opposition temporized; and the second reading was allowed to pass by a majority of nine. Their intention was to mutilate the bill in committee. The Ultra-Tories, headed by the duke of Wellington, had entered a protest against the second reading, but they were now politically powerless. The struggle had become a struggle on the one hand for the whole bill, to be carried by a creation of peers, and on the other for some mutilated measure. Grey’s instinct divined that the crisis was approaching. Either the king must consent to swamp the House, or the ministry must cease to stand in the breach between the peers and the country. The king, a weak and inexperienced politician, had in the meantime been wrought upon by the temporizing leaders in the Lords. He was induced to believe that if the Commons should reject the mutilated bill when it was returned to them, and the ministry should consequently retire, the mutilated bill might be reintroduced and passed by a Tory ministry. He was deaf to all representations of the state of public opinion; and to the surprise of the ministry, and the terror and indignation of every man of sense in the country, he rejected their proposal and accepted their resignation, May 9, 1832. The duke of Wellington undertook the hopeless task of constructing a ministry which should pass a restricted or sham Reform Bill. The only man who could have made the success of such a ministry even probable was Peel, and Peel’s conscience and good sense forbade the attempt. He refused, and after a week of the profoundest agitation throughout the country, the king, beaten and mortified, was forced to send for Grey and Brougham. On being told that his consent to the creation of peers was the only condition on which they could undertake the government, he angrily and reluctantly yielded. The chancellor, with cool forethought, demanded this consent in writing. Grey thought such a demand harsh and unnecessary. “I wonder,” he said to Brougham, when the interview was over, “you could have had the heart to press it.” But Brougham was inexorable, and the king signed the following paper: “The king grants permission to Earl Grey, and to his chancellor, Lord Brougham, to create such a number of peers as will be sufficient to ensure the passing of the Reform Bill, first calling up peers’ eldest sons.—WilliamR., Windsor, May 17, 1832.”

Grey had now won the game. There was no danger that he would have to resort to the expedient which he was authorized to employ. The introduction of sixty new peers would have destroyed the opposition, but it would have been equivalent to the abolition of the House. The king’s consent made known, a sufficient number of peers were sure to withdraw to enable the bill to pass, and thus the dignity of both king and peerage would be saved. The duke of Wellington headed this movement on the part of the opposition; and the third reading of the bill was carried in the Lords by a majority of 84.

It is well known that in after years both Grey and Brougham disclaimed any intention of executing their threat. If this were so, they must have merely pretended to brave a danger which they secretly feared to face, and intended to avoid; and the credit of rescuing the country would belong to the duke of Wellington and the peers who seceded with him. To argue such cowardice in them from statements made when the crisis was long past, and when they were naturally willing to palliate the rough policy which they were forced to adopt, would be to set up a needless and unjustifiable paradox. Nothing else in the career of either Grey or Brougham leads us to suppose them capable of the moral baseness of yielding up the helm of state, in an hour of darkness and peril, to reckless and unskilled hands. Such would have been the result if they had lacked the determination to carry out their programme to the end. The influence of every statesman in the country would then have been extinguished, and the United Kingdom would have been absolutely in the hands of O’Connell and Orator Hunt.

Grey took but little part in directing the legislation of the reformed parliament. Never anxious for power, he had executed the arduous task of 1831-1832 rather as a matter of duty than of inclination, and wished for an opportunity of retiring. Such an opportunity very shortly presented itself. The Irish policy of the ministry had not conciliated the Irish people, and O’Connell denounced them with the greatest bitterness. On the renewal of the customary Coercion Bill, the ministry was divided on the question whether to continue to the lord-lieutenant the power of suppressing public meetings. Littleton, the Irish secretary, was for abolishing it; and with the view of conciliating O’Connell, he informed him that the ministry intended to abandon it. But the result proved him to have been mistaken, and O’Connell, with some reason supposing himself to have been duped, called on Littleton to resign his secretaryship. It had also transpired in the discussion that Lord Althorp, the leader of the House of Commons, was privately opposed to retaining those clauses which it was his duty to push through the house. Lord Althorp therefore resigned, and Grey, who had lately passed his seventieth year, took the opportunity of resigning also. It was his opinion, it appeared, which had overborne the cabinet in favour of the public meeting clauses; and his voluntary withdrawal enabled Lord Althorp to return to his post and to proceed with the bill in its milder form. Grey was succeeded by Lord Melbourne; but no other change was made in the cabinet. Grey took no further part in politics. During most of his remaining years he continued to live in retirement at Howick, where he died on the 17th of July 1845, in his eighty-second year. By his wife Mary Elizabeth, only daughter of the first Lord Ponsonby, whom he married on the 18th of November 1794, he became the father of ten sons and five daughters. Grey’s eldest son Henry (q.v.) became the 3rd earl, and among his other sons were General Charles Grey (1804-1870) and Admiral Frederick Grey (1805-1878).

In public life, Grey could always be upon occasion bold, strenuous and self-sacrificing; but he was little disposed for the active work of the politician. He was not one of those who took the statesman’s duty “as a pleasure he was to enjoy.” A certain stiffness and reserve ever seemed in the popular eye to hedge him in; nor was his oratory of the kind which stirs enthusiasm and delight. A tall, stately figure, fine voice and calm aristocratic bearing reminded the listener of Pitt rather than of Fox, and his speeches were constructed on the Attic rather than the Asiatic model. Though simple and straightforward, they never lacked either point or dignity; and they were admirably adapted to the audience to which they were addressed. The scrupulous uprightness of Grey’s political and private character completed the ascendancy which he gained; and no politician could be named who, without being a statesman of the highest class, has left a name more enviably placed in English history.

(E. J. P.)

GREY, SIR EDWARD,3rd Bart. (1862- ), English statesman, was educated at Winchester and at Balliol College, Oxford, and succeeded his grandfather, the 2nd baronet, at the age of twenty. He entered the House of Commons as Liberal member for Berwick-on-Tweed in 1885, but he was best known as a country gentleman with a taste for sport, and as amateur champion tennis-player. His interest in politics was rather languid, but he was a disciple of Lord Rosebery, and in the 1892-1895 Liberal ministry he was under-secretary for foreign affairs. In this position he earned a reputation as a politician of thorough straightforwardness and grit, and as one who would maintain British interests independently of party; and he shared with Mr Asquith the reputation of being the ablest of the Imperialists who followed Lord Rosebery. Though outside foreign affairs he played but a small part in the period of Liberal opposition between 1895 and 1905, he retained public confidence as one who was indispensable to a Liberal administration. When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s cabinet was formed in December 1905 he became foreign minister, and he retained this office when in April 1908 Mr Asquith became prime minister.

GREY, SIR GEORGE(1812-1898), British colonial governor and statesman, only son of Lieutenant-Colonel Grey of the 30th Foot, was born in Lisbon on the 14th of April 1812, eight days after the death of his father at the storming of Badajoz.He passed through Sandhurst with credit, and received his commission in 1829. His lieutenancy was dated 1833, and his captaincy 1839, in which year he sold out and left the army. In the early ’thirties he was quartered in Ireland, where the wretchedness of the poorer classes left a deep impression on his mind. In 1836 the Royal Geographical Society accepted his offer to explore the north-west region of West Australia, and accordingly he landed at Hanover Bay at the end of 1837. The surrounding country he found broken and difficult, and his hardships were aggravated by the tropical heat and his ignorance of the continent. In a skirmish with the natives, in which he was speared near the hip, he showed great courage, and put the assailants to flight, shooting the chief, who had wounded him. After a brave endeavour to continue his journey his wound forced him to retreat to the coast, whence he sailed to Mauritius to recruit. Next year he again essayed exploration, this time on the coast to the north and south of Shark’s Bay. He had three whale-boats and an ample supply of provisions, but by a series of disasters his stores were spoilt by storms, his boats wrecked in the surf, and the party had to tramp on foot from Gantheaume Bay to Perth, where Grey, in the end, walked in alone, so changed by suffering that friends did not know him. In 1839 he was appointed governor-resident at Albany, and during his stay there married Harriett, daughter of Admiral Spencer, and also prepared for publication an account, in two volumes, of his expeditions. In 1840 he returned to England, to be immediately appointed by Lord John Russell to succeed Colonel Gawler as governor of South Australia. Reaching the colony in May 1841, he found it in the depths of a depression caused by mismanagement and insane land speculation. By rigorously reducing public expenditure, and forcing the settlers to quit the town and betake themselves to tilling their lands, and with the opportune help of valuable copper discoveries, Grey was able to aid the infant colony to emerge from the slough. So striking were his energy and determination that when, in 1845, the little settlements in New Zealand were found to be involved in a native war, and on the verge of ruin, he was sent to save them. The Maori chiefs in open rebellion were defeated, and made their submission. Another powerful leader suspected of fomenting discontent was arrested, and friendly chieftains were subsidized and honoured. Bands of the natives were employed in making government roads, and were paid good wages. The governor gained the veneration of the Maori tribes, in whose welfare he took a close personal interest, and of whose legends and myths he made a valuable and scholarly collection, published in New Zealand in 1855 and reprinted thirty years afterwards. With peace prosperity came to New Zealand, and the colonial office desired to give the growing settlements full self-government. Grey, arguing that this would renew war with the Maori, returned the constitution to Downing Street. But though the colonial office sustained him, he became involved in harassing disputes with the colonists, who organized an active agitation for autonomy. In the end a second constitution, partly framed by Grey himself, was granted them, and Grey, after eight years of despotic but successful rule, was transferred to Cape Colony. He had been knighted for his services, and had undoubtedly shown strength, dexterity and humanity in dealing with the whites and natives. In South Africa his success continued. He thwarted a formidable Kaffir rebellion in the Eastern Provinces, and pushed on the work of settlement by bringing out men from the German Legion and providing them with homes. He gained the respect of the British, the confidence of the Boers, the admiration and the trust of the natives. The Dutch of the Free State and the Basuto chose him as arbitrator of their quarrels. When the news of the Indian Mutiny reached Cape Town he strained every nerve to help Lord Canning, despatching men, horses, stores and £60,000 in specie to Bombay. He persuaded a detachment, then on its way round the Cape as a reinforcement for Lord Elgin in China, to divert its voyage to Calcutta. Finally, in 1859, Grey almost reached what would have been the culminating point of his career by federating South Africa. Persuaded by him, the Orange Free State passed resolutions in favour of this great step, and their action was welcomed by Cape Town. But the colonial office disapproved of the change, and when Grey attempted to persevere with it Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton recalled him. A change of ministry during his voyage to England displaced Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. But though the duke of Newcastle reinstated Grey, it was with instructions to let federation drop. In 1861 the colonial office sent him, for the fourth time in succession, to take up a post of exceptional difficulty by again entrusting him with the governorship of New Zealand, where an inglorious native war in Taranaki had just been succeeded by an armed truce. Grey did his best to make terms with the rebels and to re-establish friendship with the Maori king and the land league of tribes formed to stop further sales of land to the whites. But the Maori had got guns and powder, and were suspicious and truculent. In vain Grey, supported by Bishop Selwyn and by Fox and the peace party among the settlers, strove to avert war. It came in 1863, and spread from province to province. Ten thousand regulars and as many colonial riflemen were employed to put it down. The imperial troops were badly handled, and Grey, losing patience, became involved in bitter disputes with their commanders. As an example to the former he himself attacked and captured Weraroa, the strongest of the Maori stockades, with a handful of militia, a feat which delighted the colonists, but made him as much disliked at the war office as he now was at Downing Street. Moreover, Grey had no longer real control over the islands. New Zealand had become a self-governing colony, and though he vindicated the colonists generally when libellous imputations of cruelty and land-grabbing were freely made against them in London, he crossed swords with his ministers when the latter confiscated three million acres of tribal land belonging to the insurgent Maori. Yet through all these troubles progress was made; many successes were gained in 1866, chiefly by the colonial militia, and a condition of something like tranquillity had been reached in 1867, when he received a curt intimation from the duke of Buckingham that he was about to be superseded. The colonists, who believed he was sacrificed for upholding their interests and good name, bade farewell to him in 1868 in an outburst of gratitude and sympathy; but his career as a colonial governor was at an end. Returning to England, he tried to enter public life, delivered many able speeches advocating what later came to be termed Imperialism, and stood for Newark. Discouraged, however, by the official Liberals, he withdrew and turned again to New Zealand. In 1872 he was given a pension of £1000 a year, and settled down on the island of Kawau, not far from Auckland, which he bought, and where he passed his leisure in planting, gardening and collecting books. In 1875, on the invitation of the Auckland settlers, he became superintendent of their province, and entered the New Zealand House of Representatives to resist the abolition of the provincial councils of the colony, a change then being urged on by Sir Julius Vogel in alliance with the Centralist Party. In this he failed, but his eloquence and courage drew round him a strong Radical following, and gave him the premiership in 1877. Manhood suffrage, triennial parliaments, a land-tax, the purchase of large estates and the popular election of the governor, were leading points of his policy. All these reforms, except the last, he lived to see carried; none of them were passed by him. A commercial depression in 1879 shook his popularity, and on the fall of his ministry in 1879 he was deposed, and for the next fifteen years remained a solitary and pathetic figure in the New Zealand parliament, respectfully treated, courteously listened to, but never again invited to lead. In 1891 he came before Australia as one of the New Zealand delegates to the federal convention at Sydney, and characteristically made his mark by standing out almost alone for “one man one vote” as the federal franchise. This point he carried, and the Australians thronged to hear him, so that his visits to Victoria and South Australia were personal triumphs. When, too, in 1894, he quitted New Zealand for London, some reparation was at last made him by the imperial government; he was called to the privy council, and graciously received by Queen Victoria on his visit to Windsor. Thereafterhe lived in London, and died on the 20th of September 1898. He was given a public funeral at St Paul’s. Grey was all his life a collector of books and manuscripts. After leaving Cape Colony, he gave his library to Cape Town in 1862; his subsequent collection, which numbered 12,000 volumes, he presented to the citizens of Auckland in 1887. In gratitude the people of Cape Town erected a statue of him opposite their library building.

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