Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/180

168 History may be said to have begun a new epoch in the writing of history, making the social, industrial, and moral progress of the people its main theme. To infinite care in the gathering and sifting of his material G. added a style of wonderful charm, and an historical imagination which has hardly been equalled.

 Author:Matthew Green (1696-1737).—Poet, is known as the author of The Spleen, a lively and original poem in octosyllabic verse on the subject of low spirits and the best means of prevention and cure. It has life-like descriptions, sprightliness, and lightness of touch, and was admired by and. The poem owes its name to the use of the term in the author's day to denote depression. G., who held an appointment in the Customs, appears to have been a quiet, inoffensive person, an entertaining companion, and a Quaker.

 Author:Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882).—Philosopher, was b. at Birken Rectory, Yorkshire, and ed. at Rugby and Balliol Coll., Oxf., where he became Whyte Prof. of Moral Philosophy and, by his character, ability, and enthusiasm on social questions, exercised a powerful influence. His chief works are an Introduction to Hume's Treatise on Human Nature (Clarendon Press ed.), in which he criticised H.'s philosophy severely from the idealist standpoint, and Prolegomena to Ethics, pub. posthumously.

 Author:Robert Greene (1560?-1592).—Poet, dramatist, and pamphleteer, was b. at Norwich, and studied at Camb., where he grad. A.B. He was also incorporated at Oxf. in 1588. After travelling in Spain and Italy, he returned to Camb. and took A.M. Settling in London he was one of the wild and brilliant crew who passed their lives in fitful alternations of literary production and dissipation, and were the creators of the English drama. He has left an account of his career in which he calls himself "the mirror of mischief." During his short life about town, in the course of which he ran through his wife's fortune, and deserted her soon after the birth of her first child, he poured forth tales, plays, and poems, which had great popularity. In the tales, or pamphlets as they were then called, he turns to account his wide knowledge of city vices. His plays, including The Scottish History of James IV. and Orlando Furioso, which are now little read, contain some fine poetry among a good deal of bombast; but his fame rests, perhaps, chiefly on the poems scattered through his writings, which are full of grace and tenderness. G. d. from the effects of a surfeit of pickled herrings and Rheinish wine. His extant writings are much less gross than those of many of his contemporaries, and he seems to have given signs of repentance on his deathbed, as is evidenced by his last work, A Groat's-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance. In this curious work occurs his famous reference to as "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers." Among his other works may be mentioned Euphues' censure to Philautus, Pandosto, the Triumph of Time (1588), from which Shakespeare borrowed the plot of The Winter's Tale, A Notable Discovery of Coosnage, Arbasto, King of Denmark, Penelope's Web, Menaphon (1589), and Coney Catching. His plays, all pub.