Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/233

 and are to be found in many of the public and private collections both in England and on the continent. In England Griffier attained some reputation for his views of London and its environs taken from the Thames. He purchased a yacht, on which he lived with his family, from time to time passing from Gravesend as far as Windsor. A view of Greenwich from the river is in the collection of the Earl of Derby at Knowsley Hall. Having amassed a comfortable fortune, Griffier sailed for his native land, but was wrecked near Rotterdam, losing all his possessions. He remained for ten years or more in Holland, and, having purchased another yacht, resumed his wandering life on the water. He then returned to London, and took a house on Millbank, where he died in 1718. He was much patronised by the Duke of Beaufort. Many of Griffier's landscapes have been engraved. He also drew a series of six illustrations of the ‘Fable of the Miller and his Ass,’ which were etched by Paul Van Somer. He etched a series of plates from Barlow's drawings of birds and animals. A few other etchings by him are known, and he executed many interesting mezzotint engravings now very rare. He is usually known as ‘Old Griffier,’ to distinguish him from his sons. A portrait of Griffier by Sorst was in the Strawberry Hill collection.

the younger (d. 1750?), younger son of the above, practised in London as a landscape-painter in his father's style, and was noted as a copyist of Claude Lorraine. He died in Pall Mall about 1750.

(1688-1760?), elder son of the above, born in London in 1688, was also a landscape-painter in his father's style, especially in that of Saftleven. There is a large interesting painting by him of London from Montagu House on the Thames, in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch at Boughton, Northamptonshire; it is signed and dated 1745, which throws some doubt on the accepted statement that he went to Amsterdam and resided there for the greater part of his life. He is stated to have died there in 1750 at an advanced age, but another account says that he died at Cologne in 1760.



GRIFFIN, B. (fl. 1596), poet, probably related to the Griffins of Dingley, Northamptonshire, has been identified with a Bartholomew Griffin of Coventry, who as buried on 15 Dec. 1602 at Holy Trinity in that town. From his will (P.C.C., 37 Bolein), proved on 13 May 1603 by his widow Katherine it appears that Bartholomew Griffin left a son called Rice, a frequent family name in the Griffins of Dingley. Griffin wrote a series of sixty-two charming sonnets entitled ‘Fidessa, more chaste than kinde,’ 8vo, London, 1596, of which only three copies are at present known, those in the Bodlein, Huth, and Lamport libraries. The dedication to William Essex of Lamborne, Berkshire is followed by an epistle to the gentlemen of the Inns of Court, from which it might be inferred that Griffin himself belonged to an Inn, but no trace of him can be found in the registers. He was more probably an attorney, as he styles himself ‘gentleman’ only. In the same epistle he mentions an unfinished pastoral, which he intended, ‘for varietie sake,’ to have appended to ‘Fidessa,’ but was obliged to postpone it until the next term. No trace of it has been found (Cat. of Huth Library, ii. 630). The third sonnet in ‘Fidessa,’ commencing ‘Venus and yong Adonis sitting by her,’ was reproduced with much textual alteration in the miscellany brought together in 1599 by W. Jaggard, and entitled ‘The Passionate Pilgrime. By W. Shakespeare.’ From the copy in the Bodleian Library one hundred copies of ‘Fidessa’ were reprinted by Bliss, 8vo, Chiswick, 1815; and fifty copies by A. B. Grosart in vol. ii. of ‘Occasional Issues,’ 4to, Manchester, 1876.



GRIFFIN, BENJAMIN (1680–1740), actor and dramatist, the son of the Rev. Benjamin Griffin, rector of Buxton and Oxnead in Norfolk, and chaplain to the Earl of Yarmouth, was born in Yarmouth in 1680, and educated at the free school, North Walsham. He was apprenticed to a glazier at Norwich, where in 1712 he joined a strolling company. In 1714-15 he was one of the company with which Christopher Rich opened the rebuilt theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. His name first appears in surviving records, 16 Feb. 1715, as Sterling in the ‘Perplexed Couple.’ On 2 June he was Ezekiel Prim, a presbyterian parson, in the ‘City Ramble,’ and on 14 June Sir Arthur Addlepate in his own farce, ‘Love in a Sack.’ At this house he remained until 1721, playing many parts, including Don Lopez in his own farce, ‘Humours of Purgatory,’ 3 April 1716, and