Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/74



was engraved in his lifetime, and is inserted in Shaw's 'Staffordshire,' i. 308. A token still exists of him, and is described in 'Notes and Queries,' 1st ser. i. 167, 1850. On one side is represented his bust, with the words 'Richard Greene, collector of the Lichfield Museum, died 4 June 1793, aged 77;' on the other appears a Gothic window, lettered 'west porch of Lichfield Cathedral,' 1800.

The Thrale family and Dr. Johnson visited and admired Greene's museum in July 1774. Two years later Johnson and Boswell viewed it together. Boswell admired the 'wonderful collection' with the neat labels, printed at Greene's own press, and the board with the 'names of contributors marked in gold letters.' Boswell took 'a hasty glance' at the addition in 1779. There was printed at Lichfield in 1773 'a descriptive catalogue of the rarities in Mr. Greene's museum at Lichfield,' with a dedication to Ashton Lever,' from whose noble repository some of the most curious of the rarities had been drawn.' In the five-paged list of benefactors to the collection occur the names of Boulton of Soho Works, Birmingham, Doctor Darwin, Charles Darwin, Peter Garrick, Dr. Johnson, Pennant, Pegge, Dr. Taylor of Ashbourne, and Dr. Withering. A 'general syllabus of its contents' and a second edition of the catalogue were published in 1782. The third edition was issued in 1786. In 1773 the collection was rich in coins, crucifixes, watches, and specimens of natural history; by 1786 it had been augmented by additions of minerals, orreries, deeds and manuscripts, missals, muskets, and specimens of armour. It also contained numerous curiosities from the South Sea Islands, which had been given by David Samwell, surgeon of the Discovery, to Miss Seward, who transferred them to Greene, and thus enabled him to obtain a medal struck off by the Royal Society in honour of Captain Cook. A few years after Greene's death the collection was broken up. In 1799 his son sold the fossils and minerals to Sir John St. Aubyn for 100l. Next year Bullock bought for a hundred and fifty guineas the arms and armour which were first exhibited at his museum in the Egyptian Hall, and were afterwards added to the collections of Sir Samuel Meyrick and in the Tower of London. Nearly the whole of the remaining curiosities were sold for 600l. to Walter Honeywood Yates of Bromsberrow Place, near Gloucester, who made many additions, and in 1801 printed a catalogue of the whole. Most of these afterwards became the property of Richard Wright, surgeon at Lichfield (who was Greene's grandson, being the fifth son of the daughter who married William Wright), and at his death in 1821 the complete contents of his house were again scattered. Greene was a frequent contributor to the pages of the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' A woodcut from his sketch of a tombstone found in 1746 among the ruins of the friary at Lichfield appeared in its number for September 1746, p. 465; and so late in his life as 1790 he communicated to it a notice of a manual of devotion, written on vellum, and formerly belonging to Catherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII. A list of many of these articles, and several of his letters on antiquarian topics are printed by Nichols. Stebbing Shaw was favoured by Greene's son with the loan of some valuable manuscripts and plates from the museum for use in his ‘History of Staffordshire,’ and he embodied in his account of Lichfield a description of the collection. When Johnson was desirous of placing an epitaph for his father, mother, and brother on the spot in the middle aisle in St. Michael's Church at Lichfield, where their bones rested, he sent the lines to Greene. Greene contributed some anecdotes of Johnson to 'Johnsoniana' (, 1835, ed. ix. 248).

[Nichols's Illustrations of Lit. vi. 313-26; Boswell (Napier's ed.), ii. 280, (Hill's ed.) ii. 465, iii. 412, iv. 393; Gent. Mag. 1793, pt. i. 579, pt. ii. 772, 859; Shaw's Staffordshire, i. pp. x, 254-6, 308, 330-2, App. ii. 9; Harwood's Lichfield, pp. 434, 436; Art Journal (by Ll. Jewitt), 1872, pp. 306-8.]  GREENE, ROBERT (1560?–1592), pamphleteer and dramatist, was born in Norwich about 1560 (not 1550 as Dyce supposed). In his 'Repentance' he states that his parents were respected for their gravity and honest life. He was matriculated as a sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, on 26 Nov. 1575, proceeded B.A. 1578-9, migrated to Clare Hall, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1583, and was incorporated at Oxford in July 1588. From his 'Repentance' we learn that after proceeding B.A. he travelled in Italy and Spain; and from 'A Notable Discouery of Coosnage' it may be gathered that he visited Denmark and Poland. He acknowledges that he led a dissolute life abroad. 'At my return into England,' he writes, 'I ruffeled out in my silks in the habit of Malecontent, and seemed so discontent that no place would please me to abide in, nor no vocation cause mee to stay myselfe in' (Repentance). He probably returned in 1580, for the first part of 'Mamillia: A Mirrour or Looking-glasse for the Ladies of Englande,' 4to, was entered in the 'Stationers' Register' (, Transcript, ii. 378) on 3 Oct. of that year, though the earliest extant edition (Bodleian) is dated 1583. The 