Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/765

GRE January, 1791, and during the succeeding ten years carried out the policy of Mr. Pitt with great energy. In 1801 his lordship quitted office along with his illustrious chief, and after a short period of neutrality he and the other Grenvilles united with Mr. Fox and his friends in opposition to Mr. Addington's administration, and ultimately Mr. Pitt himself joined in the same course. On the overthrow of that feeble government in April, 1803, Mr. Pitt was once more placed at the head of affairs; but Lord Grenville refused to join the new ministry, on the ground that Mr. Fox had been excluded by the king, and that it would be dishonourable to abandon that statesman, with whom the Grenvilles had so recently formed an alliance. On the death of Mr. Pitt (23rd January, 1806) "All the Talents" came into office, and Lord Grenville was made premier, with Fox, Grey, Windham, Lord Henry Petty, and Lord Sidmouth for his leading colleagues. But they had no great power in the country, and were cordially disliked by the king. Though repeatedly offered a share in the government (see ), Lord Grenville never again held any political office under the crown. In 1809 he was elected chancellor of the university of Oxford, to the great mortification of the government, and of Lord Eldon, one of the unsuccessful candidates. Lord Grenville continued to act cordially with Lord Grey until 1815, when a difference of opinion arose between them regarding the propriety of renewing the war against Napoleon, which the latter opposed, and the former, true to his old anti-Gallican principles, strenuously advocated. He also supported the government in resisting the motion of Lord Lansdowne in 1819 (after the Peterloo massacre, as it was termed), for inquiring into the distress and the causes of the discontent existing in the manufacturing districts. A few years later his lordship gave a general support to the administration of Mr. Canning, and, in accordance with his early principles, zealously promoted the abolition of the Roman catholic disabilities. He was an able speaker and a good man of business, and though his manners were somewhat haughty and reserved, he had great influence in the house of lords. He spent the closing years of his life in retirement at Dropmore in Buckinghamshire, where he died 12th January, 1834, in his seventy-fifth year. Lord Grenville was an excellent classical scholar, and printed for private circulation, under the title of "Nugæ Metricæ," a volume of translations from the Greek, Italian, and English into Latin. He was also the author of "A New Plan of Finance," &c., 8vo, London, 1806; a "Letter to the Earl of Fingal," 1810; and edited the Letters of Lord Chatham to his Nephew, 8vo, 1804. His valuable collection of family documents has been published under the title of the "Grenville Papers," 2 vols. Lord Grenville married Anne Pitt, daughter of the first Lord Camelford, but left no issue. His title became extinct at his death.—J. T.  GREPPI,, born in Bologna of a poor but respectable family in 1751; died in Milan in January, 1811. He published four tragedies, eight comedies, modelled upon La Chaussée, and still well reputed; and some non-theatrical poems. He latterly identified himself with the party of the French occupation in Italy, and held various posts under the Cisalpine republic—W. M. R.  GRESHAM,, was the second son of Sir Richard Gresham, lord mayor of London. He was probably born in London in 1519, and when three years old lost his mother. After a residence at Gonville and Caius college, Cambridge, he was bound apprentice by his father to an uncle. Sir John Gresham. In 1544 he married Anne, widow of William Read of Beccles. In December, 1551, he settled at Antwerp, where he had already resided for about seven years at different times, and been with his father employed in the king's service, as "king's agent" or "merchant," for the purpose of negotiating loans from the Fuggers and other great merchants in Flanders. On the accession of Mary he was dismissed, but the inefficiency of his successor, Dauntsey, caused his speedy reappointment. Queen Elizabeth continued him in his post. The affairs of his Flemish agency were conducted by him principally through the medium of one Richard Clough, he himself managing his bank or shop, with his crest of a grasshopper over the door, at a house now represented by 68 Lombard Street. But at the close of 1559 he was knighted, and despatched as ambassador as well as queen's agent to Antwerp. There, with a short interval, he resided till March, 1561, spying out the discontents of the Low Countries, and at odd times buying buttons and iron chests for the queen and courtiers. After about eleven months' absence he returned home. Previous to 1564 Gresham had resided, when driven from London by the plague, on an estate near Norwich; but in that year he took for his country house Osterley in Heston parish. An offer was made by him in the January of the next year, after the example of his father Sir Richard in 1538, to erect a bourse or exchange, if the corporation would give the site, for the merchants, who had formerly transacted business together in the open air. The proposal was accepted, and the building covered in by November, 1567; the whole being under the direction of a Flemish architect, Henricke. He now transacted his ordinary business, both private and public, at Antwerp, through Mr. Clough; he himself residing at Gresham house, lately built by him in Bishopsgate Street. In 1569 he effected a change in our financial system, persuading the crown to look for loans to English merchants rather than to the foreign ones; the latter source having indeed been stopped by the war. On the 23d January, 1571, the Bourse was visited by the queen, after dining at Gresham house, and proclaimed by a herald as the "Royal Exchange." His prosperity and the confidence placed in him by the court were, however, not without their drawbacks. He was looked upon by his brother merchants as responsible for their loans to the state. So in 1573 he had, as afterwards in 1576 at Osterley, to support the expensive honour of a visit from the queen at Mayfield in Sussex. In 1572 we find him a commissioner for the better government of the capital, and in 1576 one for inquiring into the state of foreign exchanges. But that which has made his name best known to us is his provision, in 1575, for the erection of his house in Bishopsgate Street into a college, with seven professors. On the 21st November, 1579, at the age of sixty, he died of a fit of apoplexy, having long controlled the exchange with foreign countries, and being known as the "royal merchant." A picture of him by Holbein is extant, and an elaborate tomb in St. Helen's. His funeral cost £800, an enormous sum for those times. In 1768 the site of Gresham house was sold to government for the excise office, and in 1838 the exchange, rebuilt after the great fire, was again burnt down.—W. S., L.  GRESSET,, born at Amiens in 1709; died in 1777. Educated in the jesuit school at Amiens, he entered into the society as novice before he was sixteen. He then passed to Paris to the college of Louis le Grand, and his exercises in prose and verse while there were much admired. An amusing story which he was told while there, was afterwards related by him in familiar verse, and threw open to him the doors of the academy. The "Vert-vert," a poem as lively and as graceful, and distinguished by the same kind of playfulness as Pope's Rape of the Lock, published in England a few years before the "Vert-vert" was written, was produced in the author's twenty-fourth year. The poem has been translated into English by Cooper (Chalmers' Poets, vol. xv.) and by Montagu. ln another jeu d'esprit of the same character, "Ma Chartreuse," Gresset describes his cell at the college of Louis le Grand. He also published a translation of the Eclogues of Virgil. The jesuits were angry at the character of his verses, seemingly with little cause; he had not taken the final vows, and was quietly removed from the society. He wrote a tragedy in the King Cambyses vein, "Edward the Second;" and a comedy which was admired, "Le Méchant." He published a romance, and interchanged civilities in rhyme with Frederic of Prussia. Gresset soon, however, grew weary of the world of letters and fashion, and returned to Amiens. He married a relative of Galland, the author or translator of the Thousand and One Nights. He had no family. Gresset held the office of directeur of the academy, which rendered it necessary for him occasionally to visit Paris; but his heart was in Amiens and in devotional exercises, to which he now gave himself with great fervour. Unluckily the recollection of his old sins of playful verse led the king (Louis XV.) to whom he had officially to deliver the addresses of the academy, to regard him as no better than a "philosophe," and he turned his back upon him. Cresset's residence was on the banks of the Somme. He seldom went to Amiens, except to the meetings of a literary society which he had established there. Verse he still wrote and read to his academy of Amiens. He sought to publish it more extensively, but Paris refused to be amused by what at best was but an imitation of his old style. He could not give up the habit of authorship. He wrote comedies, and piously burned them. He wrote a satire against a physician in his neighbourhood, who was too fond of scribbling in 