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difgrace and difficulties by economy, which he forgot or neglected in life more advanced, and in better fortune.

About this time he became enamoured of the countess of Newburgh, whom he has celebrated with so much ardour by the name of Mira. He wrote verfes to her before he was three and twenty, and may be forgiven if he regarded the face more than the mind. Poets are fometimes in too much hafte to praise.

In the time of his retirement it is probable that he compofed his dramatick pieces, the She-Gallants (acted 1696), which he revised, and called Once a Lover and always a Lover; The Jew of Venice, altered from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (1701); Hercick Love, a tragedy

(1698);

(1698); The British Enchanters (1706), a dramatick poem; and Peleus and Thetis, a masque, written to accompany The Jew of Venice.

The comedies, which he has not printed in his own edition of his works, I never faw; Once a Lover and always a Lover, is faid to be in a great degree indecent and grofs. Granville could not admire without bigotry; he copied the wrong as well as the right from his mafters, and may be fuppofed to have learned obfcenity from Wycherly as he learned mythology from Waller.

In his few of Venice, as Rowe remarks, the character of Shilock is made comick, and we are prompted to laughter inftead of deteftation.

It

It is evident that Heroick Love was written, and prefented on the stage, before the death of Dryden. It is a mythological tragedy, upon the love of Agamemnon and Chryfeis, and therefore eafily funk into neglect, though praised in verfe by Dryden, and in profe by Pope.

It is concluded by the wife Ulyffes with this fpeech:

Fate holds the ftrings, and men like children move

But as they're led; fuccefs is from above.

In this collection are only Peleus and Thetis, and the British Enchanters, of which finding that the compilers had

improperly omitted the Preface, I have directed it to be added.

At the acceffion of queen Anne, having his fortune improved by bequests from his father, and his uncle the earl of Bathe, he was chofen into parliament for Fowey. He foon after engaged in a joint tranflation of the Invectives against Philip, with a defign, furely weak and puerile, of turning the thunder of Demofthenes upon the head of Lewis.

He afterwards (in 1706) had his eftate again augmented by an inheritance from his elder brother, Sir Bevil Granville, who, as he returned from the government of Barbadoes, died at fea. He continued to serve in parliament; and in the ninth year of queen Anne was

chofen

chofen knight of the fhire for Corn

wall.

At the memorable change of the miniftry (1710), he was made fecretary at war, in the place of Mr. Robert Walpole.

Next year, when the violence of party made twelve peers in a day, Mr. Granville became Lord Lanfdown Baron Biddeford, by a promotion juftly remarked to be not invidious, because he was the heir of a family in which two peerages, that of the earl of Bathe and lord Granville of Potheridge, had lately become extinct. Being now high in the Queen's favour, he (1712) was appointed comptroller of the household, and a privy counfellor; and to

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