GREEN, MATTHEW. Of this author of a popular poem, The Spleen, very few particulars are known. He was nephew to a Mr. Tanner, the clerk of Fish-mongers Hall, and belonged to a reputable family among the Dissenters. But though bred among the sectaries, he grew disgusted with their precision, and probably left them without being reconciled to the mother-church, as he is said to have thought freely.on points of religion. He had a post at the custom-house, which he discharged with great fidelity, and .died at a lodging in Nag's head Court, Grace-church street, at the age of forty-one, in 1737. Green's character is _given by his .intimates as that of an exceedingly honest =an, witty and original in conversation, though slenderly and agreeable in manners, though subject to the hip. Once when his friend Sylvanus Bevan, a Quaker, was complaining at Batson's coffee-house, that, while bath ing in the river, he had been saluted by a water man with the usual cry of Quaker Quirt, and wondered how his pro fession could be known while he was without his clothes ; Green replied, by your swimming against the stream." A reform took place at the custom-house, while he belonged to it, by which, among other articles, a few pence, weekly al lowed for milk to the cats,were taken away. On this occasion, Green wrote a petition from the cats,which prevented the re gulation from taking place. The poem of the Spleen was ne ver published in his lifetime, nor any of his fugitive pieces. Glover, his warm friend, presented it to the world after his death ; and, it is much to be regretted, did not prefix any account of its interesting author. It was originally a very shot t copy of verses, and was gradually and piece-meal enlarged. Pope speedily noticed its merit ; Mr NIelmoth praised its strong originality, in Fitzosborne's Letters ; and Gray duly commended it in his correspondence with Lord Oxford, when it appeared in Dodsley's Collection.
It would be as superfluous here to enter upon a serious defence of the poem of the Spleen, as it was absurd in the last editor of the British Poets to attack it upon the grounds of its author professing to offer no religious consolations for the cure of splenetic temperaments. Religion would have been quite as much misplaced amidst those light views of life which the author exhibits, as in a sentimental co medy. The views of life which he takes, are not indeed marked either by strong sensibility, or profound observa tion; but the light in which he arrays familiar scenes and situations, is peculiarly original. The matter of his pre cepts is common, while their manner of expression is hap py, and all his own. The concluding allegory, for instance, in which life is compared to a sea voyage, is extremely hackneyed, yet nowhere has the allegory been renovated by so many, and by so fine picturesque circumstances. Reason at the helm ; the Passions forming the crew ; Phi losophy putting forth the lights ; Experience employing the glass and lead ; the careening places of Bath and Tun bridge ; and the dolphins sporting round ; all compose a picture of animated and amusing effect. 'Many of his scattered thoughts and detached sentences, fairly rival the best in Butler ; and upon the whole leave it much to be re gretted, that so ingenious a mind should have been-des tined by a short life, and by the bondage of a confined voca tion, to leave such scanty relics of its powers. (4)