GREENE, ROBERT, was a native of Ipswich. The date of his birth was probably a few years later than the middle of the 16th century. He was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where, in 1578, he took his Bachelor's degree, and his Master's in 1583; and he was incorporated at Oxford in 1588. Between 1578 and 1583 he travelled on the Continent, visiting Italy and Spain; and it has been asserted, on the evidence of concurriug probabilities, that at some time or other in the early part of his life he took holy orders ; but his academical degrees are almost the only facts in his history that can be ascertained with exactness. From about 1584 he was a frequent writer for the press and for the stage ; and from some of his pamphlets, which make a half-poetical kind of confessions not unlike those of Byron, a few particulars of his melancholy career may be doubtfully gathered. It thus appears that he married the daughter of a gentleman in Lincolnshire, but that after she had borne a child to him he abandoned her for a mistress ; and his subsequent life seems to have been spent iu alternate fits of reckless debauchery and of the distresses and remorse which his excesses caused. In August 1592 a surfeit at a tavern in London threw him into an illness, which proved fatal. He was then in a state of abject poverty; and in a letter which he wrote to his wife the day before his death, charging her to pay a debt of ten pounds owing by him to his host, a poor shoemaker near Dowgate, he declared that if this man and his wife had not succoured him ho must have died in the street. His deathbed was attended by the shoemaker's wife, and by another woman who was the sister of a hanged malefactor, and by whom he had had a son. He expired on the 3rd of September 1592; next day he was buried iu the new churchyard near Bedlam.
The name of this unhappy man is very important in the early history of the English drama. Marlowe was the most distinguished of those poets who took the great steps which heralded the rise of Shakspere. Greene and Peele held the second rank among the pre cursors of the golden ago of our dramatic poetry. Greene nowhere exhibits either the glowing passion or the overflowing imagination of Marlowe, and his works are not only unequal, but in all respects irregular and anomalous; yet they show much sweetness of fancy, many touches of nature in incident as well as in character, and a poetic spirit which, if not lofty, is far above the range of the prosaic or ordi nary. He was a man of decided genius, and his plays are valuable monu ments of this interesting period in dramatic history. None of them were printed till after his death. Five have come down to us that are certainly his : The History of Orlando Furieso,' 1594, 1599, an eccentrio but imaginative and not uninteresting performance ; 'A Looking-Glass for London and England,' 1594, 1598, 1602, 1617,, written by Greene and Thomas Lodge jointly, a dramatic version of the prophecy of Jonah against Nineveh, and, amidst its whimsicalities, the most dramatic of Greene's works; The Honourable History of Friar Bacou and Friar Bungay,' 1591, 1599, 1630, 1655, a legendary play, natural and poetical, and on the whole the most pleasing of the series; 'The Comical History of Alphonsus, King of Aragon,' 1599, a group of heroic pictures, in which the poet emulates with tolerable success, the swelling vein of Marlowe ; 'The Scottish History of James the Fourth,' 1598, a most extravagant yet not uupoetical invention, having nothing of history in it but the names. There has been attributed to Greene, upon very doubtful evidence, the lively drama of 'George a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield,' printed in 1599. It has likewise been asserted that he wrote, or had a share in writing, >ne or both of the plays which are the groundwork of Henry VI.,' parts ii and lib The opposite and sounder opinion is maintained, and the state of the controversy set forth, in Mr. Knight's editions of ihakspere. (' Essay on Henry VI. and Richard III.') ' George a-Greene' is in all tho editions of Dodsley's Old Plays : Friar Bacon' is in Mr. Collier's edition of that collection. Two =client editions of Greene's dramatic works, with all his other corn >oeitions in verse, have been published by Mr. Dyce, 2 vole. 12mo, irst printed in 1831. In those volumes Mr. Dyce has given a full iccount of Greene's life, with copious specimens of his prose works, and a list of them which is complete, or almost so. The hat embraces
.hirty-four pieces, which are undoubtedly his. Their matter is very rarious. In his gayer hours he wrote love-stories and other novels, ketches of society, chiefly in its disreputable walks, and miscellaneous in his moments of remorse he wrote warnings to and ample but exaggerated and romantic confessions of his own ollies. Pieces of this last class aro the following Greene's Never Poo Late; or, a Powder of Experience sent to all Youthful Gentle men to root out Infectious Follies,' 1590 ; Greene. Mourning Garment. given him by Repentance at the Funerals of Love, 1590; and 'Greene' Create-worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repent ance: 159°. which was published soon after his death by his friend and fellow-Labourer henry Cbettle, and has been reprinted by Sir Egerton Bridges, 1313. One of his novels, 'Pandosto, the Triumph of Time,' otherwise called 'The Hysteric of Dorastus and Fawnia, is the original of ' The Winter's Tale.' It stale first priuted in 1583, had reach a twelfth edition in 1735, and is reprinted by Mr. Collier in his 'Sliakspeares Library; 1840. Some other tracts of Greene will be found In the 'Archaic' and gladden Miscellany.' All the prose works are interspersed with pieces In verse, which are by far the beet parte of them. The style is their weak point; it Is deformed by a dose copying of Lilly's worst affectations; and although, when we examine the matter, wo often discover picturesque descriptions, and sometimes touching passages of narrative, yet nowhere iu the tedious and perplexed mass do we find any reason for saying more of Greene'" proms compositions than that they are indifferent works written by a man of genius a REENOU011, HORATIO, American sculptor, was born in Boston, United States, September 6th 1805. From his earliest childhood he showed a great facility in drawing and modelling, and his tastes were carefully cultured; but it was not till he lied completed the ordinary collegiate training that he began seriously to contemplate the adoption of sculpture as a profession. Sculpture had then few practitioners in America, and none of any mark ; Greenough therefore proceeded to Rome in order to study the art. Rome continued to be his residence for some years, and he derived much professional advantage from the friendly services of Thorwsldsen. His health however gave way, but it was speedily restored by a visit to his native land. There however he did not stay long. On his return to Europe he remained long enough in Paris to execute a clever bust of Lafayette, and then pro. ceeded to Florence, where he fitted up a studio, and where, during a residence of several years, his principal worka were executed. Of these the most important perhaps are his colossal statue of Washington, which now stands in the grounds of the Capitol at Washington ; and the 'Rescue,' or, as it is sometimes termed, the 'Pioneer's Struggle, now in the Capitol itself: both of these works were commissioned bs Congress. The Rescue,' a work of considerable originality and power is intended to typify the struggle between the native and Europear races, and consists of a group of a pioneer rescuing his wife and chilc from an Indian. Besides these he executed several portrait-statuel and monumental groups, numerous busts, and some very pleasing an graceful poetic figures and busts. lie returned to America in 1851 ts superintend the erection of his group of the ' Rescue,' and eventual;; determined not again to return to Europe. But he had become inured to an Italian climate, and his constitution proved unable t withstand the variations of an American one. After a severe Hines he died, December 18th 1852.
Greenough will probably not ultimately rank among the foremos modern sculptors, but he occupies, and will no doubt continue tl occupy, a very respectable position ; while he will always retain prominent place in the history of American art as the first of hi countrymen who obtained a European reputation as a sculptor Greenough'" attainments were not limited to sculpture he paints with some skill, and he wrote well both in verse and prose. I] private life, while thoroughly unassuming, few men have been mor esteemed.