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Chapter III: Modern Greek Literature (1453-1908) (3)

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GREEN, VALENTINE (1739-1813), British engraver, was born at Halesowen. He was placed by his father in a solicitor's office at Evesham, where he remained for two years; but ultimately he decided, on his own responsibility, to abandon the legal profession and became a pupil of a line engraver at Worcester. In 1765 he migrated to London and began work as a mezzotint engraver, having taught himself the technicalities of this art, and quickly rose to a position in absolutely the front rank of British engravers. He became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists in 1767, an associate-engraver of the Royal Academy in 1775, and for some forty years he followed his profession with the greatest success. The exclusive right of engraving and publishing plates from the pictures in the Dusseldorf gallery was granted him by the duke of Bavaria in 1789, but, after he had issued more than twenty of these plates, the siege of that city by the French put an end to this undertaking and caused him serious financial loss. From this cause, and through the failure of certain other speculations, he was reduced to poverty; and in consequence he took the post of keeper of the British Institution in 1805, and continued in this office for the remainder of his life. During his career as an engraver he produced some four hundred plates after portraits by Reynolds, Romney, and other British artists, after the compositions of Benjamin West, and after pictures by Van Dyck, Rubens, Murillo, and other old masters. It is claimed for him that he was one of the first engravers to show how admirably mezzotint could be applied to the translation of pictorial compositions as well as portraits, but at the present time it is to his portraits that most attention is given by collectors. His engravings are distinguished by exceptional richness and subtlety of tone, and by very judicious management of relations of light and shade; and they have, almost without exception, notable freshness and grace of handling.

See _Valentine Green_, by Alfred Whitman (London, 1902).

GREEN, WILLIAM HENRY (1825-1900), American Hebrew scholar, was born in Groveville, near Bordentown, New Jersey, on the 27th of January 1825. He was descended in the sixth generation from Jonathan Dickinson, first president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), and his ancestors had been closely connected with the Presbyterian church. He graduated in 1840 from Lafayette College, where he was tutor in mathematics (1840-1842) and adjunct professor (1843-1844). In 1846 he graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary, and was instructor in Hebrew there in 1846-1849. He was ordained in 1848 and was pastor of the Central Presbyterian church of Philadelphia in 1849-1851. From August 1851 until his death, in Princeton, New Jersey, on the 10th of February 1900, he was professor of Biblical and Oriental Literature in Princeton Theological Seminary. From 1859 the title of his chair was Oriental and Old Testament Literature. In 1868 he refused the presidency of Princeton College; as senior professor he was long acting head of the Theological Seminary. He was a great Hebrew teacher: his _Grammar of the Hebrew Language_ (1861, revised 1888) was a distinct improvement in method on Gesenius, Roediger, Ewald and Nordheimer. All his knowledge of Semitic languages he used in a "conservative Higher Criticism," which is maintained in the following works: _The Pentateuch Vindicated from the Aspersions of Bishop Colenso_ (1863), _Moses and the Prophets_ (1883), _The Hebrew Feasts in their Relation to Recent Critical Hypotheses Concerning the Pentateuch_ (1885), _The Unity of the Book of Genesis_ (1895), _The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch_ (1895), and _A General Introduction to the Old Testament_, vol. i. Canon (1898), vol. ii. _Text_ (1899). He was the scholarly leader of the orthodox wing of the Presbyterian church in America, and was moderator of the General Assembly of 1891. Green was chairman of the Old Testament committee of the Anglo-American Bible revision committee.

See the articles by John D. Davis in _The Biblical World_, new series,
vol. xv., pp. 406-413 (Chicago, 1900), and _The Presbyterian and
Reformed Review_, vol. xi. pp. 377-396 (Philadelphia, 1900).

GREENAWAY, KATE (1846-1901), English artist and book illustrator, was the daughter of John Greenaway, a well-known draughtsman and engraver on wood, and was born in London on the 17th of March 1846. After a course of study at South Kensington, at "Heatherley's" life classes, and at the Slade School, Kate Greenaway began, in 1868, to exhibit water-colour drawings at the Dudley Gallery, London. Her more remarkable early work, however, consisted of Christmas cards, which, by reason of their quaint beauty of design and charm of draughtsmanship, enjoyed an extraordinary vogue. Her subjects were, in the main, young girls, children, flowers, and landscape; and the air of artless simplicity, freshness, humour, and purity of these little works so appealed to public and artists alike that the enthusiastic welcome habitually accorded to them is to be attributed to something more than love of novelty. In the line she had struck out Kate Greenaway was encouraged by H. Stacy Marks, R.A., and she refused to listen to those friends who urged her to return to a more conventional manner. Thenceforward her illustrations for children (such as for _Little Folks_, 1873, _et seq._) attracted much attention. In 1877 her drawings at the Dudley Gallery were sold for L54, and her Royal Academy picture for eighteen guineas; and in the same year she began to draw for the _Illustrated London News_. In the year 1879 she produced _Under the Window_, of which 150,000 copies are said to have been sold, and of which French and German editions were also issued. Then followed _The Birthday Book_, _Mother Goose_, _Little Ann_, and other books for children which were appreciated not less by adults, and were to be found on sale in the bookshops of every capital in Europe and in the cities of America. The extraordinary success achieved by the young girl may be estimated by the amounts paid to her as her share of the profits: for _Under the Window_ she received L1130; for _The Birthday Book_, L1250; for _Mother Goose_, L905; and for _Little Ann_, L567. These four books alone produced a clear return of L8000. "Toy-books" though they were, these little works created a revolution in illustration, and so were of real importance; they were loudly applauded by John Ruskin (_Art of England_ and _Fors Clavigera_), by Ernest Chesneau and Arsene Alexandre in France, by Dr Muther in Germany, and by leading art-critics throughout the world. In 1890 Kate Greenaway was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and in 1891, 1894 and 1898 she exhibited water-colour drawings, including illustrations for her books, at the gallery of the Fine Art Society (by which a representative selection was exhibited in 1902), where they surprised the world by the infinite delicacy, tenderness, and grace which they displayed. A leading feature in Miss Greenaway's work was her revival of the delightfully quaint costume of the beginning of the 19th century; this lent humour to her fancy, and so captivated the public taste that it has been said, with poetic exaggeration, that "Kate Greenaway dressed the children of two continents." Her drawings of children have been compared with Stothard's for grace and with Reynolds's for naturalness, and those of flowers with the work of van Huysum and Botticelli. From 1883 to 1897, with a break only in 1896, she issued a series of _Kate Greenaway's Almanacs_. Although she illustrated _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_ and other works, the artist preferred to provide her own text; the numerous verses which were found among her papers after her death prove that she might have added to her reputation with her pen. She had great charm of character, but was extremely shy of public notice, and not less modest in private life. She died at Hampstead on the 6th of November 1901.

See the _Life_, by M. H. Spielmann and G. S. Layard (1905).
(M. H. S.)

GREENBACKS, a form of paper currency in the United States, so named from the green colour used on the backs of the notes. They are treasury notes, and were first issued by the government in 1862, "as a question of hard necessity," to provide for the expenses of the Civil War. The government, following the example of the banks, had suspended specie payment. The new notes were therefore for the time being an inconvertible paper currency, and, since they were made legal tender, were really a form of fiat money. The first act, providing for the issue of notes to the amount of $150,000,000, was that of the 25th February 1862; the acts of 11th July 1862 and 3rd March 1863 each authorized further issues of $150,000,000. The notes soon depreciated in value, and at the lowest were worth only 35 cents on the dollar. The act of 12th April 1866 authorized the retirement of $10,000,000 of notes within six months and of $4,000,000 per month thereafter; this was discontinued by act of 4th February 1868. On 1st January 1879 specie payment was resumed, and the nominal amount of notes then stood at $346,681,000, which is still outstanding.

The so-called _Greenback party_ (also called the _Independent_, and
the _National_ party) first appeared in a presidential campaign in
1876, when its candidate, Peter Cooper, received 81,740 votes. It
advocated increasing the volume of greenbacks, forbidding bank issues,
and the paying in greenbacks of the principal of all government bonds
not expressly payable in coin. In 1878 the party, by various fusions,
cast over 1,000,000 votes and elected 14 Congressmen; and in 1880
there was fusion with labour reformers and it cast 308,578 votes for
its presidential candidate, J. B. Weaver, and elected 8 Congressmen.
In 1884 their candidate Benjamin F. Butler (also the candidate of the
Anti-Monopoly party) received 175,370 votes. Subsequently the party
went out of existence.

GREEN BAY, a city and the county-seat of Brown county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., at the S. extremity of Green Bay, at the mouth of the Fox river, 114 m. N. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890) 9069; (1900) 18,684, of whom 4022 were foreign-born and 33 were negroes; (1910 census) 25,236. The city is served by the Chicago & North-Western, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Kewaunee, Green Bay & Western, and the Green Bay & Western railways, by an inter-urban electric railway connecting with other Fox River Valley cities, and by lake and river steamboat lines. Green Bay lies on high level ground on both sides of the river, which is here crossed by several bridges. The city has the Kellogg Public Library, the Brown County Court House, two high schools, a business college, several academies, two hospitals, an orphan asylum and the State Odd Fellows' Home. It is the seat of a Roman Catholic cathedral, the bishopric being the earliest established in the North-west. The so-called "Tank Cottage," now in Washington Park, is said to be the oldest house in Wisconsin; it was built on the W. bank of the river near its mouth by Joseph Roy, a French-Canadian _voyageur_, in 1766, was subsequently somewhat modified, and in 1908 was bought and removed to its present site by the Green Bay Historical Society. Midway between Green Bay and De Pere (5 m. S.W. of Green Bay) is the state reformatory, opened in 1899-1901. Green Bay's fine harbour accommodates a considerable lake commerce, and the city is the most important railway and wholesale distributing centre in N.E. Wisconsin. Its manufactures include lumber and lumber products, furniture, wagons, woodenware, farm implements and machinery, flour, beer, canned goods, brick and tile and dairy products; and it has lumber yards, grain elevators, fish warehouses and railway repair shops. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $4,873,027, an increase of 79.9% since 1900. The first recorded visit of a European to the vicinity of what is now Green Bay is that of Jean Nicolet, who was sent west by Champlain in 1634, and found, probably at the Red Banks, some 10 m. below the present city, a village of Winnebago Indians, who he thought at first were Chinese. Between 1654 and 1658 Radisson and Groseilliers and other _coureurs des bois_ were at Green Bay. Claude Jean Allouez, the Jesuit missionary, established a mission on the W. shore of the bay, about 20 m. from the present city. Later he removed his mission to the Red Banks, and in the winter of 1671-1672 established it permanently 5 m. above the present city, at Rapides des Peres, on the E. shore of the Fox river. In 1673 Joliet and Marquette visited the spot. In 1683-1685 Le Sueur and Nicholas Perrot traded with the Indians here. In 1718-1720 Fort St Francis was erected at the mouth of the river on the W. bank, and after being several times deserted was permanently re-established in 1732. About 1745 Augustin de Langlade established a trading post at La Baye and later brought his family there from Mackinac. This was the first permanent settlement at Green Bay and in Wisconsin. The British garrison which occupied the fort from 1761 to 1763, during which time the fort received the name of Fort Edward Augustus, was removed at the time of Pontiac's rising, and the fort was never re-garrisoned by the English, except for a short time during the War of 1812. The inhabitants of La Baye were, however, acknowledged subjects of Great Britain, the jurisdiction of the United States being practically a dead letter until the American fort (Fort Howard) was garrisoned in 1816. As early as 1810 fur traders, employed by John Jacob Astor, were stationed here; about 1820 Astor erected a warehouse and other buildings; and for many years Green Bay consisted of two distinct settlements, Astor and Navarino, which were finally united in 1839 as Green Bay. The city was chartered in 1854. In 1893 Fort Howard was consolidated with it. The Green Bay _Intelligencer_, the first newspaper in Wisconsin, began publication here in 1833.

See Neville and Martin, _Historic Green Bay_ (Green Bay, 1893); and
Martin and Beaumont, _Old Green Bay_ (Green Bay, 1900).

GREENCASTLE, a city and the county-seat of Putnam county, Indiana, U.S.A., about 38 m. W. by S. of Indianapolis and on the Big Walnut river. Pop. (1900) 3661; (1910) 3790. It is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis, the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville, the Vandalia, and the Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern (electric) railways. It has manufactures of some importance, including lumber, pumps, kitchen-cabinets, drag-saws, lightning-rods and tin-plate, is in the midst of a blue grass region, and is a shipping point for beef cattle. The city has a Carnegie library and is the seat of the de Pauw University (co-educational), a Methodist Episcopal institution, founded as Indiana Asbury University in 1837, and renamed in 1884 in honour of Washington Charles de Pauw (1822-1887), a successful capitalist, banker and glass manufacturer. The total gifts of Mr de Pauw and his family to the institution amount to about $600,000. Among the presidents of the university have been Bishop Matthew Simpson, Bishop Thomas Bowman (b. 1817), and Bishop Edwin Holt Hughes (b. 1866), all of the Methodist Episcopal church. The university comprises the Asbury College of Liberal Arts, a School of Music, a School of Art and an Academy, and had in 1909-1910 43 instructors, a library of 37,000 volumes, and 1017 students. Greencastle was first settled about 1820, and was chartered as a city in 1861.

GREENE, GEORGE WASHINGTON (1811-1883), American historian, was born at East Greenwich, Rhode Island, on the 8th of April 1811, the grandson of Major-General Nathanael Greene. He entered Brown University in 1824, left in his junior year on account of ill-health, was in Europe during the next twenty years, except in 1833-1834, when he was principal of Kent Academy at East Greenwich, and was the United States consul at Rome from 1837 to 1845. He was instructor in modern languages in Brown University from 1848 to 1852; and in 1871-1875 was non-resident lecturer in American history in Cornell University. He died at East Greenwich, Rhode Island, on the 2nd of February 1883. His published works include French and Italian text-books; _Historical Studies_ (1850); _Biographical Studies_ (1860); _Historical View of the American Revolution_ (1865); _Life of Nathanael Greene_ (3 vols., 1867-1871); _The German Element in the War of American Independence_ (1876); and a _Short History of Rhode Island_ (1877).

GREENE, MAURICE (1695-1755) English musical composer, was born in London. He was the son of a clergyman in the city, and soon became a chorister of St Paul's cathedral, where he studied under Charles King, and subsequently under Richard Brind, organist of the cathedral from 1707 to 1718, whom, on his death in the last-named year, he succeeded. Nine years later he became organist and composer to the chapel royal, on the death of Dr Croft. In 1730 he was elected to the chair of music in the university of Cambridge, and had the degree of doctor of music conferred on him. Dr Greene was a voluminous composer of church music, and his collection of _Forty Select Anthems_ became a standard work of its kind. He wrote a "Te Deum," several oratorios, a masque, _The Judgment of Hercules_, and a pastoral opera, _Phoebe_ (1748); also glees and catches: and a collection of _Catches and Canons for Three and Four Voices_ is amongst his compositions. In addition he composed many occasional pieces for the king's birthday, having been appointed master of the king's band in 1735. But it is as a composer of church music that Greene is chiefly remembered. It is here that his contrapuntal skill and his sound musical scholarship are chiefly shown. With Handel, Greene was originally on intimate terms, but his equal friendship for Buononcini, Handel's rival, estranged the German master's feelings from him, and all personal intercourse between them ceased. Greene, in conjunction with the violinist Michael Christian Festing (1727-1752) and others, originated the Society of Musicians, for the support of poor artists and their families. He died on the 1st of December 1755.

GREENE, NATHANAEL (1742-1786), American general, son of a Quaker farmer and smith, was born at Potowomut, in the township of Warwick, Rhode Island, on the 7th of August (not, as has been stated, 6th of June) 1742. Though his father's sect discouraged "literary accomplishments," he acquired a large amount of general information, and made a special study of mathematics, history and law. At Coventry, R.I., whither he removed in 1770 to take charge of a forge built by his father and his uncles, he was the first to urge the establishment of a public school; and in the same year he was chosen a member of the legislature of Rhode Island, to which he was re-elected in 1771, 1772 and 1775. He sympathized strongly with the Whig, or Patriot, element among the colonists, and in 1774 joined the local militia. At this time he began to study the art of war. In December 1774 he was on a committee appointed by the assembly to revise the militia laws. His zeal in attending to military duty led to his expulsion from the Society of Friends.

In 1775, in command of the contingent raised by Rhode Island, he joined the American forces at Cambridge, and on the 22nd of June was appointed a brigadier by Congress. To him Washington assigned the command of the city of Boston after it was evacuated by Howe in March 1776. Greene's letters of October 1775 and January 1776 to Samuel Ward, then a delegate from Rhode Island to the Continental Congress, favoured a declaration of independence. On the 9th of August 1776 he was promoted to be one of the four new major-generals and was put in command of the Continental troops on Long Island; he chose the place for fortifications (practically the same as that picked by General Charles Lee) and built the redoubts and entrenchments of Fort Greene on Brooklyn Heights. Severe illness prevented his taking part in the battle of Long Island. He was prominent among those who advised a retreat from New York and the burning of the city, so that the British might not use it. Greene was placed in command of Fort Lee, and on the 25th of October succeeded General Israel Putnam in command of Fort Washington. He received orders from Washington to defend Fort Washington to the last extremity, and on the 11th of October Congress had passed a resolution to the same effect; but later Washington wrote to him to use his own discretion. Greene ordered Colonel Magaw, who was in immediate command, to defend the place until he should hear from him again, and reinforced it to meet General Howe's attack. Nevertheless, the blame for the losses of Forts Washington and Lee was put upon Greene, but apparently without his losing the confidence of Washington, who indeed himself assumed the responsibility. At Trenton Greene commanded one of the two American columns, his own, accompanied by Washington, arriving first; and after the victory here he urged Washington to push on immediately to Princeton, but was over-ruled by a council of war. At the Brandywine Greene commanded the reserve. At Germantown Greene's command, having a greater distance to march than the right wing under Sullivan, failed to arrive in good time--a failure which Greene himself thought (without cause) would cost him Washington's regard; on this, with the affair of Fort Washington, Bancroft based his unfavourable estimate of Greene's ability. But on their arrival, Greene and his troops distinguished themselves greatly.

At the urgent request of Washington, on the 2nd of March 1778, at Valley Forge, he accepted the office of quartermaster-general (succeeding Thomas Mifflin), and of his conduct in this difficult work, which Washington heartily approved, a modern critic, Colonel H. B. Carrington, has said that it was "as good as was possible under the circumstances of that fluctuating uncertain force." He had become quartermaster-general on the understanding, however, that he should retain the right to command troops in the field; thus we find him at the head of the right wing at Monmouth on the 28th of June. In August Greene and Lafayette commanded the land forces sent to Rhode Island to co-operate with the French admiral d'Estaing, in an expedition which proved abortive. In June 1780 Greene commanded in a skirmish at Springfield, New Jersey. In August he resigned the office of quartermaster-general, after a long and bitter struggle with Congress over the interference in army administration by the Treasury Board and by commissions appointed by Congress. Before his resignation became effective it fell to his lot to preside over the court which, on the 29th of September, condemned Major John Andre to death.

On the 14th of October he succeeded Gates as commander-in-chief of the Southern army, and took command at Charlotte, N.C., on the 2nd of December. The army was weak and badly equipped and was opposed by a superior force under Cornwallis. Greene decided to divide his own troops, thus forcing the division of the British as well, and creating the possibility of a strategic interplay of forces. This strategy led to General Daniel Morgan's victory of Cowpens (just over the South Carolina line) on the 17th of January 1781, and to the battle at Guilford Court House, N.C. (March 15), in which after having weakened the British troops by continual movements, and drawn in reinforcements for his own army, Greene was defeated indeed, but only at such cost to the victor that Tarleton called it "the pledge of ultimate defeat." Three days after this battle Cornwallis withdrew toward Wilmington. Greene's generalship and judgment were again conspicuously illustrated in the next few weeks, in which he allowed Cornwallis to march north to Virginia and himself turned swiftly to the reconquest of the inner country of South Carolina. This, in spite of a reverse sustained at Lord Rawdon's hands at Hobkirk's Hill (2 m. N. of Camden) on the 25th of April, he achieved by the end of June, the British retiring to the coast. Greene then gave his forces a six weeks' rest on the High Hills of the Santee, and on the 8th of September, with 2600 men, engaged the British under Lieut.-Colonel James Stuart (who had succeeded Lord Rawdon) at Eutaw Springs; the battle, although tactically drawn, so weakened the British that they withdrew to Charleston, where Greene penned them during the remaining months of the war. Greene's Southern campaign showed remarkable strategic features that remind one of those of Turenne, the commander whom he had taken as his model in his studies before the war. He excelled in dividing, eluding and tiring his opponent by long marches, and in actual conflict forcing him to pay for a temporary advantage a price that he could not afford. He was greatly assisted by able subordinates, including the Polish engineer, Tadeusz Kosciusko, the brilliant cavalry captains, Henry ("Light-Horse Harry") Lee and William Washington, and the partisan leaders, Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion.

South Carolina and Georgia voted Greene liberal grants of lands and money. The South Carolina estate, Boone's Barony, S. of Edisto in Bamberg County, he sold to meet bills for the rations of his Southern army. On the Georgia estate, Mulberry Grove, 14 m. above Savannah, on the river, he settled in 1785, after twice refusing (1781 and 1784) the post of secretary of war, and there he died of sunstroke on the 19th of June 1786. Greene was a singularly able, and--like other prominent generals on the American side--a self-trained soldier, and was second only to Washington among the officers of the American army in military ability. Like Washington he had the great gift of using small means to the utmost advantage. His attitude towards the Tories was humane and even kindly, and he generously defended Gates, who had repeatedly intrigued against him, when Gates's conduct of the campaign in the South was criticized. There is a monument to Greene in Savannah (1829). His statue, with that of Roger Williams, represents the state of Rhode Island in the National Hall of Statuary in the Capitol at Washington; in the same city there is a bronze equestrian statue of him by H. K. Brown.

See the _Life of Nathanael Greene_ (3 vols., 1867-1871), by his
grandson, George W. Greene, and the biography (New York, 1893), by
Brig.-Gen. F. V. Greene, in the "Great Commanders Series."

GREENE, ROBERT (c. 1560-1592), English dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Norwich about 1560. The identity of his father has been disputed, but there is every reason to believe that he belonged to the tradesmen's class and had small means. It is doubtful whether Robert Greene attended Norwich grammar school; but, as an eastern counties man (to one of whose plays, _Friar Bacon_, the Norfolk and Suffolk borderland owes a lasting poetic commemoration) he naturally found his way to Cambridge, where he entered St John's College as a sizar in 1575 and took his B.A. thence in 1579, proceeding M.A. in 1583 from Clare Hall. His life at the university was, according to his own account, spent "among wags as lewd as himself, with whom he consumed the flower of his youth." In 1588 he was incorporated at Oxford, so that on some of his title-pages he styles himself "utriusque Academiae in Artibus Magister"; and Nashe humorously refers to him as "utriusque Academiae Robertus Greene." Between the years 1578 and 1583 he had travelled abroad, according to his own account very extensively, visiting France, Germany, Poland and Denmark, besides learning at first-hand to "hate the pride of Italie" and to know the taste of that poet's fruit, "Spanish mirabolones." The grounds upon which it has been suggested that he took holy orders are quite insufficient; according to the title-page of a pamphlet published by him in 1585 he was then a "student in phisicke." Already, however, after taking his M.A. degree, he had according to his own account begun his London life, and his earliest extant literary production was in hand as early as 1580. He now became "an author of playes and a penner of love-pamphlets, so that I soone grew famous in that qualitie, that who for that trade growne so ordinary about London as Robin Greene?" "Glad was that printer," says Nashe, "that might bee so blest to pay him deare for the very dregs of his wit." By his own account he rapidly sank into the worst debaucheries of the town, though Nashe declares that he never knew him guilty of notorious crime. He was not without passing impulses towards a more righteous and sober life, and was derided in consequence by his associates as a "Puritane and Presizian." It is possible that he, as well as his bitter enemy, Gabriel Harvey, exaggerated the looseness of his conduct. His marriage, which took place in 1585 or 1586, failed to steady him; if Francesco, in Greene's pamphlet _Never too late to mend_ (1590), is intended for the author himself, it had been a runaway match; but the fiction and the autobiographical sketch in the _Repentance_ agree in their account of the unfaithfulness which followed on the part of the husband. He lived with his wife, whose name seems to have been Dorothy ("Doll"; and cf. Dorothea in _James IV._), for a while; "but forasmuch as she would perswade me from my wilful wickednes, after I had a child by her, I cast her off, having spent up the marriage-money which I obtained by her. Then left I her at six or seven, who went into Lincolnshire, and I to London," where his reputation as a playwright and writer of pamphlets of "love and vaine fantasyes" continued to increase, and where his life was a feverish alternation of labour and debauchery. In his last years he took it upon himself to make war on the cutpurses and "conny-catchers" with whom he came into contact in the slums, and whose doings he fearlessly exposed in his writings. He tells us how at last he was friendless "except it were in a fewe alehouses," where he was respected on account of the score he had run up. When the end came he was a dependant on the charity of the poor and the pitying love of the unfortunate. Henri Murger has drawn no picture more sickening and more pitiful than the story of Greene's death, as told by his Puritan adversary, Gabriel Harvey--a veracious though a far from unprejudiced narrator. Greene had taken up the cudgels provided by the Harvey brothers on their intervention in the Marprelate controversy, and made an attack (immediately suppressed) upon Gabriel's father and family in the prose-tract _A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, or a Quaint Dispute between Velvet Breeches and Cloth Breeches_ (1592). After a banquet where the chief guest had been Thomas Nashe--an old associate and perhaps a college friend of Greene's, any great intimacy with whom, however, he seems to have been anxious to disclaim--Greene had fallen sick "of a surfeit of pickle herringe and Rennish wine." At the house of a poor shoemaker near Dowgate, deserted by all except his compassionate hostess (Mrs Isam) and two women--one of them the sister of a notorious thief named "Cutting Ball," and the mother of his illegitimate son, Fortunatus Greene--he died on the 3rd of September 1592. Shortly before his death he wrote under a bond for L10 which he had given to the good shoemaker, the following words addressed to his long-forsaken wife: "Doll, I charge thee, by the loue of our youth and by my soules rest, that thou wilte see this man paide; for if hee and his wife had not succoured me, I had died in the streetes.--Robert Greene."

_Four Letters and Certain Sonnets_, Harvey's attack on Greene, appeared almost immediately after his death, as to the circumstances of which his relentless adversary had taken care to inform himself personally. Nashe took up the defence of his dead friend and ridiculed Harvey in _Strange News_ (1593); and the dispute continued for some years. But, before this, the dramatist Henry Chettle published a pamphlet from the hand of the unhappy man, entitled _Greene's Groat's-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance_ (1592), containing the story of Roberto, who may be regarded, for practical purposes, as representing Greene himself. This ill-starred production may almost be said to have done more to excite the resentment of posterity against Greene's name than all the errors for which he professed his repentance. For in it he exhorted to repentance three of his _quondam_ acquaintance. Of these three Marlowe was one--to whom and to whose creation of "that Atheist Tamberlaine" he had repeatedly alluded. The second was Peele, the third probably Nashe. But the passage addressed to Peele contained a transparent allusion to a fourth dramatist, who was an actor likewise, as "an vpstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his _Tygres heart wrapt in a player's hyde_ supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blanke-verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Iohannes-fac-totum, is in his owne conceyt the onely shake-scene in a countrey." The phrase italicized parodies a passage occurring in _The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York_, &c., and retained in Part III. of Henry VI. If Greene (as many eminent critics have thought) had a hand in _The True Tragedie_, he must here have intended a charge of plagiarism against Shakespeare. But while it seems more probable that (as the late R. Simpson suggested) the upstart crow beautified with the feathers of the three dramatists is a sneering description of the actor who declaimed their verse, the _animus_ of the whole attack (as explained by Dr Ingleby) is revealed in its concluding phrases. This "shake-scene," i.e. this _actor_ had ventured to intrude upon the domain of the regular staff of playwrights--their monopoly was in danger!

Two other prose pamphlets of an autobiographical nature were issued posthumously. Of these, _The Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts_ (1592), must originally have been written by him on his death-bed, under the influence, as he says, of Father Parsons's _Booke of Resolution_ (_The Christian Directorie, appertayning to Resolution_, 1582, republished in an enlarged form, which became very popular, in 1585); but it bears traces of having been improved from the original; while _Greene's Vision_ was certainly not, as the title-page avers, written during his last illness.

Altogether not less than thirty-five prose-tracts are ascribed to Greene's prolific pen. Nearly all of them are interspersed with verses; in their themes they range from the "misticall" wonders of the heavens to the familiar but "pernitious sleights" of the sharpers of London. But the most widely attractive of his prose publications were his "love-pamphlets," which brought upon him the outcry of Puritan censors. The earliest of his novels, as they may be called, _Mamillia_, was licensed in 1583. This interesting story may be said to have accompanied Greene through life; for even part ii., of which, though probably completed several years earlier, the earliest extant edition bears the date 1593, had a sequel, _The Anatomie of Love's Flatteries_, which contains a review of suitors recalling Portia's in _The Merchant of Venice_. _The Myrrour of Modestie_ (the story of Susanna) (1584); _The Historie of Arhasto, King of Denmarke_ (1584); _Morando, the Tritameron of Love_ (a rather tedious imitation of the _Decameron_ (1584); _Planetomachia_ (1585) (a contention in story-telling between Venus and Saturn); _Penelope's Web_ (1587) (another string of stories); _Alcida_, _Greene's Metamorphosis_ (1588), and others, followed. In these popular productions he appears very distinctly as a follower of John Lyly; indeed, the first part of _Mamillia_ was entered in the Stationers' Registers in the year of the appearance of _Euphues_, and two of Greene's novels are by their titles announced as a kind of sequel to the parent romance: _Euphues his Censure to Philautus_ (1587), _Menaphon. Camilla's Alarum to Slumbering Euphues_ (1589), named in some later editions _Greene's Arcadia_. This pastoral romance, written in direct emulation of Sidney's, with a heroine called Samila, contains St Sephestia's charming lullaby, with its refrain "Father's sorowe, father's joy." But, though Greene's style copies the balanced oscillation, and his diction the ornateness (including the proverbial philosophy) of Lyly, he contrives to interest by the matter as well as to attract attention by the manner of his narratives. Of his highly moral intentions he leaves the reader in no doubt, since they are exposed on the title-pages. The full title of the _Myrrour of Modestie_ for instance continues: "wherein appeareth as in a perfect glasse how the Lord delivereth the innocent from all imminent perils, and plagueth the blood-thirsty hypocrites with deserved punishments," &c. On his _Pandosto, The Triumph of Time_ (1588) Shakespeare founded _A Winter's Tale_; in fact, the novel contains the entire plot of the comedy, except the device of the living statue; though some of the subordinate characters in the play, including Autolycus, were added by Shakespeare, together with the pastoral fragrance of one of its episodes.

In Greene's _Never too Late_ (1590), announced as a "Powder of Experience: sent to all youthfull gentlemen" for their benefit, the hero, Francesco, is in all probability intended for Greene himself, the sequel or second part is, however, pure fiction. This episodical narrative has a vivacity and truthfulness of manner which savour of an 18th century novel rather than of an Elizabethan tale concerning the days of "Palmerin, King of Great Britain." Philador, the prodigal of _The Mourning Garment_ (1590), is obviously also in some respects a portrait of the writer. The experiences of the Roberto of _Greene's Groat's-worth of Wit_ (1592) are even more palpably the experiences of the author himself, though they are possibly overdrawn--for a born rhetorician exaggerates everything, even his own sins. Besides these and the posthumous pamphlets on his repentance, Greene left realistic pictures of the very disreputable society to which he finally descended, in his pamphlets on "conny-catching": _A Notable Discovery of Coosnage_ (1591), _The Blacke Bookes Messenger, Laying open the Life and Death of Ned Browne, one of the most Notable Cutpurses, Crossbiters, and Conny-catchers that ever lived in England_ (1592). Much in Greene's manner, both in his romances and in his pictures of low life, anticipated what proved the slow course of the actual development of the English novel; and it is probable that his true _metier_, and that which best suited the bright fancy, ingenuity and wit of which his genius was compounded, was pamphlet-spinning and story-telling rather than dramatic composition. It should be added that, euphuist as Greene was, few of his contemporaries in their lyrics warbled wood-notes which like his resemble Shakespeare's in their native freshness.

Curiously enough, as Mr Churton Collins has pointed out, Greene, except in the two pamphlets written just before his death, never refers to his having written plays; and before 1592 his contemporaries are equally silent as to his labours as a playwright. Only four plays remain to us of which he was indisputably the sole author. The earliest of these seems to have been the _Comicall History of Alphonsus, King of Arragon_, of which Henslowe's _Diary_ contains no trace. But it can hardly have been first acted long after the production of Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_, which had, in all probability, been brought on the stage in 1587. For this play, "comical" only in the negative sense of having a happy ending, was manifestly written in emulation as well as in direct imitation of Marlowe's tragedy. While Greene cannot have thought himself capable of surpassing Marlowe as a tragic poet, he very probably wished to outdo him in "business," and to equal him in the rant which was sure to bring down at least part of the house. _Alphonsus_ is a _history_ proper--a dramatized chronicle or narrative of warlike events. Its fame could never equal that of Marlowe's tragedy; but its composition showed that Greene could seek to rival the most popular drama of the day, without falling very far short of his model.

In the _Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ (not known to have been acted before February, 1592, but probably written in 1589) Greene once more attempted to emulate Marlowe; and he succeeded in producing a masterpiece of his own. Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_, which doubtless suggested the composition of Greene's comedy, reveals the mighty tragic genius of its author; but Greene resolved on an altogether distinct treatment of a cognate theme. Interweaving with the popular tale of Friar Bacon and his wondrous doings a charming idyl (so far as we know, of his own invention), the story of Prince Edward's love for the Fair Maid of Fressingfield, he produced a comedy brimful of amusing action and genial fun. _Friar Bacon_ remains a dramatic picture of English Elizabethan life with which _The Merry Wives_ alone can vie; and not even the ultra-classicism in the similes of its diction can destroy the naturalness which constitutes its perennial charm. _The History of Orlando Furioso, one of the Twelve Peeres of France_ has on unsatisfactory evidence been dated as before 1586, and is known to have been acted on the 21st of February 1592. It is a free dramatic adaptation of Ariosto, Harington's translation of whom appeared in 1591, and who in one passage is textually quoted; and it contains a large variety of characters and a superabundance oi action. Fairly lucid in arrangement and fluent in style, the treatment of the madness oi Orlando lacks tragic power. Very few dramatists from Sophocles to Shakespeare have succeeded in subordinating the grotesque effect of madness to the tragic; and Greene is not to be included in the list.

In _The Scottish Historie of James IV._ (acted 1592, licensed for publication 1594) Greene seems to have reached the climax of his dramatic powers. The "historical" character of this play is pure pretence. The story is taken from one of Giraldi Cinthio's tales. Its theme is the illicit passion of King James for the chaste lady Ida, to obtain whose hand he endeavours, at the suggestion of a villain called Ateukin, to make away with his own wife. She escapes in doublet and hose, attended by her faithful dwarf; but, on her father's making war upon her husband to avenge her wrongs, she brings about a reconciliation between them. Not only is this well-constructed story effectively worked out, but the characters are vigorously drawn, and in Ateukin there is a touch of Iago. The fooling by Slipper, the clown of the piece, is unexceptionable; and, lest even so the play should hang heavy on the audience, its action is carried off by a "pleasant comedie"--i.e. a prelude and some dances between the acts--"presented by Oboram, King of Fayeries," who is, however, a very different person from the Oberon of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_.

_George-a-Greene the Pinner of Wakefield_ (acted 1593, printed 1599), a delightful picture of English life fully worthy of the author of _Friar Bungay_, has been attributed to him; but the external evidence is very slight, and the internal unconvincing. Of the comedy of _Fair Em_, which resembles _Friar Bacon_ in more than one point, Greene cannot have been the author; the question as to the priority between the two plays is not so easily solved. The conjecture as to his supposed share in the plays on which the second and third parts of _Henry VI._ are founded has been already referred to. He was certainly joint author with Thomas Lodge of the curious drama called _A Looking Glasse for London and England_ (acted in 1592 and printed in 1594)--a dramatic apologue conveying to the living generation of Englishmen the warning of Nineveh's corruption and prophesied doom. The lesson was frequently repeated in the streets of London by the "Ninevitical motions" of the puppets; but there are both fire and wealth of language in Greene and Lodge's oratory. The comic element is not absent, being supplied in abundance by Adam, the clown of the piece, who belongs to the family of Slipper, and of Friar Bacon's servant, Miles.

Greene's dramatic genius has nothing in it of the intensity of Marlowe's tragic muse; nor perhaps does he ever equal Peele at his best. On the other hand, his dramatic poetry is occasionally animated with the breezy freshness which no artifice can simulate. He had considerable constructive skill, but he has created no character of commanding power--unless Ateukin be excepted; but his personages are living men and women, and marked out from one another with a vigorous but far from rude hand. His comic humour is undeniable, and he had the gift of light and graceful dialogue. His diction is overloaded with classical ornament, but his versification is easy and fluent, and its cadence is at times singularly sweet. He creates his best effects by the simplest means; and he is indisputably one of the most attractive of early English dramatic authors.

Greene's dramatic works and poems were edited by Alexander Dyce in
1831 with a life of the author. This edition was reissued in one
volume in 1858. His complete works were edited for the Huth Library by
A. B. Grosart. This issue (1881-1886) contains a translation of
Nicholas Storojhenko's monograph on Greene (Moscow, 1878). Greene's
plays and poems were edited with introductions and notes by J. Churton
Collins in 2 vols. (Oxford, 1905); the general introduction to this
edition has superseded previous accounts of Greene and his dramatic
and lyrical writings. An account of his pamphlets is to be found in J.
J. Jusserand's _English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare_ (Eng.
trans., 1890). See also W. Bernhardi, _Robert Greenes Leben und
Schriften_ (1874); F. M. Bodenstedt, in _Shakespeare's Zeitgenossen
und ihre Werke_ (1858); and an introduction by A. W. Ward to _Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay_ (Oxford, 1886, 4th ed., 1901). (A. W. W.)

GREENFIELD, a township and the county-seat of Franklin county, in N.E. Massachusetts, U.S.A., including an area of 20 sq. m. of meadow and hill country, watered by the Green and Deerfield rivers and various small tributaries. Pop. (1890) 5252, (1900) 7927, of whom 1431 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 10,427. The principal village, of the same name as the township, is situated on the N. bank of the Deerfield river, and on the Boston & Maine railway and the Connecticut Valley street railway (electric). Among Greenfield's manufactures are cutlery, machinery, and taps and dies. Greenfield, originally part of Deerfield, was settled about 1682, was established as a "district" in 1753, and on the 23rd of August 1775 was, by a general Act, separated from Deerfield and incorporated as a separate township, although it had assumed full township rights in 1774 by sending delegates to the Provincial Congress. In 1793 part of it was taken to form the township of Gill; in 1838 part of it was annexed to Bernardston; and in 1896 it annexed a part of Deerfield. It was much disaffected at the time of Shays's Rebellion.

See F. M. Thompson, _History of Greenfield_ (2 vols., Greenfield,
1904).

GREENFINCH (Ger. _Grunfink_), or GREEN LINNET, as it is very often called, a common European bird, the _Fringilla chloris_ of Linnaeus, ranked by many systematists with one section of hawfinches, _Coccothraustes_, but apparently more nearly allied to the other section _Hesperiphona_, and perhaps justifiably deemed the type of a distinct genus, to which the name _Chloris_ or _Ligurinus_ has been applied. The cock, in his plumage of yellowish-green and yellow is one of the most finely coloured of common English birds, but he is rather heavily built, and his song is hardly commended. The hen is much less brightly tinted. Throughout Britain, as a rule, this species is one of the most plentiful birds, and is found at all seasons of the year. It pervades almost the whole of Europe, and in Asia reaches the river Ob. It visits Palestine, but is unknown in Egypt. It is, however, abundant in Mauritania, whence specimens are so brightly coloured that they have been deemed to form a distinct species, the _Ligurinus aurantiiventris_ of Dr Cabanis, but that view is now generally abandoned. In the north-east of Asia and its adjacent islands occur two allied species--the _Fringilla sinica_ of Linnaeus and the _F. kawarahiba_ of Temminck. (A. N.)

GREENHEART, one of the most valuable of timbers, the produce of _Nectandra Rodiaei_, natural order Lauraceae, a large tree, native of tropical South America and the West Indies. The Indian name of the tree is _sipiri_ or _bibiru_, and from its bark and fruits is obtained the febrifuge principle bibirine. Greenheart wood is of a dark-green colour, sap wood and heart wood being so much alike that they can with difficulty be distinguished from each other. The heart wood is one of the most durable of all timbers, and its value is greatly enhanced by the fact that it is proof against the ravages of many marine borers which rapidly destroy piles and other submarine structures of most other kinds of wood available for such purposes. In the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, there are two pieces of planking from a wreck submerged during eighteen years on the west coast of Scotland. The one specimen--greenheart--is merely slightly pitted on the surface, the body of the wood being perfectly sound and untouched, while the other--teak--is almost entirely eaten away. Greenheart, tested either by transverse or by tensile strain, is one of the strongest of all woods, and it is also exceedingly dense, its specific gravity being about 1150. It is included in the second line of Lloyd's Register for shipbuilding purposes, and it is extensively used for keelsons, beams, engine-bearers and planking, &c., as well as in the general engineering arts, but its excessive weight unfits it for many purposes for which its other properties would render it eminently suitable.

GREENLAND (Danish, &c., _Gronland_), a large continental island, the greater portion of which lies within the Arctic Circle, while the whole is arctic in character. It is not connected with any portion of Europe or America except by suboceanic ridges; but in the extreme north it is separated only by a narrow strait from Ellesmere Land in the archipelago of the American continent. It is bounded on the east by the North Atlantic, the Norwegian and Greenland Seas--Jan Mayen, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands and the Shetlands being the only lands between it and Norway. Denmark Strait is the sea between it and Iceland, and the northern Norwegian Sea or Greenland Sea separates it from Spitsbergen. On the west Davis Strait and Baffin Bay separate it from Baffin Land. The so-called bay narrows northward into the strait successively known as Smith Sound, Kane Basin, Kennedy Channel and Robeson Channel. A submarine ridge, about 300 fathoms deep at its deepest, unites Greenland with Iceland (across Denmark Strait), the Faeroes and Scotland. A similar submarine ridge unites it with the Cumberland Peninsula of Baffin Land, across Davis Strait. Two large islands (with others smaller) lie probably off the north coast, being apparently divided from it by very narrow channels which are not yet explored. If they be reckoned as integral parts of Greenland, then the north coast, fronting the polar sea, culminates about 83 deg. 40' N. Cape Farewell, the most southerly point (also on a small island), is in 59 deg. 45' N. The extreme length of Greenland may therefore be set down at about 1650 m., while its extreme breadth, which occurs about 77 deg. 30' N., is approximately 800 m. The area is estimated at 827,275 sq. m. Greenland is a Danish colony, inasmuch as the west coast and also the southern east coast belong to the Danish crown. The scattered settlements of Europeans on the southern parts of the coasts are Danish, and the trade is a monopoly of the Danish government.

The southern and south-western coasts have been known, as will be mentioned later, since the 10th century, when Norse settlers appeared there, and the names of many famous arctic explorers have been associated with the exploration of Greenland. The communication between the Norse settlements in Greenland and the motherland Norway was broken off at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century, and the Norsemen's knowledge about their distant colony was gradually more or less forgotten. The south and west coast of Greenland was then re-discovered by John Davis in July 1585, though previous explorers, as Cortereal, Frobisher and others, had seen it, and at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century the work of Davis (1586-1588). Hudson (1610) and Baffin (1616) in the western seas afforded some knowledge of the west coast. This was added to by later explorers and by whalers and sealers. Among explorers who in the 19th century were specially connected with the north-west coast may be mentioned E. A. Inglefield (1852) who sailed into Smith's Sound,[1] Elisha Kent Kane (1853-1855)[2] who worked northward through Smith Sound into Kane Basin, and Charles Francis Hall (1871) who explored the strait (Kennedy Channel and Robeson Channel) to the north of this.[3]

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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Greek Law" to "Ground-Squirrel"Chapter III: Modern Greek Literature (1453-1908) (3)

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