ating loans and in smuggling money, arms, and foreign goods, not only were his services retained throughout her reign, but besides his salary of twenty shillings per diem he received grants of church lands to the yearly value of 200. Under Queen Elizabeth, besides continuing to act as financial agent of the crown, he was for some time ambassador at the court of the duchess of Parma. In 1559 he received the honour of knighthood. By the outbreak of the war in the Low Countries he was compelled to leave Antwerp on the 19th March 1567 ; but, though he spent the remainder of his life in London, he continued his business as merchant and financial agent of the Government in much the same way as formerly. Elizabeth also found him useful in a great variety of other ways, among which was that of acting as jailer to Lady Mary Grey, who, as a punishment for marrying Thomas Keys the sergeant porter, remained a prisoner in his house from June 1569 to the end of 1572. In 1565 Gresham made a proposal to the court of aldermen of London to build at his own expense a bourse or exchange, on condition that they purchased for this purpose a piece of suitable ground. In this proposal he seems to have had an eye to his own interest as well as to the general good of the merchants, for by a yearly rental of 700 obtained for the shops in the upper part of the building he received a sufficient return for his trouble and expense. Gresham died suddenly, apparently of apoplexy, 21st November 1579. His only son predeceased him, and his illegitimate daughter Anne he married to Sir Nicolas Bacon, brother of the great Lord Bacon. With the exception of a number of small sums bequeathed to the support of various charities, the bulk of his property, con sisting of estates in various parts of England of the annual value of more than 2300, was bequeathed to his widow and her heirs with the stipulation that after her decease his residence in Bishopsgate Street, as well as the rents arising from the Royal Exchange, should be vested in the hands of the corporation of London and the Mercers Company, for the purpose of instituting a college in which seven professors should read lectures one each day of the week on astronomy, geometry, physic, law, divinity, rhetoric, and music. The lectures were begun in 1597, and were delivered in the original building until 1768, when, on the ground that the trustees were losers by the gift, it was made over to the crown for a yearly rent of 500, and con verted into an excise office. From that time a room in the Royal Exchange was used for the lectures until in 1843 the present building was erected at a cost of 7000. It contains a large library, professors rooms, and a theatre capable of holding 500 persons. A notice of Gresham is contained in Fuller s Worthies and Ward s Gresham Professors; but the fullest account of him, as well as of the history of the Exchange and Gresham College is that by J. M. Burgou in his Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 2 vols., 1839. See also a Brief Memoir of Sir Thomas Gresham, 1833 ; and The Life of Sir Thomas Gresham, Founder of the Royal Exchange, 1845.
GRESSET, Jean Baptiste (1709-1777). The literary
history of Gresset might be dismissed with the simple state
ment that he wrote Vert Vert. By that one poem he is
remembered. His life is, however, interesting from another
fact, that he, who almost alone among French poets wrote
nothing of which a moralist need be ashamed, spent the last
twenty-five years of his life in regretting the frivolity which
enabled him to produce the most charming of poems. He
was born at Amiens, and brought up by the Jesuits of that
place. ^ As a boy he displayed such great promise that,
according to the usual custom of the society, the fathers
resolved to receive him among themselves. He was accepted
as a novice at the age of sixteen, and sent to pursue his
studies at the College Louis le Grand in Paris. After
completing his course he was appointed, being then under
twenty years of age, to a post as professor or assistant master
in a college at Rouen. He was, it must be remembered, a
son of the society of Jesus ; as such he had been drilled and
disciplined to perfect obedience ; in every point except that
of orders he was an ecclesiastic. Probably it was not
the intention of the society that he should become a priest.
They reckoned upon his continuing a lay brother, and help
ing the cause by his position as a teacher. From such a
mind so trained, so taught to regard everything from the
priestly point of view, devoted to the most severe studies,
occupied in the grave and responsible work of teaching,
what literary fruit was to be expected 1 Perhaps a treatise
on a Greek particle, an essay on Latin style, a grammatical
thesis, anything but that which really appeared, the
graceful, pleasant poem by which he will ever be remem
bered. He published Vert Vert at Rouen, being then
twenty-four years of age. It is a story, in itself exceedingly
humorous, showing how a parrot, the delight of a convent,
whose talk was all of prayers and pious ejaculations, was
conveyed to another convent as a visitor to please the nuns.
On the way he falls among bad companions, forgets his
convent language, and shocks the sisters on arrival by pro
fane swearing. He is sent back in disgrace, punished by
solitude and plain bread, presently repents, reforms, and is
killed by kindness. The story, however, is nothing. The
treatment of the subject, the atmosphere which surrounds it,
the delicacy in which the little prattling ways of the nuns,
their jealousies, their tiny trifles, are presented, takes the
reader entirely by surprise. The poem stands absolutely
unrivalled, even among French contes en vers,
Gresset found himself famous. He left Rouen, went up
to Paris, where he found refuge in the same garret which
had sheltered him when a boy at the College Louis Is
Grand, and there wrote his second poem, Ma Chartreuse.
Then trouble came upon him ; complaints were made to
the fathers of the alleged licentiousness of verses which
were as innocent as any school-girl s novel, the real cause of
complaint being the ridicule which Vert Vert seemed to throw
upon the whole race of nuns. An example, it was urged, must
be made ; Gresset was expelled the order. Men of robust
mind would have "been glad to get rid of such a yoke.
Gresset, who had never been taught to stand alone, went
forth weeping. He became a man of letters ; he wrote
many other poems, none of which made any mark. He
never in fact attained the same level as Vert Vert. He
wrote two or three comedies. One, called Le Mediant, still
keeps the stage, though it is difficult to assign it much
merit. He was admitted to the Academy. And then, still
young, he retired to Amiens, where he fell into the hands
of the priests, and became their abject slave. His brief
relapse from the discipline of the church became the subject
of the deepest remorse. He repented of his poems, and even
went so far as to address to the bishop an abjuration of his
title of dramatist, and to implore pardon of the Virgin for
having written plays. The history of French literature
presents many examples of poets in old age repenting the
sins of their youth ; the example of Gresset is unique as
beginning, while in full manhood, a senile repentance for
having even in so pleasant and innocent a way brought into
ridicule the institutions of the church.
GRÉTRY, Andre Ernest Modeste (1741-1813), a celebrated composer of French opera, was born at Liége, February 11, 1741. He received his first musical education in the maitrise of the college of St Denis, where his father, a poor musician, occasionally acted as violinist. Leclerc and Renekin were his early masters. But of greater importance was the practical tuition he received by attending the performance of an Italian opera company. Here he heard the operas of Galuppi, Pergolesi, and other masters ; and the desire of completing his own studies in Italy was the immediate result. To find the necessary
