Thomas Green

“ You need not, Thomas; nor need you doubt the will that has only to exert itself for an instant to—Shall I press the button, brother?"
"No, no!" I shouted in a frenzy, caused rather by my knowledge of the nature of this man than any especial threat apparent in his voice or gesture. "Let me think; let me know more fully what your requirements are—what she must suffer if I consent—and what I."
He let his hand slip back, that smooth white hand which I had more than once surveyed in admiration. Then he smiled.
"I knew you would not be foolish," he said. "Life has its charms even for hermits like me ”

“ Another son was the late Captain William S. Green, who was well known to us for many years. He was in 1842, 1859, and in 1863, a representative to the State Legislature, and died in 1870 at the age of sixty-five years, leaving a widow who is still living (1882) ; three sons: Martin, now dead, Thomas B., and John W., and a daughter, Mrs. Kettletas. Another son of Mr. Asa Green was Thomas Green, the father of the present Mr. Asa Green. The daughters of the family were Frances, the wife of Mr. Joseph Small; Mary, the wife of Mr. Thomas Haskell, and afterward the wife of Mr. Thomas Dow, Jr. ”

“ At Canterbury the monks received him as an angel of God, crying, "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord." "I am come to die among you," said Thomas in his sermon. "In this church there are martyrs," he said again, "and God will soon increase their number." A few days later he made a triumphant progress through London on his way to visit the young king; his fellow-citizens crowded round him with loud blessings, while a procession of three hundred poor scholars and London clerks raised a loud Te Deumas Thomas rode along with bowed head scattering alms on every side. ”

“ Thomas shuddered; he had forgotten Felix, but as he heard these words he could no longer delay looking at the man who had offered to stand his surety for the performance of the unholy deed his father exacted from him. Turning, he saw a man who in any place and under any roof would attract attention, awake admiration and—yes, fear. He was not a large man, not so large as himself, but the will that expressed itself in frenzy on his father's lips showed quiet and inflexible in the gray eye resting upon his own with a power he could never hope to evade. ”

“ Thomas, the king said, had entered as a tyrant into his land, had excommunicated the bishops for obedience to the king, had troubled the whole realm, had purposed to take away the royal crown from his son, had begged for a legation against Henry, and had obtained from the Pope grants of presentations to churches, which deprived knights and barons as well as the king himself of their property. The council fell in with the king's mood. Thomas was worthy of death. The king would have neither quiet days nor a peaceful kingdom while he lived. ”

“ There is no ground for saying that the right arises out of a primary human capacity, and is thus 'innate,' which does not apply equally to the duty.
31. The dissociation of innate rights from innate duties has gone along with the delusion that such rights existed apart from society. Men were supposed to have existed in a state of nature, which was not a state of society, but in which certain rights attached to them as individuals, and then to have formed societies by contract or covenant. Society having been formed, certain other rights arose through positive enactment ”

“ He was three years old when the Volunteers established the freedom of the legislature in College Green, and twenty-one when Pitt and Castlereagh purchased its extinction. His father, as a Catholic, had naturally a keen interest in the great question of reform and Catholic enfranchisement, and Moore remembered being taken by him to a dinner in honour of Napper Tandy, when the hero of the evening noticed the small boy. ”

“ To ask why I am to submit to the power of the state, is to ask why I am to allow my life to be regulated by that complex of institutions without which I literally should not have a life to call my own, nor should be able to ask for a justification of what I am called on to do. ”

“ For an hour, it may be, or a day, it raises him into a world of absolute ideality, where he may forget his wants and his vanity, and lose himself in a struggle in which the combatants are the forces of the spirit, and of which the end is that annihilation in collision with destiny which is but the blank side of reconciliation with it. ”

“ For a good many years I have used this essay of Green's with an advanced class in the theory of prose fiction. It has worked well. It always arouses discussion, and in doing so it has the great virtue that it imperiously leads the argument away from superficialities and centers it upon fundamentals. Its service as a stimulus to high thinking cannot easily be overestimated. For any student, and especially for one who has known only the unidea'd criticism of fiction so popular today, it is a fine thing to come in contact with a high-minded, sturdy, and uncompromising thinker such as Green is. ”

“ The statement that Greene had a share in a play on Henry VIII (Variorum, xix. 500) seems to be based on a confusion with a Robert Greene named by Stowe as an authority for his Annales (Collins, i. 69) .
Doubtful Plays
Greene’s hand has been sought in Contention of York and Lancaster, Edward III, Fair Em, George a Greene, Troublesome Reign of King John, Knack to Know a Knave, Thracian Wonder, Leire, Locrine, Mucedorus, Selimus, Taming of A Shrew, Thomas Lord Cromwell (cf. ch. xxiv) , and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Henry VI.
FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE (c. 1554–1628) . ”

“ Of Greene, as the creator of our lighter English prose, we have already spoken. But his work as a poet was of yet greater importance, for his perception of character and the relations of social life, the playfulness of his fancy, and the liveliness of his style, exerted an influence on his contemporaries which was equalled by that of none but Marlowe and Peele. In spite of the rudeness of his plots and the unequal character of his work, Greene must be regarded as the creator of our modern comedy. No figure better paints the group of young playwrights. ”

“ Few men, indeed, have passed more pleasantly through the world than Thomas Moore. His day of life was one continual sunshine, just sufficiently tempered and shaded by passing clouds—"mere crumpling of the rose-leaves"—as to soften and enhance its general gayety and brightness. ”

“ George shook his head. He could not rid himself of the old impression he had formed of the man in the snow.
“Mr. Dunn, a word with you,” suddenly spoke up Sweetwater, to the man who had just passed them. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that is my name,” was the quiet response, in a voice which was at once rich and resonant; a voice which George knew—the voice of the impassioned speaker he had heard resounding through the sleet as he cowered within hearing in the shed behind the Avenue A tenement. “Who are you who wish to speak to me at so late an hour?” ”

“ Grey was accustomed to sit, I found that it was easier to plan an action than to carry it out. Home life and the domestic virtues had always appealed to me more than a man’s greatness. The position which this man held in his own country, his usefulness there, even his prestige as statesman and scholar, were facts, but very dreamy facts, to me, while his feelings as a father, the place he held in his daughter’s heart—these were real to me, these I could understand ”

“ But the adherence of George Green to the resolution never to marry, unless to his Mary, is, indeed, a rare instance of the fidelity of man in the matter of love. We can but blush for our country's shame when we recall to mind the fact, that while George and Mary Green, and numbers of other fugitives from American slavery, can receive protection from any of the governments of Europe, they cannot return to their native land without becoming slaves. ”

“ Greene was concerned, along with Thomas Lodge, in writing another extant play, entitled A Looking-Glass for London and England. This is little better than a piece of stage trash, being a mixture of comedy, tragedy, and Miracle-Play; an Angel, a Devil, and the Prophet Hosea taking part in the action. The verse parts are in Greene's puffiest style, the prose parts in his filthiest. ”

“ When Warner spoke, apparently, of Greene as a "scholler" better than himself he was quite right, and as a matter of fact, Lyly's two most famous disciples were Thomas Lodge, a friend of Riche, who helped him to revise his works and corrected his faulty verses, and Robert Greene, a novelist and dramatist like Lodge and Lyly, and a friend of the former. Endowed with a less calm and sociable temperament than their model, Greene and Lodge led a chequered existence very characteristic of their epoch. ”

“ Silently she arose and left them, and reaching her cottage, threw herself upon her bed in bitterness. She shed no tears; neither did she groan, but her bosom heaved with burning agony. Sickness smote Thomas to his very heart; yea, even unto blindness he was sick. His tongue was like heated iron in his mouth, and his throat like a parched land. He was led from the pulpit. But he escaped not the persecution of the unfeeling titter, and the expressions of shallow pity. He would have rejoiced to have dwelt in darkness for ever, but there was no escape from the eyes of his tormentors. ”

“ Orlando Furioso (1586) , adapted from an English translation of Ariosto; and The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth (acted in 1592) , not a “historical” play, but founded on an imaginary incident in the life of the King. Greene is weak in creating characters, and his style is not of outstanding merit; but his humor is somewhat genial in his plays, and his methods less austere than those of the other tragedians.
3. Thomas Nash (1567–1601) was born at Lowestoft, educated at Cambridge, and then (1586) went to London to make his living by literature. ”

“ Thomas Buck's other partner was his brother John, appointed in 1625. Though he, like all [48] Thomas's colleagues, afterwards found cause of dispute with him, it is interesting to note how, on Leonard Greene's death, the brothers quickly co-operated to secure the vacant office of printer for another member of the family. The following letter [40] was written by John to Thomas on 24 October, 1630:
Brother Thomas,
I pray returne with all speede to Cambridge. Leonard Greene is dead, there's a patent void and within 14 dayes a third man must be chosen. ”

“ Tom Green opened his eyes wide with astonishment.
"What did he do that for?" he asked.
"To be revenged on me. I'll tell you what for another time. Now I want to find him. Can you tell me where he went?"
"No; I left him here, while I went to the store for a new hatchet." ”

“ After the birth of George, his mother was sold to a negro trader, and he to a Virginian, who sent agents through the country to buy up young slaves to raise for the market. George was only about nineteen years of age, when he unfortunately became connected with the insurrection. Mr. Green, who owned George, was a comparatively good master, and prided himself on treating his slaves better than most men. This gentleman was also the owner of a girl who was perfectly white, with straight hair and prominent features. ”

“ But Tom was a brave lad, and he put on a bright face before these two, and told them of his trip to Wilkesbarre, and about what he had seen and heard,—about the law-office, about Pleadwell and Carolan, about every thing, indeed, but the bargain and the money.
He tried to eat his supper as if he enjoyed it, though every mouthful seemed about to choke him, and on the plea of being very tired, he went early to bed. There he lay half the night debating with his conscience, trying to make himself believe that he had done right, yet feeling [60] all the time that he had stooped to dishonor. ”

“ It is simply Arnold’s Literature and Dogma with the literature left out. It is as much behind the age as Paley’s Evidences, or Colenso’s method of Biblical exegesis. Nor could anything be less impressive than the unfortunate hero gravely heralding a dawn that rose long ago, and so completely missing its true significance that he proposes to carry on the business of the old firm under the new name. On the other hand, it contains several clever caricatures, and a heap of delightful quotations, and Green’s philosophy very pleasantly sugars the somewhat bitter pill of the author’s fiction. ”

“ GREENE, ROBERT (1678?–1730) , philosopher, the son of Robert Greene, a mercer of Tamworth, Staffordshire, by his wife Mary Pretty of Fazeley, was born about 1678. His father, who according to the son was a repository of all the Christian virtues, died while Greene was a boy, and it was through the generosity of his uncle, John Pretty, rector of Farley, Hampshire, that he was sent to Clare Hall, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. 1699, and M.A. 1703. He became a fellow and tutor of his college and took orders. ”

“ The task was finished at last in the spring of 1845, but there remained the need of a preface, and Moore records that after various endeavours he left this, "in utter despair," to the publishers to provide. Later in the year, the annual visit from his sister Ellen made a brightness in the house, now so quiet; and after she had gone, there came letters from Tom asking for [Pg 168] money for a trip home. ”

“ During his undergraduate years the two intellectual forces most powerful at Oxford had been the writings of J. H. Newman in the religious sphere, though their influence was already past its meridian, and the writings of John Stuart Mill in the sphere of logic and philosophy. By neither of these, save in the way of antagonism, had Green been influenced. He heartily hated all the Utilitarian school, and had an especial scorn for Buckle, who, now almost forgotten, enjoyed in those days, as being supposed to be a philosophic historian, a brief term of popularity. ”