The Right Hon. Thomas Grenville, who was born on the 31st of December 1755, was the second son of the Right Hon. George Grenville, the statesman, who succeeded Lord Bute as Premier in 1763, and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Wyndham. In 1771 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, as a gentleman-commoner, and in 1778 he was appointed ensign in the Coldstream Guards, which he left the following year to become a lieutenant in the 80th foot. In 1780 he was elected Member for Buckinghamshire, and became a follower of Lord Rockingham and Mr. Fox, the latter of whom thought so highly of his talents that he intended, if his India Bill had passed, to have made him Governor-General. Towards the close of the war with the United States, Mr. Grenville was sent to Paris to negotiate terms of peace, but only remained there a short time, being recalled by the death of the Marquis of Rockingham and a change of ministry. On his return to this country he continued for some time to support Mr. Fox, but the course pursued by that statesman with regard to the French Revolution caused him to transfer his allegiance to Mr. Pitt, and in 1794 Mr. Grenville accepted the post of Minister Extraordinary to the Court of Vienna. In 1798 he became a privy councillor, and in 1799 he was sent as Ambassador to Berlin to endeavour to prevent the King of Prussia deserting the coalition against France; but the first vessel in which he sailed was stopped by ice, and the second was wrecked, and the delay which ensued rendered the mission an abortive one. In 1800 he was made Chief Justice in Eyre to the South of the Trent, a sinecure office of two thousand a year, of which he was the last holder. On the fall of Mr. Pitt's ministry in March 1801, Mr. Grenville ceased to support the Tory party, and renewed his political connection with Mr. Fox, and in 1806, shortly after his brother, Lord Grenville, became Prime Minister, he was appointed President of the Board of Control. On the death of Mr. Fox on the 13th of September 1806, he succeeded Lord Howick as First Lord of the Admiralty, a post he held until the formation of the Duke of Portland's administration in April 1807, when he finally retired from office, and devoted the remaining forty years of his life to literature, and to the collection of the splendid library, which is now one of the great glories of the British Museum. From an early age Mr. Grenville was animated by an ardent love for books, and took a great interest in the development of the National Library, of which he was for many years a Trustee. He died at Hamilton Place, Piccadilly, on the 17th of December 1846, at the age of ninety-one. Mr. Grenville had originally bequeathed his library to his great-nephew the Duke of Buckingham, but the circumstance that it was principally purchased from the profits of the sinecure office which he had held for so many years, led him to the conclusion that it was 'a debt and a duty' that the collection so acquired should be devoted to the use of the public. In the autumn of 1845, in the course of a conversation with his friend Mr. Panizzi, afterwards Sir Anthony Panizzi, then Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum, he informed him of his intention; and after his death it was found that he had revoked the bequest to the Duke of Buckingham, and left his noble collection to the nation. A full and interesting description of the printed books in the library by Sir Anthony Panizzi is to be found in the Report on the accessions to the Museum for the year 1847, and we cannot do better than give the account of them in the words of the famous librarian, who had himself much to do with the acquisition of this magnificent gift:—

'With exception of the Collection of His Majesty George the Third, the Library of the British Museum has never received an accession so important in every respect as the Collection of the Right Honourable Thomas Grenville.... Formed and preserved with the exquisite taste of an accomplished bibliographer, with the learning of a profound and elegant scholar, and the splendid liberality of a gentleman in affluent circumstances, who employed in adding to his library whatever his generous heart allowed him to spare from silently relieving those whose wants he alone knew, this addition to the National Library places it in some respects above all libraries known, in others it leaves it inferior only to the Royal Library at Paris. An idea may be formed of the literary value of Mr. Grenville's Library by referring to its pecuniary value; it consists of 20,240 volumes, forming about 16,000 works, which cost upwards of £54,000, and would sell for more now. During his lifetime, Mr. Grenville's library was most liberally rendered accessible to any person, however humble his condition in life, who could show the least cause for asking the loan of any of his precious volumes. By bequeathing the whole to his country, Mr. Grenville has secured to literary men, even after his death, that assistance, as far as it relates to the use of his books, which he so generously bestowed on them in every way during his long and dignified career:—the career of a man of high birth, distinguished for uniting to a powerful and cultivated intellect a warm and benevolent heart.'

Sir Anthony Panizzi, in describing the contents of the collection, adds: 'It would naturally be expected that one of the editors of the "Adelphi Homer" would lose no opportunity of collecting the best and rarest editions of the Prince of Poets. Æsop, a favourite author of Mr. Grenville, occurs in his Library in its rarest forms; there is no doubt that the series of editions of this author in that library is unrivalled. The great admiration which Mr. Grenville felt for Cardinal Ximenes, even more on account of the splendid edition of the Polyglot Bible which that prelate caused to be printed at Alcala, than of his public character, made him look upon the acquisition of the Moschus, a book of extreme rarity, as a piece of good fortune. Among the extremely rare editions of the Latin Classics, in which the Grenville Library abounds, the unique complete copy of Azzoguidi's first edition of Ovid is a gem well deserving particular notice, and was considered, on the whole, by Mr. Grenville himself, the boast of his collection. The Aldine Virgil of 1505, the rarest of the Aldine editions of this poet, is the more welcome to the Museum, as it serves to supply a lacuna; the copy mentioned in the Catalogue of the Royal Collection not having been transferred to the National Library.

'The rarest editions of English Poets claimed and obtained the special attention of Mr. Grenville. Hence we find him possessing not only the first and second edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales by Caxton, but the only copy known of a hitherto undiscovered edition of the same work printed in 1498 by Wynkyn de Worde. Of Shakespeare's collected Dramatic Works, the Grenville Library contains a copy of the first edition, which, if not the finest known, is at all events surpassed by none. His strong religious feelings, and his sincere attachment to the Established Church, as well as his mastery and knowledge of the English Language, concurred in making him eager to possess the earliest, as well as the rarest, editions of the translations of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue. He succeeded to a great extent; but what deserves particular mention is the only known fragment of the New Testament in English, translated by Tyndale and Roy, which was in the press of Quentell, at Cologne, in 1525, when the printers were obliged to interrupt the printing, and fly to escape persecution.

'The History of the British Empire, and whatever could illustrate any of its different portions, were the subject of Mr. Grenville's unremitting research, and he allowed nothing to escape him deserving to be preserved, however rare and expensive. Hence his collection of works on the Divorce of Henry VIII.; that of Voyages and Travels, either by Englishmen, or to countries at some time more or less connected with England, or possessed by her; that of contemporary works on the gathering, advance, and defeat of the "Invincible Armada"; and that of writings on Ireland,—are more numerous, more valuable, and more interesting than in any other collection ever made by any person on the same subjects. Among the Voyages and Travels, the collections of De Bry and Hulsius are the finest in the world; no other library can boast of four such fine books as the copies of Hariot's Virginia, in Latin, German, French, and English of the De Bry series. And it was fitting that in Mr. Grenville's library should be found one of the only two copies known of the first edition of this work, printed in London in 1588, wherein an account is given of a colony which had been founded by his family namesake, Sir Richard Grenville.

'Conversant with the language and literature of Spain, as well as with that of Italy, the works of imagination by writers of those two countries are better represented in his library than in any other out of Spain and Italy; in some branches better even than in any single library in the countries themselves. No Italian collection can boast of such a splendid series of early editions of Ariosto's Orlando, one of Mr. Grenville's favourite authors, nor, indeed, of such choice Romance Poems. The copy of the first edition of Ariosto is not to be matched for beauty; of that of Rome, 1533, even the existence was hitherto unknown. A perfect copy of the first complete edition of the Morgante Maggiore of 1482, was also not known to exist before Mr. Grenville succeeded in procuring his. Among the Spanish Romances, the copy of that of "Tirant lo Blanch," printed at Valencia in 1490, is as fine, as clean, and as white as when it first issued from the press; and no second copy of this edition of a work professedly translated from English into Portuguese, and thence into Valencian, is known to exist except in the library of the Sapienza at Rome.

'But where there is nothing common, it is almost depreciating a collection to enumerate a few articles as rare. It is a marked feature of this library, that Mr. Grenville did not collect mere bibliographical rarities. He never aimed at having a complete set of the editions from the press of Caxton or Aldus; but Chaucer and Gower by Caxton were readily purchased, as well as other works which were desirable on other accounts, besides that of having issued from the press of that printer; and, when possible, select copies were procured. Some of the rarest, and these the finest, Aldine editions were purchased by him for the same reasons. The HorÆ in Greek, printed by Aldus in 16mo in 1497, is a volume which, from its language, size, and rarity, is of the greatest importance for the literary and religious history of the time when it was printed. It is, therefore, in Mr. Grenville's library. The Virgil of 1501 is not only an elegant book, but it is the first book printed with that peculiar Italic, known as Aldine, and the first volume which Aldus printed, "forma enchiridii," as he called it, being expressly adapted to give poor scholars the means of purchasing for a small sum the works of the classical writers. This also is, therefore, among Mr. Grenville's books; and of one of the two editions of Virgil, both dated the same year, 1514, he purchased a large paper copy, because it was the more correct of the two.

'It was the merit of the work, the elegance of the volume, the "genuine" condition of the copy, etc., which together determined Mr. Grenville to purchase books printed on vellum, of which he collected nearly a hundred. He paid a very large sum for a copy of the Furioso of 1532, not because it was "on ugly vellum," as he very properly designated it, but because, knowing the importance of such an edition of such a work, and never having succeeded in procuring it on paper, he would rather have it on expensive terms and "ugly vellum," than not at all.

'By the bequest of Mr. Grenville's library, the collection of books printed on vellum now at the Museum, and comprising those formerly presented by George II., George III., and Mr. Cracherode, is believed to surpass that of any other National Library, except the King's Library at Paris, of which Van Praet justly speaks with pride, and all foreign competent and intelligent judges with envy and admiration. Injustice to the Grenville Library, the list of all its vellum books ought here to be inserted. As this cannot be done, some only of the most remarkable shall be mentioned. These are—the Greek Anthology of 1494; the Book of Hawking, of Juliana Berners, of 1496; the first edition of the Bible, known as the "Mazarine Bible," printed at Mentz about 1454; the Aldine Dante of 1502; the first Rationale of Durandus of 1459; the first edition of Fisher On the Psalms, of 1508; the Aldine Horace, Juvenal, Martial, and Petrarca, of 1501; the Livy of 1469; the Primer of Salisbury, printed in Paris in 1531; the Psalter of 1457, which supplies the place of the one now at Windsor, which belonged to the Royal Collection before it was transferred to the British Museum; the Sforziada, by Simoneta, of 1490, a most splendid volume even in so splendid a library; the Theuerdank of 1517; the Aulus Gellius and the Vitruvius of Giunta, printed in 1513, etc., etc. Of this identical copy of Vitruvius, formerly Mr. Dent's, the author of the Bibliographical Decameron wrote, "Let the enthusiastic admirers of a genuine vellum Junta—of the amplest size and in spotless condition—resort to the choice cabinet of Mr. Dent for such a copy of this edition of Vitruvius and Frontinus." The Aulus Gellius is in its original state, exactly as it was when presented to Lorenzo de' Medici, afterwards Duke of Urbino, to whom the edition was dedicated.'

In addition to the printed books, the Grenville Library contains sixty-four manuscripts, many of them being of great interest and value. The finest of them is a volume of exquisite miniature drawings by Giulio Clovio, executed by command of Philip II. of Spain, and representing the victories of the Emperor Charles V. This volume was formerly in the Escurial. Other notable manuscripts are the original drawings for Hariot's Virginia in the De Bry collection, made by John White; Norden's Description of Essex; the Third Voyage of Vespucius in Latin; and two very interesting documents relating to the Spanish Armada—one being an original letter from the Lords of the Council to the Lord High Admiral, regarding the preparation of the fleet, dated July 21, 1588; and the other, a Resolution of a Council of War, held by the admirals and captains of the fleet which dispersed the Armada, dated August 1, 1588. The former of these papers is signed by Chr. Hatton (Cancs.), W. Burghley, F. Knollys, T. Heneage, Poulet, and J. Wolley; the latter by C. Howard, George Cumberland, T. Howarde, Edmonde Sheffeylde, Fr. Drake, Edw. Hoby, John Hawkyns, and Thomas Fenner.

There is a catalogue of Mr. Grenville's library in three parts (London, 1842-72). Parts 1 and 2 were compiled by Messrs. Payne and Foss, the booksellers of Pall Mall, who bought largely for him; and part 3 by Mr. W.B. Rye, the late Keeper of the Department of Printed Books, British Museum.

A portrait of Mr. Grenville by Hoppner has been engraved for Fisher's National Portrait Gallery. There is also a painting of him by Phillips at Althorp, and a miniature by C. Manzini in the National Portrait Gallery.

A bust of him, presented by Sir David Dundas, is placed in the room in the British Museum occupied by his library.