GEORGE, an excellent dramatic writer, was born at London in 1693. He was a jeweller by profession, and followed his business for many years in that neighbourhood with a fair reputation. He was at the same time strongly attached to the muses, yet seemed to have laid it down as a maxim, that the devotion paid to them ought always to tend to the promotion of virtue, morality, and religion. In pursuance of this aim, Lillo was happy in the choice of his subjects, and showed great power of affecting the heart, by working up the passions to such a height as to render the distresses of common and domestic life equally interesting to the audiences with those of kings and heroes, and the ruin brought on private families by an indulgence of avarice, lust, and other passions, with the havoc made in states and empires by ambition, cruelty, or tyranny. His George Barnwell, Fatal Curiosity, and Arden of Faversham, are all planned on common and well-known stories; yet they have perhaps more frequently drawn tears from audiences than the more pompous tragedies of Alexander the Great, All for Love, and others of the same stamp. In the prologue to Elmeric, which was not acted till after the author's death, it is said, that when he wrote that play, he was depressed by want and afflicted by disease; but in regard to the former particular, there appears to be evidently a mistake, as he died possessed of an estate of L60 a year, besides other effects to a considerable amount. His death happened in 1739, in the forty-seventh year of his age. His works have been collected and published, with an account of his life, in two vols. 12mo.