"I once bemoned," relates Harvey, "the decayed and blasted estate of M. Gascoigne, who wanted not some commendable parts of conceit, and endevour: but unhappy M. Gascoigne, how faridly happy, in comparison of most unhappy M. Greene? He never envyed me so much as I plied him from my hart; especially when his hostessse Isam, with teares in her eies, and sighes from a deeper fountaine (for she loved him deerely) tould me of his lamentable begging of a penny pott of Malmesie ;-and how he was faine, poore soule, to borrowe her husbands shirte, whiles his owne was a washing; and how his dublet, and hose, and sworde were sold for three shillings: and beside the charges of his winding sheete, which was four shillinges, and the charges of his buriall yesterday in the New-church-yard neere Bedlam, which was six shillinges and foure pence; how deeply bee was indebted to her poore husbande: as appeered by bys owne bonde of tenne poundes: which the good woman kindly shewed me: and beseeched me to read the writing beneath which was a letter to his abandoned wife, in the behalfe of his gentle host: not so short as persuasible in the beginning, and pitifull in the ending. DOLL. I charge thee by the love 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."* The pity which Harvey assumes upon this occasion may justly be considered as hypocritical; for the pamphlet whence the above extract has been taken, abounds in the most rancorous abuse and exaggerated description of the vices of Greene, and contains, among other invectives, a sonnet unparalleled, perhaps, for the keen severity of its irony, and for the dreadful solemnity of tone in which it is delivered. It is put into the mouth of John Harvey, the physician, who had been dead some years, but who had largely participated of the torrent of satire which Greene had poured upon his brothers Gabriel and Richard. If it be the composition of Gabriel, and there is reason to suppose this to be the case, from the tract in which it appears, it must be deemed infinitely snperior, in point of poetical merit, to any thing else which he has written. JOHN HARVEY THE PHYSICIAN'S WELCOME TO ROBERT GREENE! "Come, fellow Greene, come to thy gaping grave, Bid Vanity and Foolery farewell, That overlong hast plaid the mad-brained knave, No fitter house for busie folke to dwell; Thy conny-catching pageants are past, Some other must those arrant stories tell: These hungry wormes thinke long for their repast; It was thy living; be not so aghast! A Fool and a Physitian may agree! And for my brothers never vex thyself; They are not to disease a buried elfe." + We have entered thus fully into the character and writings of Greene, from → circumstance of his having been the most popular miscellaneous author of his ay, from the striking talent and genius which his productions display, and from loe moral lesson to be drawn from his conduct and his sufferings. It may be useful to remark here, that a well chosen selection from his pamphlets, now all extremely rate, would furnish one of the most elegant and interesting volumes in the lan-dage. ‡ Of the next class of miscellaneous writers, those derived from that part of the Community which adhered to the tenets and discipline of the Puritans, and who mployed their pens chiefly in satirizing their less enthusiastic neighbours, it will Four Letters and Certaine Sonnets. Especially touching Robert Greene, and other Poets by him and Lond. 1592 Vide Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 201, 202. ; Vide D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, vol. ii. p. 17, 18. This article has been chiefly drawn up from documents afforded by Wood, Berkenhout, Beloe's Verdotes of Literature, D'Israeli, and the Censura Literaria. The extracts selected from his pamphlets Mr. Beloe, in the opening of his sixth volume, will enable the reader to form a pretty good estimate of se poetical genius of Greene. be sufficient to notice two, who have attracted a more than common share of attention, as well for the rancour of their animadversion, as for their rooted antipathy to the stage. The first of these, Stephen Gosson, was educated at Christ Church Oxford; on leaving the University, hewent to London, where he commenced po and dramatist, and, according to Wood, " for his admirable penning of partorals was ranked with Sir P. Sidney, Tho. Chaloner, Edm. Spencer, Abrah. Fraunce and Rich. Bernfield." * His dramatic writings, which consist of a tragedy, found ed on Cataline's conspiracy, a comedy, and a morality, were never printed. 0 his devotion to the Muses, however, he soon after heartily repented, as of a most heinous sin; for, imbibing the sour severity of the Puritans, he left the metropolis became tutor in a gentleman's family, in the country, and subsequently took orders. declaiming in a style so vehement against the amusements of his early days, as to acquire a great share of popular notoriety. The work by which he is best known is entitled "The Schoole of Abuse. Conteining a pleasaunt Invective against Poets, Plaiers, Jesters, and such like Caterpillers of a Comonwelth; setting up the Flagg of Defiance to their mischievous exercice, and overthrowing their Bulwarkes by prophane Writers, naturall Reason, and common experience. A discourse as pleasaunt for Gentlemen that favour learning, as profitable for all that wyll follow vertue. By Stephen Gosson, Stud. Oxon." London, 1597. This was speedily followed by another attack in a pamphlet, termed " Playes confuted in five Actions, etc. Proving that they are not to be suffred in a christian commonweale, etc.;" a philippic which he dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham, as he had done his Schoole to Sir Philip Sidney; both of whom considered the liberty which he had taken, rather in the light of an insult than a compliment. The warfare of Gosson, however, was mildness itself, compared with that which Philip Stubbes carried on against the same host of poetical sinners. This puritanical zealot, whose work we have repeatedly quoted, commenced his attack upon the public in the year 1583, by publishing in small 8vo. the first edition of his "Anatomie of Abuses:" contayning a discoverie, or briefe sumarie of such notable vices and imperfections as now rayne in many Christian Countreyes of the Worlde: but (especiallie) in a verie famous Ilande called Ailgna: etc." A second impression, which now lies before me, was printed in 1595, 4to. and both it and the octavo are among the scarcest of Elizabethan books. "Stubbes," remarks Mr. Dibdin," did what he could, in his Anatomy of Abuses, to disturb every social and harmless amusement of the age. He was the forerunner of that snarling satirist, Prynne; but I ought not thus to cuff him, for fear of bringing upon me the united indignation of a host of black-letter critics and philologists. A large and clean copy of his sorrily printed work, is among the choicest treasures, of a Shakspearean virtuoso." He subjoins, in a note, commencing in the true spirit of bibliomaniacism, that "Sir John Hawkins calls this a curious and very scarce book;' and so does my friend, Mr. Utterson; who revels in his morocco-, coated copy of it- Exemplar olim Farmerianum!"" Then proceeding more so berly, he adds, "Let us be candid, and not sacrifice our better judgments to our book-passions. After all, Stubbes's work is a caricatured drawing. It has strong passages, and few original thoughts; and is, moreover, one of the very works printed in days of yore, which have running titles to the subjects discussed in them. These may be recommendations with the bibliomaniac: but he should be informed that this volume contains a great deal of puritanical cant, and licen tious language that vices are magnified in it in order to be lashed, and virtues diminished that they might not be noticed. Stubbes equals Prynne in his anathe mas against Plays and Interludes; and in his chapters upon Dress' and 'Dancing," he rakes together every coarse and pungent phrase in order to describe these horrible sins' with due severity. He is sometimes so indecent, that, for the credit of the age and of a virgin reign, we must hope that every virtuous dame threw Wood's Athenæ Oxon. vol. i. Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. iii. p 258. note few the copy of his book, which came into her possession behind the fire. Thismay reasonably account for its present rarity." Of the tone in which Stubbes's book is written no inaccurate judgment may be formed from the various passages which we have already quoted; but the following short extract will more fully develop, perhaps, the acrimony of his pen than any paragraph that has yet been brought forward. He is speaking of the neglect, of Fox's Book of Martyrs, "whilst other toyes, fantasies and bableries," he adds, "wherof the world is ful, are suffered to Le printed. Then prophane schedules, sacraligious libels, and hethnical pamphlets of toyes and bableries (the authors whereof may vendicate to themselves no smal commendations, at the hands of the devil for inventing the same) corrupt men's mindes, pervert good wits, allure to baudrie, induce to whordome, suppresse virtue and erect vice: which thing how should it be otherwise? for are they not invended and excogitat by Belzebub, written by Lucifer, licensed by Pluto, printed by Cerberus, and set a broche to sale by the infernal furies themselves to the poysning of the whole worlde."† The works of Gosson and Stubbes are now chiefly valuable for the numerous illustrations which they incidentally give of the manners, customs, dress and diversions, of their age, and especially for the light which they throw on the character and costume of the stage. The progress of discussion has at length brought us to the third class of Miscellaneous Writers, who may be considered as possessing a more decorous and philosophic cast in composition than the authors who have just fallen beneath our notice. The individuals of this genus, too, are numerous, but we shall content ourselves with the mention of three, who were more than usually popular in their day, Thomas Lodge, Abraham Fleming, and Gervase Markham. Lodge was educated at Oxford, which he entered about 1573; he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine at Avignon, and practised as a physician in London, where he died in 1625. He was a dramatic poet as well as a miscellaneous writer, and was considered by his contemporaries as a man of uncommon genius. He appears to have been, not only a scholar, but a man of the world, to have possessed no small share of wit and humour, and to have uniformly wielded his pen in support of morality and good order. Of his pieces no doubt many have perished; in his professional capacity, only one remains, a "Treatise on the Plague; but the productions which acquired him most celebrity were written to expose the follies and vices of the times, and of these, about half a dozen are preserved. He is now best known by his "Wits Miserie and the Worlds Madnesse. Discovering the Devils incarnate of this Age. Lond. 1596:" a tract which, although so extremely rare as to be in the possession of only one or two collectors, has been frequently quoted, owing to its containing some interesting notices of contemporary writers. The principal faults in the literary character of Lodge seem to have been a love of quaintness and affectation; the very titles of his pamphlets indicate the former; the alliteration in the one just transcribed is notorious, and another is termed "Catharos. Diogenes in his Singularitie. Wherein is comprehended his merrie baighting fit for all men's benefits: Christened by him, A Nettle for Nice Noses, 1591." From a passage in "The Returne from Pernassus" it is evident that he was thought to be deeply tainted with Euphuism, the literary folly of his time. The poet is speaking of Lodge and Watson both, he says, 66 subject to a crittick's marginall, Abraham Fleming, the corrector and enlarger of the second edition of Holinshed's Chronicle in 1585, was prodigiously fertile, both as an original writer and • Dibdin's Bibliomania, p. 366. Ancient British Drama, vol. i. p. 49. +Anatomie of Abuses, sig P, p. 7. a translator. In the latter capacity he gave versions of the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil, both in rhyme of fourteen feet, 1575, and in the regular Alexandrine without rhyme, 1589; of Elian's Various History in 1576; of Select Epistles of Cicero, 1576, and in the same year, a "Panoplie of Epistles from Tully Isocrates, Pliny, and others; of the Greek Panegyric of Synesius, and of various Latin works of the fifteenth century. As an original miscellaneous writer, his pieces are still more numerous, and, for the most part, occupied by moral and religious subjects; for example, one is called "The Cundyt of Comfort," 1579; a second, "The Battel between the Virtues and Vices," 1582, and a third "The Diamond of Devotion," 1586. This last is so singularly quaint both in its title-page and divisions, so superior, indeed, in these departments, to the titles of his contemporary Lodge, and so indicative of the curious taste of the times in the methodical arrangement of literary matter, as to call for a further description. The complete title runs thus: "The Diamond of Devotion: Cut and squared into sixe severall pointes namelie, 1. The Footepath of Felicitie. 2. A Guide to Godlines. 3. The Schoole of Skill. 4. A Swarme of Bees. 5. A Plant of Pleasure. 6. A Grove of Graces. Full of manie fruitfull lessons availeable unto the leading of a godlie and reformed life." The "Footepath of Felicitie" has ten divisions, concluding with a "looking glasse for the Christian reader; the "Guide to Godlines," is divided into three branches, and these branches into so many blossoms; the first branch containing four blossoms, the second thirteen, and the third ten; the Schoole of Skill" is digested into three sententious sequences of the A. B. C.; the "Swarme of Bees" is distributed into ten honeycombs, including two hundred lessons; the "Plant of Pleasure" bears fourteen several flowers, in prose and verse; the "Grove of Graces" exhibits forty-two plants, or Graces, for dinner and supper, and the volume concludes with "a briefe praier." From the specimens which we have seen of Fleming's composition, it would appear, that his affectation was principally confined to his title pages and divisions: for his prose is more easy, natural, and perspicuous, than most of his contemporaries. He was rector of Saint Pancras, Soper-lane, and died in 1607.* Gervase Markham, whom we have incidentally mentioned in various parts of this work, was the most indefatigable writer of his era. He was descended of an ancient family in Nottinghamshire, and commenced author about the year 1592. The period of his death is not ascertained; but he must have attained a good old age, for he fought for Charles the First, and obtained a Captain's commission in his army. His education had been very liberal, for he was esteemed a good classical scholar, and he was well versed in the French, Italian, and Spanish languages. As he was a younger son, it is probable that his finances were very limited, and that he had recourse to his pen as an additional means of support. He seems, remarks Sir Egerton Brydges, " to have become a general compiler for the booksellers, and his various works had as numerous impressions as those of Burn and Buchan in our days." No subject, indeed, appears to have been rejected by Markham; husbandry, huswifry, farriery, horsemanship, and military tactics, hunting, hawking, fowling, fishing, and archery, heraldry, poetry, romances, and the drama: all shared his attention and exercised his genius and industry.‡ 66 *For catalogues of Fleming's Works, see Herbert's Typographical Antiquities; Warton's Hist of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 402 ad 405. Tanner's Bibliotheca, p. 257, 288, and Censura Literaria, No vii. p. 313, et seq. + Censura Literaria, vol. ii p. 218. As no complete catalogue of this ingenious author's productions is to be found in any one writer. I have thought it desirable to endeavour to form one, noticing only the first editions, when ascertained, and referring, for the full titles, to the works cited at the close of this note. 1. A Discourse of Horsemanshippe, 4to. 1593.-2. Thyrsys and Daphne, 1593.-3. The Gentleman's Academie, or Booke of St. Albans, 4to. 1595-4. The poem of poems, or Sions muse, contayning the divine song of king Salomon, devided into eight eclogues, Svo. 1595.-5. The most honourable tragedie of Sir Richard Grenvill, knight, a heroick poem, in eight-line stanzas, 8vo. 1595.-6. Devoreux. Vertues tears for the losse of the most christian king Henry, third of that name, king of Fraunce: and the untimely death of the most noble and heroicall gentleman, Walter Devoreux, &c., 4to. 1597.-7. Ariosto's Rozera and Rodomantho, &c. paraphrastically translated. 1598.-8. The Teares of the beloved, or the Lameat? His popularity, in short, in all these various branches was unrivalled; and such was his reputation as a cattle doctor, that the booksellers, aware of the value of his works in this kind of circulation, got him to sign a paper in 1617, in which he bound himself not to publish any thing further on the diseases of "horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine, goates, etc." His books on agriculture were not superseded until the middle of the eighteenth century, and the fifteenth impression of his "Cheap and Good Husbandry," which was originally published in 1616, is now before us, dated 1695. Nor were his works on rural amusements less relished; for his "Country Contentments," the first edition of which appeared in 1615, had reached the eleventh in 1675. The same good fortune attended him even as a poet, for in England's Parnassus, 1600, he is quoted thirty-four times, forming the largest number of extracts taken from any minor bard in the book. He appears to have been an enthusiast in all that relates to field-sports, and his works, now becoming scarce, are, in many respects, curious and interesting, and display great versatility of talent. By far the greater part of them, as is evident from their dates, was written before the year 1620, though many were subsequently corrected and enlarged. Having thus given a sketch of three great classes of miscellaneous writers, it will be necessary to add some notice of a few circumstances which more peculiarly distinguished this branch of literature during the life-time of our poet. It is to the reign of Elizabeth, that we have to ascribe the origin of genuine printed Newpapers, a mode of publication which has now become absolutely essential to the wants of civilised life. The epoch of the Spanish invasion forms that of this interesting innovation, for, previous to the daring attempt of Spain, all public news had been circulated in manuscript, and it was left to the sagacity of Elizabeth and the legislative prudence of Burleigh to discover, how highly useful, in this agitated crisis, would be a more rapid circulation of events, through the medium of the press. Accordingly, in April, 1588, when the formidable Armada approached the shores of old England, appeared the first number of “The English Mercury." That it was published very frequently, is evident from the circumstance that No. 50, the earliest number now preserved, and which is in the British Museum, Sloane MSS., No. 4106, is dated the 23d of July, 1588. It resembles the London Gazette of the present day, with respect to the nature of its articles, one of which presents us with this curious information :-"Yesterday the Scotch Ambassador had a private audience of Her Majesty, and delivered a letter from the King his master, containing the most cordial assurances of adhering to Her Majesty's interests, and to those of the protestant religion; and the young King aid to Her Majesty's minister at his court, that all the favour he expected from the Spaniards was, the courtesy of Polyphemus to Ulysses, that he should be devoured the last."* of Saint John, &c. 4to. 1600 -9. Cavalerice, or the English Horseman, 4to. 1607.-10. England's Ardia, alluding his beginning from Sir Philip Sydney's ending, 4to. 1607.-11. Ariosto's Satyres, 4to. 1608-12. The Famous Whore, or Noble Courtezan, 4to. 1609.-13. Cure of all diseases, incident to Horses, 4to. 1610-14. The English Husbandman in two parts, 1613.-15. The Art of Husbandry, first translated from the Latin of Cour Heresbachiso, by Barnaby Googe, 4to. 1614.-16. Country Contentments, or the Husbandman's Recreations, 4to. 1615.-17. The English Huswife, 4to. 1615.-18. Cheap and Good Husbandry, 4to. 1616 -19. Liebault's Le Maison Rustique, or the Country Farm, folio. 1616-The Engsh Horseman, 4to. 1617.—(8. How To Chuse, Ride, Traine. And Diet Both Hunting Horses And Running Horses, 1599.)—– 22. The Inrichment of the Weald of Kent, 4to.-23. Markham's Farewel to Husbandry, 49 1620.-24. The Art of Fowling, 8vo. 1621.-25. Herod and Antipater, a Tragedy, 4to. 1622.-26. The Whole Art of Husbandry, contained in Four Bookes, 410, 1631.-27. The Art of Archerie, 8vo. 1634.The Faithful Farrier, 8vo. 1635 -29. The Soldiers Exercise, 3d edit. 1643.-30. The Way to Get Wealth, 4to. 1638.-31. The English Farrier, 4to. 1649.–32. Epitome concerning the Diseases of Beasts ad Poultry, 8vo.-34. His Masterpiece, concerning curing of Cattle, 4to. an edition 1662.—(10. Marie Madalen's Lamentations, 4to. 1601.) Numerous editions of many of these works, with alterations in the title-pages, were published to the year 1700. See Censura Literaria, vol. ii. p. 217-225. Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica, p. 273, 274. bee's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. ii. p. 244, et seq. and vol. ii. p. 339. Bridges' Theatrum Poetarum, p. 278–255. Biographia Dramatica. British Bibliographer, No. iv. p. 380, 381. Warton's Hist. of Engl Poetry, vol. iii. p. 455 See Chalmers's Life of Ruddiman, 8vo. p. 106. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 31, and Andrew's history of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 145, 156. |