CHAPTER IV.

LYLY'S LEGATEES.

I.

All Lyly's imitators, Greene, Lodge, Melbancke, Riche, Munday, Warner,

Dickenson, and others, did not faithfully copy his style in all its

peculiarities, at any rate in all their works; some of them borrowed

only his ideas, others his plot; others his similes; most of them,

however, when they first began to write, went the fullest length in

imitation, and tricked themselves out in euphuistic tinsel. They were

careful by choosing appropriate titles for their novels to publicly

connect themselves with the euphuistic cycle. "Euphues" was a magic

pass-word, and they well knew that the name once pronounced, the doors

of the "boudoirs," or closets as they were then called, and the hands

of the fair ladies, were sure to open; the book was certain to be

welcome.

Hence the number of writers who declared themselves Euphues' legatees

and executors. Year after year, for a while, readers saw issuing from

the press such books as "Zelauto, the fountaine of Fame ... containing a

delicate disputation ... given for a friendly entertainment to Euphues

at his late arrival into England," by Munday, 1580; or as "Euphues his

censure to Philautus, wherein is presented a philosophicall combat

betweene Hector and Achylles," by Robert Greene, 1587: "Gentlemen," says

the author to the readers, "by chance, some of Euphues loose papers came

to my hand, wherein hee writ to his friend Philautus from Silexedra,

certaine principles necessary to bee observed by every souldier." Or

there was "Menaphon, Camillas alarum to slumbering Euphues," by the

same, 1589; "Rosalynde, Euphues golden legacie, found after his death in

his cell at Silexedra," by Thomas Lodge, 1590; "Arisbas, Euphues amidst

his slumbers," by John Dickenson, 1594, &c.[103] All these authors

continued their model's work in contributing to the development of

literature written chiefly for ladies; in that way especially was Lyly's

initiative fruitful.

Barnabe Riche, for example, publishes "Don Simonides,"[104] a story of

a foreigner who travels in Italy and then comes to London, like Euphues,

mixes in good society, and makes the acquaintance of Philautus; he

writes this romance "for the amusement of our noble gentilmen as well as

of our honourable ladies." He wrote also a series of short stories,[105]

this time "for the onely delight of the courteous gentlewoemen bothe of

England and Irelande;" and, for fear they should forget his design of

solely pleasing them, he addresses them directly in the course of his

narrative: "Now, gentilwomen, doe you thinke there could have been a

greater torment devised, wherewith to afflicte the harte of Silla?"

Shakespeare, an assiduous reader of collections of this kind, and who,

unfortunately for their authors, has not transmitted his taste to

posterity, was acquainted with Riche's tales, and drew from this same

story of Silla the principal incidents of his "Twelfth Night." Riche

himself had taken it from the "Histoires tragiques" of Belleforest, and

Belleforest had translated it from Bandello.

Munday's Zelauto[106] is also a traveller. A son of the Duke of Venice,

he goes on his travels, after the example of Euphues, visiting Naples

and Spain, where he falls "in the company of certain English merchants,"

very learned merchants, "who, in the Latin tongue, told him the happy

estate of England and how a worthy princes governed their common

wealth." He comes accordingly to this country, for which he feels an

admiration equal to Euphues' own. From thence he "takes shipping into

Persia," and visits Turkey, prepared upon any emergency to fight

valiantly or to speak eloquently, his hand and tongue being equally

ready with thrusts and parries, or comparisons and similes.

Again we find Lyly's manner in Melbancke's "Philotimus,"[107] 1583, a

book full, as "Euphues," of letters, dialogues, and philosophical

discussions, and in Warner's "Pan his Syrinx," 1584. Warner, whose fame

mainly rests on his long poem, "Albion's England," published in 1586,

began his literary career as a novelist of the euphuistic school. In

common with many youths of all times, of whom Lyly was one, he was

scarcely out of "non-age," to use his own word, than he wanted to impart

to his fellow-men his experience of a life, for him just begun, and to

teach them how to behave in a world of which he knew only the outside.

He lands his hero, Sorares, "in a sterile and harborlesse island," not a

rare occurrence even in novels anterior to Defoe; Sorares' sons start to

find him. Both they and their father meet with sundry adventures, in the

course of which they tell or hear stories and take part in various

"controversies and complayntes." Many topics are philosophically

discussed; the chief being, as in Lyly, woman. One of the speakers puts

forward the assertion that there may be, after all, some good in women;

but another demonstrates that there is none at all; and that their name

of "wo-man" contains their truest definition. Whereupon, we are treated

once more to a description of dresses and fashions: "Her face painted,

her beautie borrowed, her haire an others, and that frisled, her

gestures enforced, her lookes premeditated, her backe bolstred, her

breast bumbasted, her shoulders bared and her middle straite laced, and

then is she in fashion!" Of course this does not apply to English, but

to Scythian and Assyrian ladies. This description is followed, as in

Lyly, by a proper antidote, and with a number of rules to be observed by

all the honest people who desire to escape the wiles of the feminine

sex.

Warner's book had some success; it reached a second edition in

1597,[108] in which the author states that two writers, at least, copied

him, sometimes "verbatim" without any acknowledgment; one of them seems

to have been no less a person than Robert Greene, "a scholler," says

Warner, "better than my selfe on whose grave the grasse now groweth

green, whom otherwise, though otherwise to me guiltie, I name not."

Several incidents in Greene's works resemble Warner's stories,

especially the one called "Opheltes," the plot of which forcibly reminds

us of "Francesco's Fortunes," and at the same time of a different work

of greater fame, the "Two Gentlemen of Verona."[109]

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.

II.

With Robert Greene we are in the midst of Bohemia, not exactly the

Bohemia which Muerger described and which dies in the hospital: the

hospital corresponds in some manner to ideas of order and rule; under

Elizabeth men remained irregular to the end; literary men who were not

physicians like Lodge, or shareholders in a theatre like Shakespeare, or

subsidized by the Court like Ben Jonson, died of hunger in the gutter,

or of indigestion at a neighbour's house, or of a sword-thrust in the

tavern. Therein is one of the peculiarities of the period. It

distinguishes the Bohemia of Elizabeth from other famous Bohemias, that

of Grub Street, known to Dr. Johnson, and that of the _quartier latin_

described by Muerger.

Greene was one of the most original specimens of the unfortunate men who

in the time of Elizabeth attempted to live by their pen. He was as

remarkable for his extravagances of conduct as for his talents,

sometimes gaining money and fame by the success of his writings,

sometimes sinking into abject poverty and consorting with the outcasts

of society. Of all the writers of the Elizabethan period he is perhaps

the one whose life and character we can best picture to ourselves; for

in his last years, repentant and sorrow-stricken, he wrote with the

utmost sincerity autobiographical tales and pamphlets, which are

invaluable as a picture of the times; they are, in fact, nothing else

than the "Scenes de la vie de Boheme" of Elizabethan England.

In these books Greene gives us the key to his own character, to his many

adventures, and to his miserable end. There were two separate selves in

him, and they proved incompatible. One was full of reasonable, sensible,

and somewhat _bourgeois_ tendencies, highly appreciating honour

respectability, decorum, civic and patriotic virtues; of women liking

only those that were pure, of men those that were honest, religious and

good citizens. Greene's other self was not, properly speaking, the

counterpart of the first, and had no taste for vices as vices, nor for

disorder as disorder, but was wholly and solely bent upon _enjoyment_,

immediate enjoyment whatever be the sort, the cost, or the consequence.

Hence the glaring discrepancies in Greene's life, his faults, not to say

his crimes, his sudden short-lived repentances, his supplications to his

friends not to imitate his example, his incapacity to follow steadily

one course or the other. His better self kept his writings free from

vice, but was powerless to control his conduct. This struggle between

the forces of good and evil is exceedingly well depicted in Greene's

Repentances, under his own or fictitious names; of all the heroes of his

tales he is himself the most interesting and the most deeply studied. As

a novel writer and an observer of human nature, his own portrait is

perhaps his masterpiece.

Greene was born at Norwich about 1560, and belonged to a family in easy

circumstances. He was sent to Cambridge, where he was admitted to St.

John's College on November, 1575. There, according to a propensity that

was inborn, he at once associated with noisy, unprincipled young

fellows. This propensity accompanied him through life, and led him to

constantly surround himself with a rabble of merry companions, to be

greatly liked by them, but to make few sincere friends, and to quarrel

with these very often, to drop their acquaintance, to befriend them

again, and so on to the last.

The universities at that time were not places of edification; and Lyly,

who during the same period had a personal experience of them, was

careful when, shortly afterwards, he wrote his advice for the education

of "Ephoebus" to warn fathers of the dangers of university life: "To

speak plainly of the disorder of Athens [that is, Oxford] who does not

se it and sorrow at it? Such playing at dice, such quaffing of drink,

such daliaunce with women, such dauncing, that in my opinion there is no

quaffer in Flaunders so given to tipplyng, no courtier in Italy so given

to ryot, no creature in the world so misled as a student in Athens."

Many return from the universities "little better learned, but a great

deal worse lived, then when they went, and not only unthrifts of their

money, but also banckerouts of good manners."[110]

Greene did not fail to choose his associates among people of this sort,

and with some of them he crossed over to the continent in his turn to

visit "Circe." "Being at the University of Cambridge, I light amongst

wags as lewd as my selfe, with whome I consumed the flower of my youth,

who drew me to travell into Italy and Spaine, in which places I saw and

practizde such villainie as is abhominable to declare...." He comes

back, and after the pleasures and excitement of travel, ordinary

every-day life seems to him tasteless; the mere idea of a regular career

of any sort is abhorrent to him. "At my return into England, I ruffeled

out in my silks, in the habit of _Malcontent_, and seemed so discontent

that no place would please me to abide in, nor no vocation cause mee to

stay myselfe in."[111]

In this uncertainty, and with his head full of Italian remembrances and

romantic adventures, he thought, being not yet twenty, to try his hand

at writing. His first attempt was a novel, a love story in the Italian

fashion, in which very much loving was to do for very little probability

and less observation of character and nature. It was called "Mamillia";

it was finished in 1580, and published three years later.

Greene at that time was again in Cambridge, and strange to say, among

the many whims that crossed his mind, a fancy took him to apply himself

to study. Gifted as he was, this caused him no trouble; he acquired much

varied knowledge, of which his writings show sufficient proof, and was

received M.A. in 1583.[112] He then left the university and went to

London, where the most curious part of his life, that was to last only

nine years longer, began.

The reception awarded to "Mamillia" seems to have encouraged him to

continue writing. It had, in fact, crude as it seems to us now, many

qualities that would ensure it a welcome: its style was euphuistic; its

tone was Italian; its plot was intricate, and, lastly, there was very

much love in it. He continued therefore in this vein, writing with

extreme facility and rapidity improbable love stories, with wars, kings,

and princesses, with euphuism and mythology, with Danish, Greek,

Egyptian and Bohemian adventures. There was a "Myrrour of Modesty" which

has for its heroine the chaste Susannah, a "Gwydonius, the card of

fancie," again a tale in the Italian style, an "Arbasto" which tells of

the wars and loves of a Danish king, a "Morando," containing a series of

discussions and speeches on love, all of them entered or published in

1584-6. Then came his "Planetomachia," 1585, where the several planets

describe and exemplify their influence on human fate; "Penelopes web,"

1587, containing a succession of short stories; "Perimedes," 1588,

imitated from Boccaccio; "Pandosto," a tale of Bohemian and Sicilian

kings and shepherds, which had an immense success, much greater

according to appearances than the exquisite drama of a "Winter's Tale,"

that Shakespeare drew from it. "Alcida," a story of the metamorphosis of

three young love-stricken princesses of an island "under the pole

antartike," was apparently published in the same year; "Menaphon," a

charming pastoral tale, appeared in 1589, and several others followed.

His popularity was soon considerable; his books were in all the shops;

several went through an extraordinary number of editions; his name was

better known than any: "I became," says he, "an author of playes, and a

penner of love pamphlets, so that I soone grew famous in that qualitie,"

and who then "for that trade" was there "so ordinarie about London as

_Robin Greene_?"[113]

As for his beginning to write plays, he has left a lively account of the

casual meeting which led to his becoming attached to a company of

players and to be for a time their playwright in ordinary. It was at a

moment when his purse was empty; for as he quaintly puts it in one of

his stories: "so long went the pot to the water, that at last it came

broken home; and so long put he his hand into his purse that at last the

emptie bottome returned him a writt of _non est inventus_; for well

might the divell dance there for ever a crosse to keepe him backe."[114]

In this difficulty he met by chance a brilliantly dressed fellow who

seemed to be a cavalier, and happened to be a player. It is a well-known

fact that if scenery was scanty in Elizabethan play-houses, the players'

dresses were very costly, and if need there was, this would be an

additional proof that no monetary consideration would have induced the

young man who played, for example, the part of Shakespeare's Cleopatra,

to appear in less than queenly ruffs and farthingales, such as Rogers

has represented in his portrait of Elizabeth.

"What is your profession? said Roberto [that is, Robert Greene].[115]

"Truely, sir, said he, I am a player.

"A player, quoth Roberto; I tooke you rather for a gentleman of great

living, for if by outward habit men should be censured, I tell you, you

woud be taken for a substantiall man.

"So am I, where I dwell, quoth the player, reputed able at my proper

cost, to build a windmill. What, though the worlde once went hard with

me, when I was faine to carrie my playing fardle a footebacke; _tempora

mutantur_ ... it is otherwise now; for my share in playing apparell will

not be solde for two hundred pounds."

The player goes on relating his own successes, the parts he performs,

and how he had been himself for a while the playwright of his troop, but

that had been some time ago; tastes are changing and his wit is now out

of fashion: "Nay, more, I can serve to make a prettie speech, for I was

a countrie author, passing at a morall, for it was I that pende the

moral of mans wit, the Dialogue of Dives, and for seaven yeeres space

was absolute interpreter of the puppets. But now my Almanacke is out of

date:

The people make no estimation

Of morals teaching education.

"Was not this prettie for a plaine rime extempore? If ye will, ye shall

have more.

"Nay, it is enough, said Roberto, but how meane you to use mee?

"Why, sir, in making playes, said the other, for which you shall be well

paid, if you will take the paines."

Greene did so, and with no mean success. He grew more and more famous,

and, without becoming more wealthy, had the pleasure of being able to

squander at one time much larger sums of money than before: "Roberto was

now famozed for an arch-playmaking-poet; his purse, like the sea,

somtime sweld, anon like the same sea fell to a low ebb; yet seldom he

wanted, his labors were so well esteemed."

He had not yet broken all connection with his birth-place and his

family, and some of his visits were for him memorable ones. During one

of them he was seized with a sudden fit of repentance for the loose life

he had been leading in London; the better man in him made himself heard,

and he fell into such an abyss of misery and despair as to remind us of

the great conversions of the Puritan epoch. In fact, his companions,

when he again saw them, wondering at his altered countenance, called him

a Puritan. "Once I felt a feare and horrour in my conscience, and then

the terrour of Gods judgementes did manifestly teach me that my life was

bad, that by sinne I deserved damnation, and that such was the greatnes

of my sinne that I deserved no redemption. And this inward motion I

received in St. Andrews church in the cittie of Norwich, at a lecture or

sermon then preached by a godly learned man.... At this sermon the

terrour of Gods judgementes did manifestly teach me, that my exercises

were damnable, and that I should bee wipte out of the booke of life, if

I did not speedily repent my loosenes of life, and reforme my

misdemeanors."

In the same way, in the next century, George Fox the Quaker, John

Bunyan, and many others, were to find themselves awe-stricken at the

thought of God's judgment; in the same way also, and in almost the same

words, the hero of a novel that was to be world-famous in the following

age was to express the sudden horror he felt when remorse began to prey

upon him. "No one," wrote Robinson Crusoe, in his journal, "that shall

ever read this account will expect that I shall be able to describe the

horrors of my soul at this terrible vision." But Greene differed from

them all by the short duration of his anxieties: "This good notion

lasted not long in mee, for no sooner had I met with my copesmates, but

seeing me in such a solemn humour, they demaunded the cause of my sadnes

... they fell upon me in a jeasting manner, calling me Puritane and

Presizian, and wished I might have a pulpit." And soon the good effect

of the godly vision in St. Andrew's church wore away.

He allowed another chance of escaping his final doom to pass in the same

manner. Famous as he was all over the country, witty and brilliant, with

such patrons as Leicester, Essex and Arundel, to whom several of his

works are dedicated, he became acquainted with "a gentlemans daughter of

good account." He loved her; his suit was favoured, and he married her,

about 1586. He lived with her for a year and they had a boy; but she

objected to his disorderly ways of life, and he, unable to alter them,

"cast her off, having spent the marriage money." She returned to

Lincolnshire, he to London, and they never met again. That Greene,

however, had felt within himself what it is to be a father is shown by

the exquisite "lullaby" he composed shortly after for Sephestia in his

"Menaphon." It is the well-known song:

"Weepe not my wanton! smile upon my knee!

When thou art olde, ther's griefe inough for thee!

Mothers wagge, pretie boy,

Fathers sorrow, fathers joy.

When thy father first did see

Such a boy by him and mee,

He was glad, I was woe.

Fortune changde made him so,

When he left his pretie boy,

Last his sorowe, first his joy.

* * * * *

Weepe not my wanton! smile upon my knee!

When thou art olde, ther's griefe inough for thee!

The wanton smilde, father wept;

Mother cride, babie lept:

More he crowde, more we cride;

Nature could not sorowe hide.

He must goe, he must kisse

Childe and mother, babie blisse:

For he left his pretie boy,

Fathers sorowe, fathers joy."

[Illustration: ROBERT GREENE IN HIS SHROUD.

(_From Dickenson's "Greene in conceipt,"_ 1598.)]

In London he continued a favourite: "For these my vaine discourses [that

is, his love novels] I was beloved of the more vainer sort of people,

who being my continuall companions came still to my lodging, and there

would continue quaffing, corowsing, and surfeting with me all the day

long." One of his best friends has corroborated his statement, giving at

the same time a graphic description of his physical appearance: "Hee

inherited more vertues than vices," wrote Nash, "a jolly long red peake

[beard] like the spire of a steeple he cherisht continually, without

cutting, whereat a man might hang a jewell, it was so sharp and pendant

... He had his faultes ... Debt and deadly sinne, who is not subject

to?... A good fellow he was ... In a night and a day would he have yarkt

up a pamphlet as well as in seaven yeare, and glad was that printer that

might bee so blest to pay him deare for the very dregs of his wit. He

made no account of winning credite by his workes ... His only care was

to have a spel in his purse to conjure up a good cuppe of wine with at

all times."[116]

The few samples that have come to us of the talk in these meetings of

Elizabethan literary men show, as might well have been supposed, that it

was not lacking in freedom. Greene himself has left an account of one of

these conversations, when he expressed, Bohemia-wise, his opinions of a

future life and, without Aucassin's extenuating plea that he was

love-mad, he exclaimed: "Hell, quoth I, what talke you of hell to me? I

know if I once come there, I shall have the company of better men than

my selfe; I shall also meete with some madde knaves in that place, and

so long as I shall not sit there alone, my care is the lesse. But you

are mad folks, quoth I, for if I feared the judges of the Bench no more

than I dread the judgments of God, I would before I slept dive into one

carles bagges or other, make merrie with the shelles I found in them so

long as they would last."[117]

His associations at that time were getting lower and lower. He was

leaving Bohemia for the mysterious haunts of robbers, sharpers, loose

women, and "conny-catchers." He had once for a mistress the sister of a

famous thief nicknamed Cutting Ball that ended his days on the gallows,

and he had a child by her, called Fortunatus, who died in 1593. He

thought it a sort of atonement to communicate to the public the

experience he derived from his life among these people, and accordingly

printed a series of books on "conny-catching," in which he unveiled all

their tricks and malpractices. The main result was that they wanted to

kill him.[118]

It was, in fact, too late to reform; all that was left for him was to

repent, an empty repentance that no deed could follow. Though scarcely

thirty his constitution was worn out. The alternations of excessive

cheer and of scanty food had ruined his health; it was soon obvious that

he could not live much longer. One day a "surfet which hee had taken

with drinking"[119] brought him home to his room, in a poor shoemaker's

house, who allowed him to stay there by charity on credit. He was not to

come out alive. His illness lasted some weeks, and as his brain power

was unimpaired he employed his time in writing the last of his

autobiographical pamphlets. Considering the extravagance of his life, in

which he had known so many successes, and the sorrows of his protracted

illness, they read very tragically indeed. He addressed himself to the

public at large, to his more intimate friends, to his wife confessing

his wrongs towards her, and asking pardon. Yet to the last, broken as he

was in body, he remained a literary man, and while confessing all round

and pardoning every one, he could not drop his literary animosities nor

forget his life-long complaint against plagiarists.

His complaint was one of which the world of letters was to hear much

more in after time, and which in fact is constantly renewed in our own

day; it is the complaint of the novelist against the dramatist, claiming

as his own incidents transferred by the playwright from readers to

spectators. As novels proper were just beginning then in England, and as

drama was also beginning to spread, Greene's protest is one of the first

on record, and thousands were to follow it. Strange to say of all the

men of whom he complains, the one he has picked out to hold up to

disdain and to scorn, and towards whom in his dying days he seems to

have entertained the strongest animosity, was a young man of

twenty-eight, who was just then becoming known, and whose fame was to

increase somewhat in after years, namely, William Shakespeare. Greene

beseeches the three principal friends he still had, Marlowe, Nash, and

Peele, to cease writing plays; what is the good of it? others come, turn

to account what has been written before them, give never a thank-you for

it, and get the praise. Let them stop publishing and these new-comers,

among them this "upstart" Shakespeare, unable as they obviously are to

invent anything, will have their careers cut short. Be warned by my

fate, says Greene, and mind "those puppits ... that speake from our

mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I,

to whom they al have been beholding: is it not like that you to whome

they all have been beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am now)

be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not, for there is an

upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his _Tigers heart

wrapt in a players hide_, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a

blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute _Joannes fac

totum_, is in his owne conceit the onely shake-scene in a countrie. O

that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable

courses: and let those apes imitate your past excellence and never more

acquaint them with your rare inventions."[120]

This savage abuse of young Shakespeare, who had probably mended at that

time more plays than we know, and more, surely, than he had personally

written, must not pass without the needful comment that his abuser was,

according to his own testimony, as ready, for a trifle, to make an

acquaintance and start a friendship as to turn a friend into a foe.

"Though," says he, "I knew how to get a friend, yet I had not the gift

or reason how to keepe a friend." He quarrelled, in fact, with most of

them, not excepting Nash and Marlowe, to whom he is now appealing

against Shakespeare; and his prefaces contain numerous attacks on the

writers of the time. It must be remembered, too, how bitter was the end

of poor Greene, how keenly he felt, he the boon companion _par

excellence_, finding himself "forsaken" in his need, and left alone in

the shoemaker's desolate room. It is curious to think that among the men

whose absence from his bedside he most resented was Shakespeare, and

that this want of a visit whetted his already ill-disposed mind into

expressing the only abuse known to have been directed by his

contemporaries against the author of "Hamlet."

Shakespeare, of course, did not answer;[121] his plea might have been

that if he did not pay much attention to others' authorship, much less

did he pay to his own; for he never published his own dramas, nor did he

protest when mangled versions of them were circulated by printers. He

only showed that Greene's criticisms had not much affected him by

turning later on another of the complainer's novels into a drama.

Shakespeare's friend, Ben Jonson, who was not accustomed to so much

reserve, speaks very disparagingly of Greene; he represents him as being

a perfectly forgotten author in 1599, which was untrue, and as for the

particular work in which Shakespeare was abused, he describes it as only

fit for the reading of crazy persons.

"_Trusty._ ... Every night they read themselves asleep on those books

[one of the two being the "Groats-worth"].

"_Epicoene._ Good faith it stands with good reason. I would I knew where

to procure those books.

"_Morose._ Oh!

"_Sir Amorous La Foole._ I can help you with one of them, mistress

Morose, the 'Groats-worth of wit.'

"_Epicoene._ But I shall disfurnish you, Sir Amorous, can you spare it?

"_La Foole._ O yes, for a week or so; I shall read it myself to him,"

&c.[122]

With the exception just mentioned, Greene's thoughts were all turned to

repentance. He had the consolation of receiving from his wife a kindly

message on the eve of his death, "whereat hee greatly rejoiced,

confessed that he had mightily wronged her, and wished that hee might

see her before he departed. Whereupon, feeling his time was but short,

hee tooke pen and inke and wrote her a letter to this effect:

"Sweet wife, as ever there was any good will or friendship betweene thee

and mee, see this bearer (my host) satisfied of his debt: I owe him

tenne pound, and but for him I had perished in the streetes. Forget and

forgive my wronges done unto thee, and Almighty God have mercie on my

soule. Farewell till we meet in heaven, for on earth thou shalt never

see me more. This 2d of September, 1592. Written by thy dying

husband."[123]

He died a day after.

III.

Greene's non-dramatic works are the largest contribution left by any

Elizabethan writer to the novel literature of the day. They are of four

sorts: his novels proper or romantic love stories, which he called his

love pamphlets; his patriotic pamphlets; his conny-catching writings, in

which he depicts actual fact, and tells tales of real life forshadowing

in some degree Defoe's manner; lastly, his Repentances, of which some

idea has already been given.[124]

His love pamphlets, which filled the greatest part of his literary

career, connect him with the euphuistic cycle, and he is assuredly one

of Lyly's legatees. Possessing a much greater fertility of invention

than Lyly, he follows as closely as the original bent of his mind allows

him, the manner of his master. He is euphuistic in his style, wise in

his advice to his readers, and a great admirer of his own country.

His moral propensities do not lie concealed behind pretty descriptions

or adventures; they are stamped on the very first page of each of his

books and are expressly mentioned in their titles. In this too, like his

master Lyly, he may be considered a precursor of Richardson. He writes

his "Mamillia" to entreat gentlemen to beware how, "under the perfect

substaunce of pure love, [they] are oft inveigled with the shadowe of

lewde luste;" his "Myrrour of Modestie" to show "howe the Lorde

delivereth the innocent from all imminent perils and plagueth the

bloudthirstie hypocrites with deserved punishments." "Euphues his

censure to Philautus" teaches "the vertues necessary in every

gentleman;" "Pandosto" shows that "although by the meanes of sinister

fortune truth may be concealed, yet by Time in spight of fortune, it is

most manifestly revealed."[125] Quiet, wealthy, comfortable Richardson

had no better aim, and had, in fact, a very similar one, when he wrote

his "Pamela," as he is careful to state on the title-page, "in order to

cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the

youth of both sexes;" and his "Clarissa," to show "the distresses that

may attend the misconduct both of parents and children in relation to

marriage." Be it said to the praise of both authors and readers, this

moral purpose so prominently stated did not in the least frighten the

public of ladies, whose suffrage, the two men, different as they were in

most things, were especially courting. Richardson's popularity among

them needs not to be recalled, and as for Greene, he was stated at the

time of his greater vogue to be nothing less than "the Homer of

women."[126]

Greene's praise of England is as constant as Lyly's; he is careful to

show that whatever appearances may be, he is proud to be a citizen of

London, not, after all, of Bohemia; if he represents himself shipwrecked

near the coast of an island where, like Robinson Crusoe, he is alone

able to swim, finding the country pleasant, he describes it as "much

like that faire England the flower of Europe."[127] Euphues' praise of

London is matched by Greene's description of its naval power in his

"Royal Exchange": "Our citizens of London (Her Majesties royal fleet

excepted) have so many shyppes harboured within the Thames as wyll not

onelie match with all the argosies, galleyes, galeons and pataches in

Venice, but to encounter by sea with the strongest cittie in the whole

world."[128] As for foreign women, Greene agrees with Lyly that they all

paint their faces, and cannot live without a lover. French women, for

example, are "beautifull," it is true, but "they have drugges of

Alexandria, minerals of Egypt, waters from Tharsus, paintings from

Spaine, and what to doe forsooth? To make them more beautifull then

vertuous and more pleasing in the eyes of men then delightful in the

sight of God.... Some take no pleasure but in amorous passions, no

delight but in madrigals of love, wetting Cupid's wings with rose water,

and tricking up his quiver with sweete perfumes."[129]

[Illustration: ANOTHER DRAGON. 1608.]

But Greene's style marked him most indelibly as a pupil of Lyly. He has

taken Euphues' ways of speech with all their peculiarities, and has

sometimes crowded his tales with such a quantity of similes, metaphors

and antitheses as to beat his master himself on his own ground.[130]

Here, again, we are in the middle of scorpions, crocodiles, dipsas, and

what not. Take, for instance, "Philomela the lady Fitzwaters

nightingale;"[131] as it is written expressly for ladies, and dedicated

to one of them, and as, in addition, the characters are of high rank,

the novel is nearly one unbroken series of similes: "The greener the

alisander leaves be, the more bitter is the sappe," says Philip, the

jealous husband, to himself; "the salamander is most warm when it lyeth

furthest from the fire;" thus his wife may well be as heart-hollow as

she seems lip-holy. He charges his friend Lutesio to tempt her, by way

of trial. "Lutesio," the lady replies to the young man's declaration,

"now I see, the strongest oake hath his sap and his worms [and] that

ravens will breed in the fayrest ash." These observations appear

unanswerable to Lutesio, and the husband would share his conviction if

he did not reflect that "the onix is inwardly most cold, when it is

outwardly most hot." The experiment must be tried again, and the friend

returns to the charge: "Madam, I have been stung with the scorpion and

cannot be helpt or healed by none but by the scorpion."

"I see now," replies the lady to this compliment, "that hemlocke

wheresoever it bee planted, will be pestilent [and] that the serpent

with the brightest scales shroudeth the most fatall venome." Is there

anything more certain? But that does not prevent the halcyon from

hatching when the sea is calm, and the phoenix from spreading her wings

when the sunbeams shine on her nest. This is what the husband remarks,

and, guided by the onyx, the alexander, &c., after a mock trial, he

divorces his wife.

What did the people think of it? They thought "all was not golde that

glistered, ... that the Agate, bee it never so white without, yet it is

full of black strokes within."

During this time, Philomela, the wife who had been driven away, retires

to Palermo, where her knowledge of natural history allows her to observe

that the more the camomile is trodden on, the faster it grows. Scarcely

separated from her, the husband loses his confidence in the onyx and

alexander, and sets out in search of her. He does not know her place of

retreat, but, happily, among all possible routes, he chooses precisely

that leading to Palermo. He finds his wife again, and his joy is so

great that he is choked by it, and dies; a just punishment for his

confidence in Lyly's botany.[132]

In the same way as patient Grisell's story had been in the same period

transferred to the stage, this new example of feminine virtue, from the

pen of the "Homer of women," was, in later years, worked into a drama.

At that time Greene had long been dead and could not complain of the new

"shake-scene" tortures inflicted upon him by Davenport.[133]

This story, characteristic as it is of Greene's style when he means to

be euphuistic, can scarcely be taken as a fair sample of the

improbability he is able to crowd into a single novel. Most of his tales

(and in this he greatly differs from Lyly) take place we do not know

when, we do not know where, among men we have never anywhere come

across. Learned as he was, versed in the Greek, Latin, French and

Italian tongues, able to translate passages from the Italian of Ariosto,

to dress in English language the charming "Debat de Folie et

d'Amour"[134] of Louise Labe, to imitate (as he thought) Cicero's style,

while describing (as he thought) the great orator's loves,[135] his turn

of mind was as little critical as can be imagined, and his wide

popularity served to spread geographical and historical absurdities,

some of which were preserved by Shakespeare himself, for the amusement

of a learned posterity. Greene's picture of Ulysses' Penelope is not

more Greek than the exquisite painting by Pinturicchio at the National

Gallery, where the wise king of Ithaca appears under the guise of a

red-hosed Italian youth with flowing hair; while his wife sits at her

"web" in a Florentine blue dress. In Greene, Penelope is represented

telling stories to while away the time, which, unless we endow her with

a prophetical gift, are impossibilities. Her first story begins thus:

"Saladyne the Souldan of AEgipt, who by his prowesse had made a generall

conquest of the south-east part of ye world tooke to wife Barmenissa,

the onely daughter and heire of the great chan." No wonder that such

tales could chain the attention and awaken the curiosity of her maids,

and keep them quiet till the time when "a messenger came hastily rushing

in, who tolde Penelope that Ulisses was arryved that night within the

port of Ithaca.... Penelope called for her sonne and that night sent him

post to the sea."[136]

Not less wonderful are the stories of "Arbasto," King of Denmark, or of

"Pandosto," King of Bohemia. They may be taken as typical specimens of

the sort of romantic novel the Elizabethan public enjoyed, and which was

sure to make an author popular. We must remember when reading these

tales that they were the fashion, the craze, at a time when "Midsummer

Night's Dream" and "Romeo and Juliet" were being played. Chaotic,

improbable, and in some parts ridiculous as they appear to us, they

would have made their author wealthy if anything could, so much so that,

as we have seen, the publishers, according to Nash, considered

themselves "blest to pay Greene deare for the very dregs of his wit." He

was, if anything, an author that sold. What were his wares?

In "Arbasto" Greene represents himself reaching in his travels the

island of Candia. He meets in a cell a solitary old man, and without any

ceremony makes bold to ask him for his story. The old man is at first

somewhat shocked at this inquisitiveness, and gets very angry; but he

grows calmer and complies. He is Arbasto, late King of Denmark, and was

once very happy: "I feared not the force of forraigne foes, for I knewe

none but were my faithfull friends," says he, in a style that reminds

one of the King Herod of miracle-plays. Living in such content, he

thought it advisable to invade France, where at that time a king was

reigning, named Pelorus, about whom chroniclers are silent. Arbasto came

straight to Orleans, and after some siege operations, "had so shaken the

walles with cannon shot, that they were forced to strengthen them with

counter mures."

A three months' truce is agreed to on both sides, and the two sovereigns

entertain each other. At the French court, Arbasto meets the two

daughters of the king, Myrania and Doralicia, two wonderful creatures,

especially the latter, who was "so adorned with more then earthlie

perfection as she seemed to be framed by nature to blemishe nature, and

that beautie had skipt beyond her skil in framing a peece of such

curious workemanship." Arbasto cannot cease gazing at her; he addresses

to himself euphuistic speeches several pages long, but they do him no

good. It so happens that while his love is set on Doralicia, the other

princess falls in love with him. But this again does him no good. He

ceases to find anything worth living for; even the possible destruction

of France seems to him tasteless. His nobles observe his changed mood,

and wonder, and his confidant, Duke Egerio, vainly tries on him the

effect of a new series of euphuistic examples and similes. Arbasto

continues loving, and Doralicia perseveres in her coldness; they meet

once, and argue one against the other with the help of salamanders and

scorpions, and empty their whole herbaria over each other's head; but

things remain _in statu_.

King Pelorus, who, for all that, does not lose his head, offers Arbasto

an interview in Orleans to sign the peace. Arbasto comes, the gates are

shut, he is thrown into prison; his army is cut to pieces, and a great

scaffold is erected in a conspicuous place, on which the prisoner is to

be publicly executed in ten days' time.

The royal Dane tries to console himself in his prison with what remains

of his herbarium and zoology. But better help comes in the shape of the

loving princess, Myrania, who is resolved to save him. By her command

her maid entices the gaoler to her room, and causes him to tread "upon a

false bord" that had apparently been there in all times, ready for this

very emergency. The gaoler falls "up to the shoulders;" then he

disappears into a hole, where he dies, and his keys are taken from him.

Arbasto is very happy, and promises Myrania to love and marry her; they

go "covertly out of the citie, passing through France with many

fearefull perils" and reach Denmark. Pelorus and Doralicia are extremely

angry; she even takes to "blaspheming ... but as words breake no bones,

so we cared the lesse for her scolding."

But Arbasto learns to his cost that no man when truly in love can cease

to love as he pleases. Before keeping his word to Myrania he wants once

more to appeal to her fair sister. But the fair sister continues in her

blaspheming mood, and sends a very sharp and contemptuous answer.

Both letters fall into the hands of Myrania, who is so struck by this

piece of treachery that she dies of her sorrow; hearing which Pelorus

rather unexpectedly dies of his sorrow for her death. Doralicia then is

queen, and at last discovers that in the innermost part of her heart

there is love for Arbasto. She writes accordingly, but the Dane this

time returns a contemptuous answer. Receiving which, the poor French

queen dies of her sorrow. And thereupon, for no apparent reason, except

to add yet more sorrow to the conclusion of this tragical tale, the

confidant of the Danish king turns traitor, usurps his crown, and

Arbasto goes to Candia, where Greene had the good fortune to hear from

his own lips this wondrous and authentic tale. "Merry and tragical!

tedious and brief!" as Duke Theseus would think.

However complete the success awarded to Arbasto's adventures, it was

nothing compared with the popularity of "Pandosto." If this was not the

best it was the most famous of Greene's tales. The plot is well known,

for Shakespeare, unmoved by the dying maledictions of his late

companion, drew from it the materials of his "Winter's Tale" (1611?). He

kept many of the improbabilities of Greene, rejected a few, and added

some of his own. But the great change he made was to give life to the

heroes, and as they had been shaped by Greene they sorely needed it.

Rarely did a more unlikely and a cruder tale come from the pen of our

novelist.

The events of the story take place among kings and shepherds: "In the

countrey of Bohemia there raygned a king called Pandosto." This is the

usual beginning of novels of the time; hundreds of them commence in this

manner;[137] the very first lines transport the reader to an unknown

country, and place him before an unknown king, and if, after reading

only those few words, he is surprised to find himself entangled in

extraordinary, inexplicable adventures, he must be of a very naive

disposition. But in Elizabethan times adventures were liked for their

own sake; probability was only a very secondary motive of enjoyment.

"Pandosto," in any case, deserves our attention, for, if it commenced

like many other novels of the time, it led, as we have said, to

"Winter's Tale," to which it is worth while to go. When the two are read

together and compared, it seems as if Shakespeare had chosen on purpose

one of the worst of Greene's tales, to show by way of an answer to the

accusations of the dead writer, that he was able to form something out

of nothing. Greene had, in truth, only modelled the clay; Shakespeare

used it, adding the soul.

Greene simply states his facts and takes little trouble about explaining

them; the reader must rest satisfied with the author's bare word. There

is no attempt at the study of passions; his heroes change their minds

all of a sudden, with the stiff, sharp, improbable action of puppets in

a show. Pandosto (Leontes) loves and hates, and becomes jealous, and

repents always in the same brusque wire-and-wood manner; the warmth of

his passions, so great and terrible in Shakespeare, is here simply

absent; when he begins to suspect his friend Egistus (Polixenes) of

feeling an unlawful love for Bellaria (Hermione), we are barely informed

that the Bohemian king "concluded at last to poyson him." When Dorastus

and Fawnia (Florizel and Perdita) seek refuge in Pandosto's kingdom,

Pandosto at once falls in love with his own daughter, Fawnia, whom he

does not know; then on the receipt of a letter from Egistus, "having his

former love turned to a disdainful hate," he wishes to have her killed.

Very differently is the couple received by Shakespeare's Leontes:

"Were I but twenty-one,

Your father's image is so hit in you,

His very air, that I should call you brother,

As I did him; and speak of something wildly

By us performed before. Most dearly welcome!

And you, fair princess, goddess!--O, alas,

I lost a couple, that 'twixt heaven and earth

Might thus have stood, begetting wonder as

You gracious couple do."

In Greene the exquisite figure of Perdita appears as a very rough sketch

under the name of Fawnia. She loves her Dorastus not merely because he

is lovable, but because "hoping in time to be advaunced from the

daughter of a poore farmer to be the wife of a riche king." Dorastus

comes to her disguised as a shepherd, and as she does not recognize him

"she began halfe to forget Dorastus and to favor this prety shepheard

whom she thought shee might both love and obtaine." It would be cruel to

make further comparisons, but it is necessary to say thus much in order

to show what a hold adventures, however crude, surprises, unexpected

meetings and recognitions, had upon Elizabethan minds. They were quite

sufficient to insure success; to add life and poetry was very well, but

by no means necessary. Shakespeare did so because he could not do

otherwise; and he did it thoroughly, as was his wont, endowing with his

life-giving faculty the most insignificant personage he found

embryo-like in Greene. The least of them has, in Shakespeare, his own

moods, his sensitiveness, a mind and a heart that is his and his alone;

even young Mamillius, the child who lives only the length of one scene,

is not any child, but tells his tale, his sad tale, with a grace that is

all his own.

"A sad tale's best for winter.

... I will tell it softly;

Yond crickets shall not hear it."

Living people, too, are his Paulina, his Antigonus, his Camillo, his

Autolycus, all of them additions of his own creation. Living also, his

shepherds, for whom he received only insignificant hints from Greene. In

"Pandosto" we hear of "a meeting of all the farmers daughters in

Sycilia," without anything more, and from this Shakespeare drew the idea

of his sheep-shearing feast, where he delights in contrasting with the

rough ways of his peasants the inborn elegance of Perdita: "O

Proserpina," says she, in her delicious mythological prattle:

"For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall

From Dis's wagon! daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares ..."

And Florizel, wondering at her with his young admiring eyes, answers in

the same strain:

"When you speak, sweet,

I'd have you do it ever; when you sing,

I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;

Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,

To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you

A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do

Nothing but that."

Very different is the old shepherd's tone; though kindly, it is quite

conformable to his estate and situation:

"Fie, daughter! when my old wife lived, upon

This day she was both pantler, butler, cook,

Both dame and servant; welcomed all, served all,

Would sing her song, and dance her turn; now here,

At upper end o' the table, now i' the middle;

On his shoulder and his; her face o' fire

With labour, and the thing she took to quench it,

She would to each one sip. You are retired,

As if you were a feasted one, and not

The hostess of the meeting."

Never has the language of country people been better transferred to

literature; their manners, tone, and language in Shakespeare have

remained true to nature even to the present day, so much so that it is

difficult, while writing, not to think of harvest and vintage scenes,

which every year brings round again in our French valleys, and the sort

of kindly talk very similar to the old shepherd's that many of us

remember, as well as I do, to have heard in the country, from peasant

associates in early days. This unsurpassed fidelity to nature is the

more remarkable as it dates from the Arcadian times of English

literature, days that were to last long, even down to the time of Pope

and of Thomson himself, to stop at Burns, when at last a deeper, if not

truer, note was to be struck.

But with regard to mere facts, Shakespeare was in no way more careful

than Greene, and he seems to have known, and it was in fact visible

enough, the greediness of his public to be such that, ostrich like, they

would swallow anything. He, therefore, changed very little. In Greene,

ships "sail into Bohemia," a feat that cannot be repeated to-day; the

Queen is tried by a jury "panelled" for that purpose; the nobles go "to

the isle of Delphos, there to enquire of the oracle of Apollo whether

she had committed adultery." Very much the same things happen in

Shakespeare. The survival of Hermione is his own invention; in Greene

she dies for good at the beginning of the novel, when she hears of the

death of her son. With the same aptitude to die for no other cause than

to improve a story, Pandosto dies also in Greene's tale: he remembered

his faults and "fell in a melancholie fit, and to close up the comedie

with a tragicall stratageme he slewe himselfe." Merry and tragical! But

otherwise Dorastus and Fawnia would have had to wait before becoming

king and queen, and such a waiting was against the taste of the time and

the rules of novel writing.

Such as it is, Greene's tale had an extraordinary success. While

Shakespeare's drama was not printed, either in authentic or pirated

shape, before the appearance of the 1623 folio, the prose story had a

number of editions throughout the seventeenth century and even, under

one shape or another, throughout the eighteenth. It was printed as a

chap-book during this last period, and in this costume began a new life.

It was turned into verse in 1672, under the title, "Fortune's tennis

ball: or the most excellent history of Dorastus and Fawnia, rendred into

delightful english verse";[138] it begins with this "delightful"

invocation:

"Inspire me gentle love and jealousie,

Give me thy passion and thy extasie,

While to a pleasant ayr I strik the strings

Singing the fates of lovers and of kings."

But the highest and most extraordinary compliment to Greene's

performance was its translation into French, not only once, as has been

said, but twice. The first time was at a moment when the English

language and literature were practically unknown and as good as

non-extant to French readers. It appeared in 1615, and was dedicated to

"tres haute and tres illustre princesse, Madame Christine Soeur du

Roy."[139] The second translation, that has never yet been noticed, was

made at a time when France had a novel literature of its own well worth

reading, and when Boileau had utterly routed and discomfited the writers

of romantic and improbable tales. Nevertheless, it was thought that a

public would be found in Paris for Greene's novel, and it was printed

accordingly in French in 1722, this time adorned with engravings.[140]

They show "Doraste" dressed as a marquis of Louis XV.'s time; while

"Pandolphe" wears a flowing wig under his cocked hat, and sits on a

throne in rococo style. A copy of the book was purchased for the royal

library, and is still to be seen at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris,

with the crown and cipher of his Most Christian Majesty on the cover.

Greene's story of "Menaphon"[141] is hardly more probable, but it takes

place in the country of Arcadia, a fact that predisposes us to treat

with indulgence any lack of reality; moreover, it contains touches of

true poetry, and is perhaps, all considered, the best of Greene's

romantic novels. In common with most of this author's tales it abounds

in monologues and dialogues; heroes think aloud and let us into their

secret thoughts, a device adapted from the classic drama and very common

in all the English novels of the period. There is also, according to

Greene's custom, a great abundance of songs and verses, the best piece

being the lullaby quoted above. Propriety and the truth of characters

are not much better observed here than in Greene's other stories.

Everybody in this romance speaks with infinite grace and politeness. The

shepherd Menaphon, introducing himself to the Princess Sephestia and her

child, who have been cast ashore through a shipwreck, says to them:

"Strangers, your degree I know not, therefore pardon if I give lesse

title than your estates merit." And, falling desperately in love with

the beautiful young woman, who gives as her name Samela of the island of

Cyprus, he describes to her with ardour and not without grace the

pastoral life that he would like to lead with her: "I tell thee, faire

nymph, these plaines that thou seest stretching southward, are pastures

belonging to Menaphon: ther growes the cintfoyle, and the hyacinth, the

cowsloppe, the primrose and the violet, which my flockes shall spare for

flowers to make thee garlands, the milke of my ewes shall be meate for

thy pretie wanton, the wool of the fat weathers that seemes as fine as

the fleece that Jason fet from Colchos, shall serve to make Samela

webbes withall; the mountaine tops shall be thy mornings walke, and the

shadie valleies thy evenings arbour: as much as Menaphon owes shall be

at Samelas command if she like to live with Menaphon."

The romance goes on its way, strewn with songs whose refrains of varied

and tuneful metres afford charming melody. In the end two knights,

Melicertus and Pleusidippus, both enamoured of Sephestia, fight a duel;

they are separated. The king of the country interferes, and

comprehending nothing of these intricate love affairs, he is on the

point of cutting off all their heads, when it is discovered that

Melicertus is the long lost husband of Sephestia; the other duellist is

the child of the shipwrecked woman, who, in the course of the tale, has

been stolen from her on the shore and has grown up in hiding. They

embrace one another; and, as for Menaphon, whose sweetheart finds

herself thus provided with a sufficiently fond husband and son, he

returns to his old love, Pesana, who had had patience to wait for him,

doubtless without growing old: for, in these romances, people do not

grow old. Pleusidippus has become a man, without the least change in his

mother's face; she has remained as beautiful as in the first page of

the book, and is, according to appearances, still "sweet-and-twenty."

In his tales of this sort Greene was mostly describing delights with

which he was not personally acquainted, lands of which he had no

practical knowledge, princely adventures for which no historian could

vouch. He was perfectly free and unimpeded. The taste of the public was

similar to his; no Boileau was there to stop him, and he wrote

accordingly, following his fancy, not caring in the least for nature and

possibility, letting his pen go as fast as it would, and turning out "in

a night and a day" a tale like his "Menaphon." But if he did not choose

to paint from life and to describe realities in his "love pamphlets," he

did so on purpose, not because he was unable to do it. In several of his

other writings his subject was such that the work would have been

nothing if not true; and there we find a clear view of human passions,

foibles and peculiarities, which show that if the taste of the romance

readers of the time had been such as to encourage him in this line, he

would have proved no mean realistic novelist. His Repentances abound in

portraits and scenes, showing the keen eye he had for realities. His

conny-catching literature is full of exact descriptions of the sordid

life of the sharpers and low courtesans of Elizabethan London. In more

than one of these pamphlets he foreshadows, though I need not say with a

much lesser genius, the "Moll Flanders" and the "Colonel Jack" of a

later period. The resemblance is especially great in the "Life and death

of Ned Browne,"[142] in which the hero, according to the custom in

picaresque novels, of which more hereafter, himself tells his own story

in the first person. Greene is particularly bitter in his denunciations

of the professional courtesans of London, about whom he knew probably

more than any of his contemporaries. But with all the hatred he felt

towards them so long as he had pen in hand, he cannot help repeating

that, however objectionable they are in many ways, they have for

themselves this advantage, that they are extremely beautiful, so that if

their morals are exactly the same as in other countries they excel at

least in something which in itself is not contemptible. They are "a

kinde of women bearing the faces of Angels, but the hearts of devils,

able to intrap the elect if it were possible."[143] Greene had no

pretension to be one of the elect, and was only too often "intraped";

but for all his miseries his words show a scarcely less intense

admiration for his diabolical angels than Des Grieux's famous rapturous

phrase when he meets Manon on her way to the ship that is to convey her

to America: "Son linge etait sale et derange; ses mains delicates

exposees a l'injure de l'air; enfin tout ce compose charmant, _cette

figure capable de ramener l'univers a l'idolatrie_, paraissait dans un

desordre et un abattement inexprimables." "Again," writes Greene: "let

me say this much, that our curtizans ... are far superiour in

artificiall allurement to them of all the world, for, although they

have not the painting of Italie, nor the charms of France, nor the

jewelles of Spaine, yet they have in their eyes adamants that wil drawe

youth as the jet the strawe.... Their lookes ... containe modesty,

mirth, chastity, wantonness and what not."[144]

Besides the personal reminiscences with which he made up his repentance

tales and stories, Greene as an observer of human nature is seen at his

best in his curious, and at the time famous, dialogue "between velvet

breeches and cloth breeches."[145] It is in fact a disputation between

old England and new England; the England that built the strong houses

praised by Harrison, and the England that adorned itself with the

Burghley House paper work; traditional England and italianate England.

Velvet breeches is "richly daubde with gold, and poudred with pearle,"

and is "sprung from the auncient Romans, borne in Italy, the mistresse

of the worlde for chivalry." Cloth breeches is of English manufacture

and descent, and deplores the vices that have crept into "this glorious

Iland" in the wake of Italian fashions. Both plead before Greene, each

giving very graphic accounts of the behaviour of the other. Here, for

example, is a scene, assuredly from the life, at a barber's shop:

"Velvet breeches he sittes downe in the chaire wrapt in fine cloathes

... then comes [the barber] out with his fustian eloquence, and making a

low conge, saith:

[Illustration: VELVET BREECHES AND CLOTH BREECHES, 1592.]

"Sir, will you have your wor[ship's] haire cut after the Italian maner,

shorte and round, and then frounst with the curling yrons, to make it

looke like a halfe moone in a miste? or like a Spanyard, long at the

eares and curled like the two endes of an old cast periwig? or will you

be Frenchified, with a love locke downe to your shoulders, wherein you

may weare your mistresse favour? The English cut is base and gentlemen

scorne it, novelty is daintye; speake the woord sir, and my sissars are

ready to execute your worships wil.

"His head being once drest, which requires in combing and rubbing some

two howers, hee comes to the bason: then being curiously washt with no

woorse then a camphire bal, he descends as low as his berd, and asketh

whether he please to be shaven or no, whether he will have his peak cut

short and sharpe, amiable like an _inamorato_, or broad pendant like a

spade, to be terrible like a warrior and a Soldado ... if it be his

pleasure to have his appendices primed or his mustachios fostered to

turn about his eares like ye branches of a vine...."

The question pending between cloth and velvet is submitted to a jury;

men of the various professions are called and accepted, or rejected,

according to their merit; each is described, often in a very lively

manner. Here is, for example, the portrait of a poet or rather of _the_

poet of the Elizabethan period; for the specimen here represented stands

as a type for all his class; and it is worth notice, for if Shakespeare

himself was different, many of his associates at the "Mermaid," we may

be sure, well answered the description. "I espied far off a certain kind

of an overworne gentleman, attired in velvet and satin; but it was

somewhat dropped and greasie, and bootes on his legges, whose soles

wexed thin and seemed to complaine of their maister, which treading

thrift under his feet, had brought them unto that consumption. He walked

not as other men in the common beaten way, but came compassing

_circumcirca_, as if we had beene divells and he would draw a circle

about us, and at every third step he looked back as if he were afraid of

a baily or a sarjant." Cloth Breeches, who seems to be describing here

Greene himself, is not too severe in his appreciation of the character

of the poor troubled fellow: "If he have forty pound in his purse

together, he puts it not to usury, neither buies land nor merchandise

with it, but a moneths commodity of wenches and capons. Ten pound a

supper, why tis nothing if his plough goes and his ink horne be cleere

... But to speak plainely I think him an honest man if he would but live

within his compasse, and generally no mans foe but his own. Therefore I

hold him a man fit to be of my jury."

Judgment is passed in favour of cloth England against velvet England;

and in this ultra-conservative sentence the views of the Bohemian

novelist are summed up in this premature essay on the "philosophy of

clothes."

IV.

The fame and success of Greene encouraged writers to follow his example.

He had shown that there was a public for novels, and that it was a sort

of literature that would pay, both in reputation and money. He had,

therefore, many rivals and imitators who were thus only second-hand

disciples of Lyly. Among these Nicholas Breton and Emmanuel Ford may be

taken as examples. Both were his contemporaries, but survived him many

years. In both traces of euphuism survive, but they are faint; at the

time they wrote euphuism was on the wane, and it is only on rare

occasions that Ford reminds us that "the most mightie monarch Alexander,

aswel beheld the crooked counterfeit of Vulcan as the sweet picture of

Venus. Philip of Macedon accepted...."[146]

What Ford especially imitated from Greene was the art of writing

romantic tales with plenty of adventures, unexpected meetings and

discoveries, much love, and improbabilities enough to enchant

Elizabethan readers and sell the book up to any number of editions. In

this he rivalled his model very successfully, and his romances were

among the most popular of the time of Shakespeare. The number of their

editions was extraordinary, and they were renewed at almost regular

intervals up to the eighteenth century; there was a far greater demand

for them than for any play of Shakespeare.[147] Besides imitating

Greene, who obviously revealed to him the success to be won by writing

romantic tales, he imitated at the same time the Italians and the

Spaniards, introducing into his romances a licentiousness quite unknown

to Greene, but well known to Boccaccio, and heroic adventures similar to

those his friend Anthony Munday was just then putting into English.

These last were to be the chief delight of novel-readers in the

seventeenth century, and did more than anything for the great popularity

of Ford's novels during that period.

Ford's earliest and most characteristic work was called "Parismus, the

renowned prince of Bohemia ... conteining his noble battailes fought

against the Persians ... his love to Laurana ... and his straunge

adventures in the desolate Iland," &c., &c.[148] As the title informs us

there are loves and wars in this romance, deeds of valour and of

sorcery, there are pageants and enchanters. The adventures take place in

purely imaginary lands, which the author is pleased to call Bohemia,

Persia, &c., but which might have been as well baptized Tartary or

Mongolia. The manners and costumes, however, when there is an attempt at

describing them, are purely Elizabethan. There are masques such as were

shown at court in Shakespeare's time, and during one such fete, as in

"Romeo and Juliet," Parismus for the first time declares his love to

Laurana: "The maskers entred in this sort: first entred two torch

bearers, apparelled in white satten, beset with spangles of gold, after

whom followed two Eunuches, apparelled all in greene, playing on two

instruments, then came Parismus attired all in carnation satten ... next

followed ... when came two knights ... next followed ..."[149] and so

on; in the same style as in Shakespeare's play, "enter Romeo, Mercutio,

Benvolio, with five or six maskers, torch-bearers and others."[150] But,

alas, this is the only place where there is any resemblance between the

two styles; though the situation developes under Ford's pen in a manner

to suggest that he must have read "Romeo" not without a purpose. Had his

purpose been to show his contemporaries the height of Shakespeare's

genius by giving, side by side with it, the measure of an ordinary mind,

he could not have tried better nor succeeded less. For contemporaries

and successors consumed innumerable editions of "Parismus," and only too

easily numbered editions of "Romeo."

Parismus and Laurana talk, in the midst of the ball, of their new-born

love, and after an exchange of highly polite phrases she thus confesses

her feelings: "My noble lord ... I heartily thanke you for taking so

much paines for my sake, being unwoorthie thereof, and also unable to

bee sufficiently thankfull unto you for the same, and for that you say

your happinesse resteth in my power, if I can any way work your content

to the uttermost of my endeavour I will do it." Parismus, of course, has

nothing to answer except that no one could require more.

It had been, however, with her also, love at first sight; but Laurana

does not say:

"Go, ask his name: if he be married,

My grave is like to be my wedding bed."

She is far too well bred and courtly, and she explains as follows what

she has felt: "My Lord, I assure you, that at such time as I sawe you

comming first into this court, my heart was then surprised, procured, as

I think by the destinies, that ever since I have vowed to rest yours."

This speech is made at a nightly garden meeting, similar to the one

where Romeo went "with love's light wings," and where was heard the

sweetest and gravest lovers' music that ever enchanted human ears:

"At lovers' perjuries,

They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,

If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully:

Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,

I will frown and be perverse....

Well, do not swear: although I joy in thee,

I have no joy of this contract to-night.

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say, It lightens." ...

He of Bohemia had not come with "love's light wings," but "somewhat

before the hour, was gone forth in his night gowne, with his sworde

under his arme, and comming to the gate he was wont to goe in at into

the gardeine, found it shut, and having no other meanes, he gott over

the wall." We picture him clambering over the wall, his night-gown

flowing about him to do duty for love's wings. The lovers meet, and

"thus they spent the night in kinde salutations and curteous imbracings

to the unspeakable joy and comfort of them both."

To complete the external resemblance of the two situations, there is in

Ford's novel a young lord to play the part of "County Paris." He is

called Sicanus, and Laurana's family greatly favours his suit: "Laurana,

my cheefest care is to see thee married, according to thy state, which

hath made me send for thee, to know whether thou hast alreadie placed

thy affection or no: otherwise there is come into this country, a knight

of great estate," &c., &c. "Laurana departed with a heavie heart."

Then again, as in "Romeo," there is another meeting of the lovers, this

time in Laurana's chamber; and they spend the hours "in sweete

greetings, but farre from anie thought of unchastnesse, their imbracings

being grounded upon the most vertuous conditions that might bee: and

sitting together upon the beds side, Laurana told him...." As in Romeo,

they are parted by morn:

"Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:

It was the nightingale, and not the lark....

--It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east....

--Yond light is not daylight...."

A very different morn shines in at Laurana's windows: "Nowe the dismall

houre of their parting being approached, by reason of the light that the

sunne began to give into the chamber, Parismus taking Laurana in his

armes, drawing sweete breath from her lippes, told her that now, to his

greefe, he must leave her to be courted by his enemie."

Without any very great grief on our side we shall leave them to follow

from this point a series of adventures very different from Romeo's.

Parismus becomes a chief of outlaws, and acquires great fame under the

name of the Black Knight; he wages war against Sicanus, he encounters

young Violetta, and their meetings read like a tale from Boccaccio

rather than like a play of Shakespeare; at last he marries Laurana

"with admirable pompe" in the "temple of Diana." We shall leave them in

this holy place, though many more adventures are in store for them. We

shall only state that Ford, encouraged by the great success of this

first attempt, wrote several other novels exactly in the same style,

containing the same improbable monsters and wonders, and the same

licentious adventures. In spite, however, of the condemnation he

suffered at the hands of wise people on account of the undeniable

immorality of several of his episodes, his reputation went on increasing

for years and long survived him.[151]

Another follower of Greene was Nicholas Breton,[152] eighteen years his

senior; but he did not begin novel-writing until after the death of his

model, when this kind of literature had taken a firm hold of the public.

Very little euphuism remains in Breton; we do not find in him those

clusters of similes with which Lyly and Greene were fond of adorning

their novels, and alliteration is there only to remind us that through

Greene, Breton may be considered a secondary legatee of Lyly. The

subjects and the form of his writings, much better than his style, prove

him a pupil of Greene. He imitated his dialogues, publishing in

succession his conference "betwixt a scholler and an angler," his

discussion between "wit and will"; his disputation of a scholar and a

soldier, "the one defending learning, the other martiall discipline,"

and several others on travels, on court and country, &c. He imitated

Greene's tales of low life, anticipating in his turn Defoe's novels,

with his "Miseries of Mavillia;" he remained, however, far below the

level not only of Defoe, but of Greene, whose personal knowledge of the

misfortunes he was describing enabled him to give in his writings of

this kind pictures of reality that contrasted strangely with the

fanciful incidents of his romantic novels. The only things worth

remembering in these "miseries," besides their subject, are a few

thoughtful observations such as the one (in alliterative style) which

opens the story: "Sorrow sokes long ere it slayes; care consumes before

it killes; and destinie drives the body into much miserie, before the

heart be strooken dead;" a far juster observation than Greene's fancies,

according to which heroes of novels may be got rid of as quickly by

sorrow as by poison or apoplexy.

There are also in Breton imitations of the romantic novel of Italian

origin such as Greene understood it and such as the Elizabethan public

loved it. Breton published in 1600 his "Strange fortunes of two

excellent princes," which his modern editor does not hesitate to declare

"a bright and characteristic little book." This little masterpiece

begins thus, in very characteristic fashion indeed: "In the Ilandes of

Balino, neere unto the city of Dulno, there lived a great duke named

Firente.... This lord had to wife a sweete ladie called Merilla, a

creature of much worth.... This blessed lord and ladie had issue male,

onlie one sonne named Penillo and female one onlie daughter named

Merilla." These two children were famous for their wit and beauty. "But

I will ... entreat of another Duke, who dwelt in the Ilands of

Cotasie.... This duke had to name Ordillo, a man famous for much worth

as well in wit as valour.... This duke had to wife a gratious ladie....

She had by her lord the duke two blessed children, a sonne and a

daughter; her sonne named Fantiro and her daughter Sinilla." These two

children begat wonder for their wit and their beauty.

Such is the introduction. What do you think will follow? That the two

perfect young men will marry the two unique young women? This is exactly

what happens; and the only perceptible interest in the tale is to see

from what improbable incidents such likely consequences are derived. We

can safely, it seems, class this novel in the same category as

"Arbasto," "Mamillia," and other products of Greene's pen; not, however,

without remarking that Breton's stories, as well as those of his model,

were not meant to delight nurseries, but were destined to give pleasure

to grown-up people, to people in society; they were offered them as

_jucunda oblivia vitae_, exactly in the same fashion as the three-volume

novels of to-day. Breton himself is positive on this point, and he has

been careful to inform us that his intention was to write things "which

being read or heard in a winters evening by a good fire, or a summers

morning in the greene fields may serve both to purge melancholy from

the minde and grosse humours from the body."[153]

Again, he was connected with the Greene and Lyly group by the pleasure

he felt in composing imaginary letters. A number of such letters had

been inserted by Lyly in his "Euphues," and had proved one of the

attractions of the book; Greene and the other novelists of the period

never missed an opportunity of making their heroes write to each other,

and they always transcribed their letters in full, a process inherited

from the romance writers of the Middle Ages. Breton, following the

example already given by some of his contemporaries, went beyond that,

and published a volume of imaginary letters from everybody to anybody on

any subject, many of them rather coarse, some good, some rather slow in

their gait and heavy in their wit.[154] The public taste was so

decidedly in favour of these compositions that this was the most

successful of Breton's enterprises. It was often reprinted; a number of

similar collections were circulated in the seventeenth century, and

their popularity had not abated when Richardson was asked, by the

publishers Osborne and Rivington, to compose one for country people. He

did so, and the only difference, and a sufficiently important one, was

that in his series the letters were connected by the thread of a story.

Greene had a rival of much higher stature in his friend Thomas Lodge.

Lodge was a little older than Greene, and survived him long, so that he

happened to be a contemporary both of Greene and of his imitators. He

rivalled Greene, but did not imitate him, being himself a direct legatee

of Lyly. The sort of life he led differed greatly from that of his

friend, but it was scarcely less characteristic of the period. Lodge was

the son of a rich London grocer who had been Lord Mayor. Born in 1557,

he had known Lyly at Oxford; had studied law; then, yielding to those

desires of seeing the dangers and beauties of the world which drove the

English youths of the period to seek preferment abroad, he closed his

books for a while, and became a corsair, visiting the Canary Isles,

Brazil, and Patagonia. He brought back, as booty from his expeditions,

romances written at sea to beguile the tedium of the passage and the

anxieties of the tempest. One was called "The Margarite of America";

another "Rosalynde." The latter fell into Shakespeare's hands and

pleased him; he drew from it the plot of "As you like it."[155] Coming

before the literary public, Lodge does not altogether forget his

profession of corsair, and in order to deprive the critics of the

temptation to sneer, he is careful to brandish his rapier from time to

time, and to write prefaces that make one's hair stand on end. "Roome

for a souldier and a sailer, that gives you the fruits of his labors

that he wrote in the Ocean!" he cries to the reader at the beginning of

his "Rosalynde," and let fault-finders keep silence; otherwise he will

throw them overboard "to feed cods."

After such a warning there would be nothing it seems but to hold our

tongue; but perhaps, taking the practical side of the question, we may

consider that by this time Lodge's rapier must have grown very rusty,

and would not offer more danger than any critic is bound to incur in

the performance of his duty. Besides that admiration may in all

sincerity be blended with criticism when it is a question of Lodge's

masterpiece, "Rosalynde."

The tale itself bears a somewhat curious history. Twice at two hundred

years' distance it took the fancy of the greatest genius of the period.

In the Middle Ages it was called the "Tale of Gamelyn,"[156] and Chaucer

apparently intended to work it into his "Canterbury Tales," but he died

before he had completed his wish, and some copy of the rough old poem

having, as it seems, been found among his papers, it was in after time

inserted in the manuscripts of his works as the "Cooke's Tale." As it

stood in the fourteenth century this story recited mere deeds of valour,

of strong, sinewy fighters; love and women played no part in it; and it

is a great loss for us not to know whether old Chaucer would have made

this very necessary addition, and what sort of mediaeval Rosalind he

would have depicted.

As things went, we are indebted to our gentleman adventurer for the

invention of Rosalind. Lodge took up the tale and remodelled it

entirely; he gave place in it to the fair she-page and to her friend

Alinda and to Phoebe, the hard-hearted shepherdess, in such a way that

when Shakespeare in his turn bethought himself of this story, he had

nothing to add to fit it for his own stage, nothing except genius.

[Illustration: PREPARING FOR THE HUNT, 1575.]

But if Lodge cannot be considered a man of genius, he is certainly a

writer of very remarkable gifts. His novel is a pastoral tale that

takes place somewhere in France, near Bordeaux, and reads as pleasantly

as any story in "Astree," no mean compliment. Probability, geography and

chronology, are not Lodge's strong points; we are in fact again in the

country of nowhere, in an imaginary kingdom of France over which the

usurper Torismond reigns. The true king has been deposed and leads a

forester's life, untroubled, unknown, in the thick woods of Arden.

Rosalind, a daughter of the deposed king, has been kept as a sort of

hostage at the court of the tyrant in Bordeaux, presumably his capital.

All of a sudden she is exiled in her turn, without more explanation than

"I have heard of thy aspiring speaches and intended treasons."[157]

Alinda, her friend, the daughter of the tyrant, refuses to leave her,

and both fly the court, Rosalind being dressed as a page, a rapier at

her side, her wit full of repartees, her mind full of shifts, and equal,

in fact, as in Shakespeare, to any emergency. "Tush, quoth Rosalynd, art

thou a woman and hast not a sodaine shift to prevent a misfortune? I,

thou seest, am of a tall stature, and would very well become the person

and apparell of a page; thou shalt bee my mistris, and I will play the

man so properly, that, trust me, in what company so ever I come, I will

not bee discovered. I will buy mee a suite, and have my rapier very

handsomely at my side, and if any knave offer wrong, your page will shew

him the point of his weapon. At this Alinda smiled, and upon this they

agreed, and presentlie gathered up all their jewels which they trussed

up in a casket.... They travailed along the vineyards, and by many

by-waies, at last got to the forrest side," the forest of Arden, which

at that time happened to be near the vineyards of Gascony.

But this geographical situation is the least of the wonders offered by

the forest. In it live not only Gerismond, the lawful king, very happy

and contented, free and without care, wanting nothing; but, in the

valleys, the most lovable shepherdesses and the most loving shepherds;

they feed their flocks while piping their ditties; they inscribe their

sonnets on the bark of trees; they are very learned, though mere

shepherds; they quote Latin and write French; they know how to ask the

god of love that the heart of their mistress may not be "de glace."

"Bien qu'elle ait de neige le sein."

They live in the shade of the most unaccountable woods, woods composed

of pine-trees, fig-trees, and lemon-trees. "Then, comming into a faire

valley, compassed with mountaines whereon grewe many pleasant shrubbs,

they might descrie where two flocks of sheepe did feede. Then looking

about they might perceive where an old shepheard sat, and with him a

yong swaine, under a covert most pleasantlie scituated. The ground where

they sat was diapred with Floras riches, as if she ment to wrap Tellus

in the glorie of her vestments: round about, in the forme of an

amphitheater were most curiouslie planted pine-trees, interseamed with

limons and citrons, which with the thicknesse of their boughes so

shadowed the place, that Phoebus could not prie into the secret of that

arbour.... Fast by ... was there a fount so christalline and cleere that

it seemed Diana and her Driades and Hemadriades had that spring as the

secret of all their bathings. In this glorious arbour sat these two

shepheards seeing their sheepe feede, playing on their pipes...." It is

like a landscape by Poussin. Alinda and her page find the place very

pleasant, and decide to settle there, especially when they have heard

what a shepherd's life is like. "For a shepheards life, oh! mistresse,

did you but live a while in their content, you would saye the court were

rather a place of sorrowe than of solace ... Envie stirres not us, wee

covet not to climbe, our desires mount not above our degrees, nor our

thoughts above our fortunes. Care cannot harbour in our cottages, nor

doo our homely couches know broken slumbers." Fine assertions, to which

some hundred and fifty years later Prince Rasselas was most solemnly to

give the lie. But his time had not yet come, and both princesses resolve

to settle there, to purchase flocks, and "live quiet, unknowen, and

contented."[158]

Many other pleasant things are to be found in the forest; in fact, the

two ladies meet their lovers there; brave Rosader, the Gamelyn of

Chaucerian times, the Orlando of Shakespeare, and wicked but repentant

and reformed Saladin, who loves Alinda as Rosader loves Rosalind. They

meet, too, the shepherdess Phoebe, "as faire as the wanton that brought

Troy to ruine," but in a different dress; "she in a peticoate of

scarlet, covered with a greene mantle, and to shrowde her from the

sunne, a chaplet of roses;" in a different mood, too, towards shepherds,

thinking nothing of her Paris, poor Montanus whom she disdains while he

is dying for her.

Yet there were even more wonders in this forest of Arcadian shepherds,

exiled princesses, and lemon-trees. There were "certaine rascalls that

lived by prowling in the forrest, who for feare of the provost marshall

had caves in the groves and thickets";[159] there were lions, too, very

dangerous, hungry, man-eating lions. Such animals appear in Shakespeare

also, as well as "palm trees," and Shakespeare moreover takes the

liberty of doubling his lion with a serpent.

"A wretched ragged man o'ergrown with hair

Lay sleeping on his back: about his neck

A green and gilded snake had wreath'd itself

Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach'd

The opening of his mouth; but suddenly,

Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd itself,

And with indented glides did slip away

Into a bush: under which bush's shade

A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,

Lay couching."[160]

Let us not be too much troubled; here will be good opportunities for

lovers to show the sort of men they are, to be wounded, but not

disfigured, and finally to be loved.

So many rare encounters of men and animals, and shepherds and lovers,

give excellent occasions for Rosalind to display the special turn of her

mind, and if, in Lodge, she has not all the ready wit that Shakespeare

has given her, she is by no means slow of speech; she possesses besides

much more of that human kindness in which we sometimes find the

brilliant page of the play a little deficient. The conversations between

her and Alinda are very pleasant to read, and show how at last, not only

on the stage, but even in novels, the tongues of the speakers had been

loosened.

"No doubt, quoth Aliena,[161] this poesie is the passion of some

perplexed shepheard, that being enamoured of some fair and beautifull

shepheardesse suffered some sharpe repulse, and therefore complained of

the cruelty of his mistris.

"You may see, quoth Ganimede [Rosalind's page-name], what mad cattell

you women be, whose hearts sometimes are made of adamant that will touch

with no impression, and sometimes of waxe that is fit for everie forme;

they delight to be courted and then they glorie to seeme coy, and when

they are most desired, then they freeze with disdaine....

"And I pray you, quoth Aliena, if your roabes were off, what mettall are

you made of that you are so satyricall against women?... Beware,

Ganimede, that Rosader heare you not....

"Thus, quoth Ganimede, I keepe decorum, I speake now as I am Alienas

page, not as I am Gerismonds daughter; for put me but into a peticoate,

and I will stand in defiance to the uttermost, that women are

courteous, constant, virtuous, and what not."

Thus there is much merry prattle between these two, especially when the

presence of the lover of the one sharpens the teasing disposition of the

other; when, for example, Rosader finding, not without good cause, some

resemblance between the page and his Rosalind, pities the former, for

not equalling the perfection of his mistress.

"He hath answered you, Ganimede, quoth Aliena, it is inough for pages to

waite on beautifull ladies and not to be beautifull themselves.

"Oh! mistres," answers the she-page, who cannot help feeling some spite,

"holde your peace, for you are partiall; who knowes not, but that all

women have desire to tie sovereigntie to their peticoats, and ascribe

beautie to themselves, where if boyes might put on their garments,

perhaps they would proove as comely; if not as comely, it may be more

curteous."

There are also some morning scenes full of pleasant mirth and cheerful

light, in which perhaps there is more of Phoebus than of the sun, and

more of Aurora than of the dawn; but this light, such as it is, is worth

the looking at, so merrily it shines; and the talk of these early risers

well suits the half-classic landscape.

"The sunne was no sooner stept from the bed of Aurora, but Aliena was

wakened by Ganimede, who restlesse all night, had tossed in her

passions; saying it was then time to goe to the field to unfold their

sheepe.

"Aliena ... replied thus: What? wanton, the sun is but new up, and as

yet Iris riches lies folded in the bosom of Flora; Phoebus hath not

dried the pearled deaw, and so long Coridon hath taught me it is not fit

to lead the sheepe abroad lest the deaw being unwholesome they get the

rot. But now see I the old proverbe true ..." (and here comes some

euphuism).

"Come on," answers Ganimede, who does not seem in a mood to appreciate

euphuism just then, "this sermon of yours is but a subtiltie to lie

still a bed, because either you think the morning colde, or els I being

gone, you would steale a nappe; this shifte carries no palme, and

therefore up and away. And for Love, let me alone; Ile whip him away

with nettles and set Disdaine as a charme to withstand his forces; and

therefore, looke you to your selfe; be not too bolde, for Venus can make

you bend; nor too coy, for Cupid hath a piercing dart that will make you

cry _Peccavi_.

"And that is it, quoth Aliena, that hath raysed you so early this

morning?

"And with that she slipt on her peticoate, and start up; and assoone as

she had made her readie and taken her breakfast, away goe these two with

their bagge and bottles to the field, in more pleasant content of mind

than ever they were in the court of Torismond."

In the same way as in Shakespeare, fair Phoebe, deceived by Rosalind's

dress, Phoebe, who thought herself beyond the reach of love, becomes

enamoured of the page and feels at last all the pangs of an unrequited

passion. Lodge's Rosalind, more human we think than her great

Shakespearean sister, uses, to persuade Phoebe into loving Montanus, a

kindly, tender language, meant to heal rather than irritate the poor

shepherdess's wounds. "What!" will exclaim the great sister, ...

"... What though you have no beauty ...

Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?

Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?

I see no more in you than in the ordinary

Of nature's sale-work: Od's my little life!

I think she means to tangle my eyes too:--

No, 'faith, proud mistress, hope not after it;

'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk-hair,

Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream

That can entame my spirits to your worship."[162]

Very spiritless, and tame, and old fashioned, will the other Rosalind

appear by the side of this impetuous, relentless deity. A few perhaps

will consider that her tame, kindly, old-fashioned, mythological piece

of advice to the shepherdess, makes her the more lovable: "What,

shepheardesse, so fayre and so cruell?... Because thou art beautifull,

be not so coye: as there is nothing more faire, so there is nothing more

fading, as momentary as the shadowes which growes from a cloudie sunne.

Such, my faire shepheardesse, as disdaine in youth, desire in age, and

then are they hated in the winter, that might have been loved in the

prime. A wrinkled maid is like a parched rose, that is cast up in

coffers to please the smell, not worn in the hand to content the eye.

There is no folly in love to had-I-wist, and therefore, be rulde by me.

Love while thou art young, least thou be disdained when thou art olde.

Beautie nor time cannot bee recalde, and if thou love, like of Montanus;

for if his desires are manie, so his deserts are great."[163] And it is

indeed quite touching to see poor Montanus in the simplest lover fashion

verify by his acts this description of himself; for while reduced to the

last degree of despair, seeing the unconquerable love Phoebe entertains

for the page, he beseeches Rosalind to save her by returning her love;

sorrow will kill him any way, but he will die contented if he thinks

that even through another's love Phoebe will live happy in her Arcadian

vale.

I need not add that all these troubles end as happily as possible; the

storms pass away and a many-coloured rainbow encompasses Arden, Arcady,

and the kingdom of France; every lover becomes loved, the three couples

get married, and while the music of the bridal fete is still in our

ears, news is brought that "hard by, at the edge of this forest, the

twelve peers of France are up in arms" to recover Gerismond's rights.

They accomplish this feat in a twinkling, as French peers should; why

they did not do it before does not appear: probably because the treble

marriage would not have looked so pretty in Notre Dame as under the

lemon trees. There is much bloodshed of course, but it is blood we do

not care for, and we are allowed to part from our shepherd friends with

the pleasing thought that they will see no end to their loves and

happiness.

Such is "Euphues golden legacy," one of the best examples of the sort

of novel that was being written at this period. It has all the

characteristics of this kind of writing such as it had come to be

understood at that date; prose is mixed with verse, and several of

Lodge's best songs are included in "Rosalynde"; it is full of

meditations and monologues like those with which the neo-classic drama

of the French school has made us familiar.[164] In the more important

places, in monologues, speeches and letters euphuistic style usually

prevails;[165] the chronology and geography of the tale, its logic and

probability, the grouping of events are of the loosest description; but

it has moreover a freshness and sometimes a pathos which is more easily

felt than expressed and of which the above quotations may have given

some idea.

In "Rosalynde" we see Lodge at his best. Perhaps, remembering his

threats, it is better not to try to see him at his worst; it will

therefore be sufficient to add that, having published also satires and

epistles imitated from Horace, eclogues, some other short stories or

romances, a translation of the philosophical works of Seneca, two or

three incoherent dramas (in one of which a whale comes on to the stage,

and without any ceremony vomits forth the prophet Jonah),[166] Lodge

changed his profession once again, abandoned the sword for the lancet,

became a physician, gained a fortune, and died quietly a rich citizen in

1625.

He had thus lived beyond the period of Lyly's fame, of Greene's

reputation, of Shakespeare's splendour, and saw, before he died, the

beginnings of a new and very different era in which both the drama and

the novel were to undergo, as we shall see, many and vast

transformations.

[Illustration: SCORPIO.]

FOOTNOTES:

[103] "Prose and Verse" by John Dickenson, ed. Grosart, Manchester,

1878, 4to. At a later date Dickenson took Greene for his model when he

wrote his "Greene in conceipt new raised from his grave, to write the

tragique history of the faire Valeria of London," 1598. In this

Dickenson imitates Greene's descriptions of the life of the courtezans

of London (Troy-novant). See _infra_, pp. 187 _et seq._

[104] "The straunge and wonderfull Adventures of Don Simonides," London,

1581, 4to; in 1584 appeared "The second tome of the travailes ... of Don

Simonides."

[105] "Riche his Farewell to Militarie profession: Conteining verie

pleasaunt discourses fit for a peaceable tyme. Gathered together for the

onely delight of the Courteous Gentlewoemen bothe of England and

Irelande, for whose onely pleasure thei were collected together, and

unto whom thei are directed and dedicated," London, 1581, 4to. By the

same: "The Adventures of Brusanus, Prince of Hungaria," 1592; "Greenes

newes both from heaven and hell," 1593, &c.

[106] London, 1580, 4to. One copy in the Bodleian Library.

[107] "Philotimus, the warre betwixt nature and fortune," London, 1583,

4to. A copy in the Bodleian Library.

[108] "Syrinx or a seavenfold historie ... newly perused and amended by

the original author," London, 1597, 4to. Warner died in 1609.

[109] "Episode of Julia and Proteus." This episode has been traced to

the story of the shepherdess Felismena, in Montemayor's "Diana." But

Shakespeare may have taken some hints also from Warner. Opheltes

(Proteus) married (not betrothed) to the virtuous Alcippe (Julia), goes

to "Sardis," where he becomes acquainted (in the same manner as Greene's

Francesco) with the courtesan Phoemonoe (Greene's Infida). Alcippe hears

of it, and wants at least to be able to see her husband; she enters the

service of the courtesan, and there suffers a moral martyrdom. Opheltes

is ruined, and, in words which Greene nearly copied, "Phoemonoe not

brooking the cumbersome haunt of so beggerly a guest, with outragious

tearms flatly forbad him her house." Alcippe makes herself known, and

all ends well for the couple.

[110] Arber's reprint, pp. 139 and 141.

[111] "The Repentance of Robert Greene," 1592. "Works," ed. Grosart,

vol. xii. p. 172.

[112] He belonged then to Clare Hall; the preface to the second part of

"Mamillia" (entered 1583) is dated "from my studie in Clarehall." Later

in life he seems to have again felt the want of increasing his

knowledge, and he was, for a while, incorporated at Oxford, July, 1588;

he, therefore, describes himself on the title-page of some of his works,

not without touch of pride, as belonging to both universities. In common

with his friend Lodge he had a taste for medical studies, and he appears

to have attempted to open to himself a career of this kind; he styles

himself on the title-page of "Planetomachia," 1585, as "Student in

Phisicke," but as he never gave himself any higher appellation we may

take it for granted that he never went beyond the preliminaries.

[113] "The Repentance of Robert Greene," 1592, "Works" vol. xii. p. 173.

[114] "Greene's never too late," 1590, "Works," vol. viii. p. 101.

[115] "Greene's Groats-worth of wit," 1592, "Works," vol. xii. pp. 131

_et seq._ "Roberto ... whose life in most parts agreeing with mine,

found one selfe punishment as I have done" (_Ibid._ p. 137).

[116] "Strange Newes," 1592. A rough engraving, showing Greene at his

writing table, is to be seen on the title-page of "Greene in conceipt,"

a novel by T. Dickenson, 1598; his "peake" exists, but is not quite so

long as Nash's description would have led us to expect.

[117] "Repentance," "Works," vol. xii. p. 164.

[118] See especially vol. x. of the "Works." Greene's example gave a

great impetus to these strange kinds of works, but he was not the first

to compose such; several came before him, especially T. Audeley, with

his "Fraternitye of vacabondes," 1560-1, and Thomas Harman, "A caveat or

warening for common cursetors vulgarely called vagabones," 1566 or 1567;

both reprinted by Viles and Furnivall, Early English Text Society, 1869.

[119] See the note added by the editor to his "Repentance," "Works,"

vol. xii. p. 184.

[120] Epilogue to the "Groats-worth of wit," directed "to those

gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making

plaies," "Works," vol. xii. p. 144. The verse quoted by Greene occurs in

the third part of Henry VI., with the difference of "womans" for

"players." About this, see Furnivall, Introduction to the "Leopold

Shakspere," p. xvi. As to the identification of Greene's three friends,

see Grosart's memorial introduction and Storojenko's "Life," in "Works,"

vol. i.

[121] The exaggeration in the attack was so obvious that it raised some

protest, and Henry Chettle, who had edited Greene's "Groats-worth" after

his death, felt obliged to print a rectification in his next book, as

was the custom then, when newspapers did not exist. This acknowledgment,

that would to-day have been published in the _Athenaeum_ or the

_Academy_, was inserted in his "Kind Heart's Dream," issued in the same

year, 1592, and is to the effect that so far as Shakespeare (for Chettle

can allude here to no other) is concerned: "divers of worship have

reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his

facetious grace in writing that approoves his art."

[122] "The Silent Woman," act iv. sc. 2; and "Every man out of his

humour," act ii. sc. 1.

[123] "Repentance," "Works," vol. xii. p. 185.

[124] The "Life and Complete Works" of Greene have been published by Dr.

Grosart, London, 1881, 15 vols. 4to. His principal non-dramatic writings

may be classified as follows:

1. _Romantic novels, or "love pamphlets"_: "Mamillia," 1583; "The second

part," 1583; "Myrrour of Modestie," 1584; "Card of fancie," 1584 (?);

"Arbasto," 1584 (?); "Planetomachia," 1585; "Morando, the Tritameron of

love," 1586 (?); "Second part," 1587; "Debate betweene follie and love,"

1587; "Penelopes web," 1587; "Euphues his censure to Philautus," 1587;

"Perimedes," 1588; "Pandosto" (_alias_ "Dorastus and Fawnia"), 1588;

"Alcida," 1588 (?); "Menaphon," 1589; "Ciceronis amor," 1589;

"Orpharion," 1590 (?); "Philomela," 1592.

2. _Civic and patriotic pamphlets_: "Spanish Masquerado," 1589; "Royal

Exchange," 1590; "Quip for an upstart courtier," 1592.

3. _Conny-catching pamphlets_: "A notable discovery of coosnage," 1591;

"Second part of Conny-catching," 1591; "Third and last part," 1592;

"Disputation betweene a Hee conny-catcher and a Shee conny-catcher,"

1592 (attributed to Greene); "The Blacke bookes messenger" (_i.e._,

"Life of Ned Browne"), 1592.

4. _Repentances_: "Greenes mourning garment," 1590 (?); "Greenes never

too late to mend," 1590; "Francescos fortune or the second part of

Greenes never too late," 1590 (these two last belong also to Group 1);

"Farewell to follie," 1591 (entered 1587); "Greenes Groats-worth of

wit," 1592; "The Repentance of Robert Greene," 1592.

[125] The same virtuous tone and purpose appear invariably in the

dedications of his books to his patrons or friends. To all of them he

wishes "increase of worship and vertue," and he commends them all "to

the tuition of the Almightie."

[126] Thomas Nash, "The Anatomie of Absurditie," London, 1590, 4to,

written in 1588. There seems to be no doubt that Nash refers to Greene

in the passage: "I but here the Homer of women hath forestalled an

objection," &c., sig. A ii.

[127] "Alcida," "Works," vol. ix. p. 17.

[128] "The Royal Exchange, contayning sundry aphorismes of phylosophie

... fyrst written in Italian," 1590, "Works," vol. vii. p. 224

[129] "Greenes never too late," 1590, "Works," vol. viii. p. 25.

[130] Greene and Lyly are placed on a par by J. Eliote, a friend of the

former; in the sonnet, in Stratford-at-Bow French, he wrote in

commendation of Greene's "Perimedes":

"Greene et Lylli tous deux raffineurs de l'Anglois."

See also the commendatory verses by H. Upchear, prefacing "Menaphon":

"Of all the flowers a _Lillie_ one I lov'd."

[131] 1592, "Works," vol. xi.

[132] Some faint resemblance has been pointed out by Dunlop between this

story and the tale of Tito and Gisippo in the "Decameron," giornata x.

novella 8.

[133] "The City Nightcap, or crede quod habes et habes, a tragi-comedy,"

London, 1661, 4to, licensed 1624, reprinted in Dodsley's "Old plays."

[134] "The debate betweene Follie and Love, translated out of French,"

1587, "Works," vol. iv.

[135] "Ciceronis amor Tulies love ... a work full of pleasure, as

following Ciceroes vaine," 1589, "Works," vol. vii. This work is

noteworthy as being an almost if not quite unique example of an attempt

in Elizabethan times to write a pseudo-historical novel in the style of

the period referred to. Greene set to work expressly with such a

purpose, and he states it in the title of the book and in its preface:

"Gentlemen, I have written of Tullies love, a worke attempted to win

your favours, but to discover mine owne ignorance in that coveting to

counterfeit Tullies phrase, I have lost myself in unproper words." In

this tale Cicero is represented standing at the tribune and haranguing

the senate: "Conscript fathers and grave senators of Rome," &c.

[136] "Penelopes web," 1587, "Works," vol. iv. p. 233.

[137] "There dwelled in Bononia a certaine Knight called Signior

Bonfadio" ("Morando"). "There dwelled in the citie of Metelyne a certain

Duke called Clerophantes" ("Greenes carde of fancie"). "There dwelled

... in the citie of Memphis a poore man called Perymedes" ("Perimedes"),

&c.

[138] London, 1672.

[139] "Histoire tragique de Pandosto roy de Boheme et de Bellaria sa

femme. Ensemble les amours de Dorastus et de Faunia; ou sont comprises

les adventures de Pandosto roy de Boheme, enrichies de feintes

moralites, allegories, et telles autres diversites convenables au sujet.

Le tout traduit premierement en Anglois de la langue Boheme et de

nouveau mis en francois par L. Regnault," Paris, 1615, 12mo. A copy in

the Bodleian Library.

[140] "Histoire tragique de Pandolphe roy de Boheme et de Cellaria sa

femme, ensemble les amours de Doraste et de Faunia; enrichie de figures

en taille douce," Paris, 1722, 12mo.

[141] "Menaphon. Camillas alarum to slumbering Euphues, in his

melancholie cell at Silexedra," 1589. "Works," vol. vi.

[142] "The blacke bookes messenger, laying open the life and death of

Ned Browne one of the most notable of cutpurses ... in England. Heerein

hee telleth verie pleasantly in his owne person such strange prancks ...

as the like was yet never heard of," 1592, "Works," vol. xi.

[143] "Groats-worth of wit," "Works," vol. xii. p. 140.

[144] "Greenes never too late," "Works," vol. viii. p. 67.

[145] "A quip for an upstart courtier, or a quaint dispute between

velvet breeches and cloth breeches," London, 1592; "Works," vol. xi. In

the year of its publication it went through three editions and had

several afterwards. It was translated into Dutch: "Een seer vermakelick

Proces tusschen Fluweele-Broeck ende Laken-Broek," Leyden, 1601, 4to.

Greene had as his model in writing this book F. T.'s "Debate between

pride and lowliness," and he drew much from it, though not so much by

far as he has been accused of by Mr. Collier. "The Debate," &c.,

Shakespeare Society, 1841, preface. (F. T. is not Francis Thynne.)

[146] Dedication of "Parismus," 1598.

[147] The thirteenth edition of "Parismus" appeared in 1649; there were

others in 1657, 1663, 1664, 1665, 1668, 1671, 1677, 1684, 1690, 1696,

1704, &c. (Sidney L. Lee.)

[148] London, 1598, 4to.

[149] Sig. C iii. _et seq._

[150] Act i. sc. 4. "Romeo" was first printed in 1597. A contemporary

representation of such an _entree_ of maskers is to be seen in the

curious painting representing Sir H. Unton and the principal events in

his life; now kept in the National Portrait Gallery (painted about

1596).

[151] "Parismenos, the second part of ... Parismus," 1599; "Ornatus and

Artesia," of uncertain date, but surely anterior to 1598; "Montelion,

Knight of the Oracle," of uncertain date; the earliest known copy bears

date, 1633. Francis Meres, in his celebrated "Palladis Tamia," gives a

list of books "hurtful to youth," and which are to be "censured"; among

them, besides "Gargantua," "Owlglass," &c., he names "Ornatus and

Artesia" and the "Black Knight," which might perhaps be "Parismus," for

such was our hero's nickname.

[152] "Works in verse and prose," ed. Grosart, London, 1879, 2 vols.,

4to. Breton was born in 1542-3; he studied at Oxford, and travelled on

the continent; he died in 1626.

[153] This forms part of the title of his "Wonders worth the hearing,"

1602 (a dialogue with anecdotes).

[154] "A poste with a packet of mad Letters." The earliest dated edition

is of the year 1603. Breton published, besides the writings above

mentioned, some religious, pastoral, and other poetry. Part of it is

dedicated to Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, the famous sister of Sir

Philip: "The Countesse of Pembrookes love," 1592; "The Countesse of

Pembroke's passion" (no date). His pastoral poetry is among the best of

his time. He left also moral essays and characters or typical portraits:

"Characters upon essaies morall and divine, 1615," dedicated to Bacon,

and concerning wisdom, learning, knowledge, patience, love, peace, war

and other, even then, rather trite subjects. "The good and badde," 1616,

contains characters of a knave, an usurer, a virgin, a parasite, a

goodman, an "atheist or most badde man: hee makes robberie his purchase,

lecherie his solace, mirth his exercise, and drunkennesse his glory,"

&c. These books of "Characters" were extremely popular. _Cf._

"Characters of virtues and vices" by Hall, 1608; Sir Thomas Overbury's

"Characters," 1614; John Earle's "Microcosmographie," 1628, and a great

many others. The last-named was translated into French by J. Dymocke,

"Le vice ridicule," Louvain, 1671, 12mo. One of his most curious works

is his "Fantasticks," 1626.

[155] The principal novels or short stories of Lodge are: "Forbonius and

Prisceria," 1584, reprinted by the Shakespeare Society, 1853;

"Rosalynde, Euphues golden legacie found after his death in his cell at

Silexedra ... fetcht from the Canaries," 1590, reprinted by Hazlitt,

1875, and again in a popular form by Prof. H. Morley, 1887; "The famous,

true, and historicall life of ... Robin the divell," 1591; "Euphues

shadow the battaile of the sences wherein youthful folly is set downe,"

1592; it was edited by Greene in the absence of his friend, who was at

sea "upon a long voyage." The story takes place in Italy at the time

when "Octavius possessed the monarchy of the whole world." "The

Margarite of America," 1596, reprinted by Halliwell, 1859. In this

romance (p. 116), Lodge incidentally eulogizes his contemporary the

French poet Philippe Desportes, and he mentions the popularity of his

works in England. The "Complete Works" of Lodge have been published by

the Hunterian Club, ed. Gosse, Glasgow, 1875, _et seq._

[156] "The tale of Gamelyn, from Harleian MS., 7334," ed. Skeat, Oxford,

1884, 16mo.

[157] "Works," vol. ii. p. 12 (each work has a separate pagination)

[158] "Works," vol. ii. pp. 14, 16, 19, 20.

[159] "Works," vol. ii. pp. 63, 46, 42.

[160] "As you like it," act iv. sc. 3.

[161] Her forest name for Alinda.

[162] "As you like it," act iii. sc. 5.

[163] "Works," vol. ii. pp. 29, 30, 31, 49.

[164] "Saladin's meditation with himself: 'Saladin, art thou disquieted

in thy thoughts?'" &c. "Rosalind's passion: 'Unfortunate Rosalind, whose

misfortunes are more than thy years,'" &c. "Aliena's meditation: 'Ah!

me; now I see, and sorrowing sigh to see that Diana's laurels are

harbours for Venus doves,'" &c.

[165] For example, in "the schedule annexed to Euphues testament," by

which the dying man leaves the book to Philautus for the benefit of his

children. They will find in it what is fit for the God Love, "roses to

whip him when he is wanton, reasons to whistant him when he is wilie."

In the same manner Sir John of Bourdeaux informs his sons that "a

woman's eye as it is precious to behold, so is it prejudicial to gaze

upon"; Rosalind observes to herself that "the greatest seas have the

sorest stormes, the highest birth is subject to the most bale and of all

trees the cedars soonest shake with the wind," &c. The same style is

used in "Euphues shadow" in "Robin the divell," &c.: "Thou art like the

verven (Nature) poyson one wayes, and pleasure an other, feeding me with

grapes in shewe lyke to Darius vine, but not in substance lyke those of

Vermandois" ("Robin the divell").

[166] "A Looking glasse for London and England." This drama was written

by Lodge and by his friend Greene. The following stage direction occurs

in it: "Ionas the prophet cast out of the whales belly upon the stage."

[Illustration: PENSHURST, SIDNEY'S BIRTHPLACE.]