some mention as a collection of professedly serious satires.

We now find ourselves on the threshold of the Elizabethan era. Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe may be taken as representing the prose satire of that period. They availed themselves of the pamphlet, which at this time supplied the place of journalism, to carry on personal controversies, or to amuse the public by ridiculing the affectations and vices of the age-but always with the object of putting money in their own pockets.

The rollicking humour and fertile genius of the Elizabethans were not favourable to satire. Men were not, in those days, sufficiently out of temper with themselves and the world to be critical. The spirit of romanticism-of emotional imagination, rather than the critical spirit, was abroad. So that in the satiric compositions of the day, wit unpruned, wild burlesque, and exuberant horse-play take the place of that acid intellectual aloofness, that restrained inward revolt, which have marked the greatest satirists

As it was the direct impulse of classical studies acquired at the Universities which at this time inspired Lodge, Donne, Marston, and Hall to write satiric verse, so Greene and Nashe also were 'University wits.' But their biting pamphlets owe nothing to the classics. They are the outcome of their life in London. They are pasquinades thrown off in a fever heat of personal resentment, or satiric romances, confessions, exposures written. under pressure of want. Wild and unrestrained in their lives, these writers were equally wild and unrestrained in their prose. Their touch is uncertain, their style diffuse, their sarcasm often pointless, their satire frequently degenerates into the absurdest buffoonery, but, in spite of all those defects, the wit,

were.

and warmth, and life of the Elizabethans was in them, and these are imperishable qualities. 1560-1592. Robert Greene, as dramatist or euphuistic romancer, lampooner or moralist, lyricist or pamphleteer, blackguard or repentant, offers one of the most interesting character-studies in Elizabethan literature. But we have only to consider him in the one capacity of satirist; we must not even stay to moralize over his unfortunate surfeit of Rhenish and pickled herrings.

1591.

Greene spent his life in passing from violent fits of debauchery to equally violent fits of remorse, which found voice in confessions and culminated in the 'Groat's-worth of Wit,' an autobiography in the form of a novel, written on his death-bed. In the Conny-catching' series he uses his unrivalled knowledge of knavery to expose the ways of the London sharpers. It is very probable that, with characteristic irony, he also wrote the 'Defence of Conny-catching,' in which he is himself roundly abused, with the view of advertising his previous pamphlets. Here, and in 'The Life and Death of Mourton and Ned Browne, two notable Conny-catchers,' he shows great skill in wielding the weapon of irony. The latter work is, indeed, a faint foreshadowing of 'Jonathan Wild,' though it lacks the strength and consistent irony of that masterpiece.

Greene's best satiric work, however, is 'A Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' wherein he ridicules the whole race of parvenus in the person of Gabriel Harvey, whose brother Richard, an astrologer given to indulging in troublesome prophecies, had caused offence by calling Greene's circle 'piperly makeplaies and make-bates.' The description of the jury, who decide the 'Quaint Dispute' as to the social value of foreign luxuries between Velvet-breeches and Cloth-breeches in favour of the latter, gives occasion

for a whole gallery of contemporary portraits drawn from members of the various professions. Besides the historical interest of these portraits there is much satiric humour to be found in the delineation of them.

In his best satiric work, we may note, there is little trace of that pedantic, affected, euphuistic style which Greene exhibited in his love-stories. The sentences, indeed, are straggling and unframed, but the style becomes simple and natural. The chief fault of his prose, dramatic or other, is that there is no air of repose, but a continual straining after wit, which signifies a lack of art and self-criticism, and results in the tedious quality attending so much. Elizabethan wit. The 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' however, is comparatively free from this fault. The unity of plan makes this piece a more artistic whole than is usually the case in the pamphlets of the time.

Greene's attack upon Harvey gave rise to a literary warfare, which was carried on for five years by Harvey and Nashe. So virulent and rancorous was this war, and so much did it excite popular feeling, that it became necessary at last for the authorities to interfere and put a stop to it.

1597.

Thomas Nashe, like Greene, was a University 1567-1601. inan, and, like him, was a dramatist, romancer, pamphleteer-everything by starts and nothing long. His work is marred conspicuously by the lack of form and self-restraint which distinguish all the Elizabethan prose writers; but his brilliant motherwit, his gift for irony and burlesque, and his power of scathing sarcasm to a large extent redeem these faults. He is not, however, so dexterous in the use of irony as Greene, and he is more boisterous. His share in the Martin-Marprelate controversy1—

1 For the history of the Martin Marprelate controversy and tracts see Dexter's 'The Congregationalism of the last Three

a controversy in which there was little real humour displayed on either side-and his literary quarrel with Gabriel Harvey, begun in defence of Greene, made him famous. His controversial severity led him to great lengths of caricature and violence, but he is now and again extremely happy, as, for instance, in his criticism of Harvey's craze for English hexameters. 'Have with you to Saffron Walden,' the last and best known of his attacks on Harvey, is full of scornful ridicule wrapped in a whirl of wit, and is written in his most characteristic 'yerking, firking, jerking veine.' There are many good things, too, in the 'Anatomie of Absurditie,' a shapeless collection of shrewd observations.

We must be content with the bare mention of 1596-1601. other writers in the native school. The Kinde friendly snippinge' and the moral disquisitions of Breton,1 the truths shadowed forth by strong-phrased Gilpin, and the fantastic verses of silver-tongued Sylvester, do not indeed call for any lengthy notice; but Thomas Lodge, though he cannot compare with Greene and Nashe for vigour, originality, and wit, demands some attention.

1556-1625.

He was one of the least boisterous, but by no means the least interesting, of the University wits who came up to London at the end of the sixteenth century. He tried his hand at every sort of com

Hundred Years,' and for that of the quarrel with Gabriel Harvey see Nashe's Works, ed. Grosart (Huth Library), pp. liii-lviii.

Nicholas Breton's 'No Whippinge, nor Trippinge, but a kinde friendly Snippinge,' is the last of a trilogy arising out of an attack on Ben Jonson: 'The Whippinge of the Satyre by W. I[ngram?], and 'The Whipper of the Satyre-his Penance in a White Sheet,' etc., the reply of some friend of Marston's with more zeal than wit.

2'Skialetheia.'

3 Tobacco Battered and Pipes Shattered about their Eares that Idlely Idolize so Base and Barbarous a Weed.'

position, and succeeded in rivalling, if not in surpassing, Lilly the famous for facility' in his own line of euphuistic romance. As a satirist he is, it may be, somewhat tame and lacking in force, but his writings have a certain distinction which recommends them. For when Hall boasted in the 'Virgidemiarum' 1597. 'Follow me who list,

And be the second English satirist,'

he did an injustice to Lodge, who had anticipated him in his own particular line of heroic satire; for the rare British Museum copy of 'A Fig for Momus' bears the date of 1595. Would God our realme could light upon a Lucilius!' Lodge had exclaimed in his reply to Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse."1 We now find him coming forward with a modest attempt to supply that deficiency in the realm.

In the preface To the Gentlemen Readers whatsoever '-a preface, be it noted, of supreme interest in the history of English satire-the title of the volume Fig for Momus' is explained. The explanation is, 'In despight of the detractor who, worthily deserving the name of Momus, shall . . . at my hands have a figge to choake him.' 'The satyres,' he goes on to say, 'included in this volume are by pleasures, rather placed here to prepare and trie the ear then to feede it because, if they passe well, the whole centon of them, alreadie in my hands, shall sodainly be published." It does not seem that he met with

1 The 'School of Abuse' was a foolish invective against the stage. It was afterwards honoured by calling forth Sir Philip Sidney's beautiful reply, 'The Defence of Poesie.'

2 'In them, under the name of certaine Romaines, where I reprehend vice I purposely wrong no man, but observe the laws of that kind of poeme. If any repine thereat, I am sure he is guilty, because he bewrayeth himselfe.' He shows that he is not of the compromising sort: 'If any man reprove let him looke to it; I will lip him. As I am ready to satisfy the reasonable, so I have a gird in store for a railer.'