Another description of miscellaneous authors, consisted of those who, attached to the discipline of the puritans, employed their pens
in inveighing with great bitterness against the dress and amusements of the less rigid part of the community; and a third, equally distant from the levity of the first, and the severity of the second, class, was occupied in calmly discussing the various topics which morals, taste, and literature supplied.
As examples of the first species, no age can produce more extraordinary characters than Nash, Decker, and Greene; men intimately acquainted with all the crimes, follies, and debaucheries of a town-life, indefatigable as writers, and possessing the advantages of learning and genius. Thomas Nash, whose character as a satirist and critic, we have already given in a quotation from Dr. Lodge, died about the year 1600, after a life spent in controversy and dissipation. He had humour, wit, and learning, but debased by a plentiful portion of scurrility and buffoonery; he was born at Leostoffe in Suffolk, educated at Cambridge, where he resided as a Member of St. John's College, nearly seven years, and obtained great celebrity, as the confuter and silencer of the puritanical Mar-prelates, a service that merited the reputation which it procured him. He was the boon companion of Robert Greene, whose vices he shared, and with whom he acted as the unrelenting scourge of the Harveys.
This terror of his opponents, this Aretine of England, though most remarkable for his numerous prose pamphlets, was also a dramatic poet. His productions, as enumerated by Mr. Beloe, amount to five and twenty.[486:A]
Thomas Decker, an author still more prolific, began his career as a dramatic poet about the year 1597, and as a prose writer in 1603. His plays, now lost, preserved, or written in conjunction with others, amount to twenty-eight; but it is in his capacity as a miscellanist that we have here to notice him.
His tracts, of which thirty have been attributed to him, and near five and twenty may be considered as genuine, clearly prove him to
have been an acute observer of the fleeting fashions of his age, and a participator in all its follies and vices. His "Gul's Horne Booke, or Fashions to please all sorts of Guls," first printed in 1609, exhibits a very curious, minute, and interesting picture of the manners and habits of the middle class of society, and on this account will be hereafter frequently referred to in these pages.[487:A] That experience had tutored him in the knaveries of the metropolis, the titles of the following pamphlets will sufficiently evince. "The Belman of London, bringing to Light the most notorious Villanies that are now practised in the Kingdome," 1608; one of the earliest books professing to disclose the slang of thieves and vagabonds; and remarks Warton, from a contemporary writer, the most witty, elegant, and eloquent display of the vices of London then extant.[487:B] "Lanthern and Candle Light: Or, The Bell-Man's Second Night's Walke. In which he brings to light a Brood of more strange Villanies than ever were till this Yeare discovered" 4to. 1612. "Villanies discovered by Lanthorn and Candle Light, and the Helpe of a new Crier called O-per-se-O. Being an Addition to the Belman's second Night's Walke, with canting Songs never before printed." 4to. 1616. It will occasion no surprise, therefore, if we find this describer of the arts and language of thieving himself in a jail; he was, in fact, confined in the King's Bench prison from 1613 to 1616, if not longer. The most remarkable transaction of his life appears to have been his quarrel with Ben Jonson, who, no doubt sufficiently provoked, satirizes him in his Poetaster, 1601, under the character of Crispinus; a compliment which Decker amply repaid in his "Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the humorous Poet," 1602, where he lashes Ben without mercy, under the designation of Horace Junior. Jonson replied in an address to the Reader, introduced in the 4to. edition of his play, in place of the epilogue, and points to Decker, under the
appellation of the Untrusser. Decker was an old man in 1631, for in his Match me in London, published in that year, he says: "I have been a priest in Apollo's Temple many years, my voice is decaying with my age;" he probably died in 1639, the previous year being the date of his latest production.
Of Robert Greene, the author of near fifty productions[488:A], the history is so highly monitory and interesting as to demand more than a cursory notice. It affords, indeed, one of the most melancholy proofs of learning, taste, and genius being totally inadequate, without a due control over the passions, to produce either happiness or respectability. This misguided man was born at Norwich, about the middle of the sixteenth century, of parents in genteel life and much esteemed. He was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, from whence, at an early period of his education, he was, unfortunately for his future peace of mind, induced to absent himself, on a tour through Italy and Spain. His companions were wild and dissolute, and, according to his own confession[488:B], he ran headlong with them into every species of dissipation and vice.
On his return to England, he took his degree of Batchelor of Arts at St. John's, in 1578, and afterwards, removing to Clare-hall, his Master of Arts degree in that college, 1583. We learn, from one of his numerous tracts, that, immediately after this event, he visited the metropolis, where he led a life of unrestrained debauchery. Greene was one of those men who are perpetually sinning and perpetually repenting; he had a large share of wit, humour, fancy, generosity, and good-nature, but was totally deficient in that strength of mind which is necessary to resist temptation; he was conscious, too, of his great abilities, but at the same time deeply conscious of the waste of