Beggers injoy, when princes oft doe mis.
The homely house that harbours quiet rest,
The cottage that affoords no pride nor care,
The meane that grees with country musicke best,
The sweete consort of mirth and musick's fare,
Obscured life sets downe a type of blis,
A minde content both crowne and kingdome is."[491:A]
Deeply is it to be lamented, and with a sense, too, of humiliation for the frailty of human nature, that, with such inducements to a moral and rational life, with sufficient to support existence comfortably, for he had some property of his own, and his wife's dowry had been paid[491:B], and with a child whom he loved, and with a wife whom he confesses was endowed with all that could endear and dignify her sex, he could suffer his passions so far to subdue his reason, as to throw these essentials towards happiness away! In the year 1586 he abandoned this amiable woman and her son, to revel in all the vicious indulgences of the metropolis. The causes of this iniquitous desertion may be traced in his works; from these we learn that, in the first place, she had endeavoured, and perhaps too importunately for such an irritable character, to reform his evil propensities[491:C], and secondly that on a visit to London on business, he had been fascinated by the allurements of a courtesan[491:D], and on this woman, whose name was Ball, and on her infamous relations, for her brother was afterwards hanged[491:E], he squandered both his own property and that of his wife.
It is almost without a parallel that during the remainder of Greene's life, including only six years, he was continually groaning with anguish and repentance, and continually plunging into fresh guilt; that in his various tracts he was confessing his sins with the
deepest contrition, passionately apostrophizing his injured wife, imploring her forgiveness in the most pathetic terms, and describing, in language the most touching and impressive, the virtue of her whom he had so basely abandoned.