"Nor too familiar with great men; for presumption winnes disdaine."[497:A]
The virtues of Greene were, it is to be apprehended, confined to his books, they were theoretical rather than practical; for, however sincere might be his repentance at the moment, or determined his resolution to reform, the impression seems to have been altogether transient; he continued to indulge, with few interruptions, his vicious course, until a death, too accordant with the dissipated tissue of his life, closed the melancholy scene. He died, says Wood, about 1592, of a surfeit taken by eating pickled herrings and drinking Rhenish wine.[497:B] It appears that his friend Nash was of the party.
Of the debauchery, poverty, and misery of Greene, Gabriel Harvey, with whom he had carried on a bitter personal controversy, has left us a highly-coloured description. If the last scene of his life be not exaggerated by this inveterate opponent, it presents us with a picture of distress the most poignant and pathetic upon record.
"I once bemoned," relates Harvey, "the decayed and blasted estate of M. Gascoigne, who wanted not some commendable parts of conceit, and endevour: but unhappy M. Gascoigne, how lordly happy, in comparison of most unhappy M. Greene? He never envyed me so much as I pitied him from my hart; especially when his hostesse Isam, with teares in her eies, and sighes from a deeper fountaine (for she loved him deerely) tould me of his lamentable begging of a penny pott of Malmesie;—and how he was faine poore soule, to borrow her husbandes shirte, whiles his owne was a washing: and how his dublet, and hose, and sworde were sold for three shillings: and beside the charges of his winding sheete, which was four shillinges, and the charges of his buriall yesterday in the New-church yard neere Bedlam, which was six shillinges and foure pence; how deeply hee was indebted to her poore husbande: as appeered by hys owne bonde of tenne poundes: which the good woman kindly shewed me: and beseeched me to read the writing beneath; which was a letter to his abandoned wife, in the behalfe of his gentle host: not so short as persuasible in the beginning, and pittifull in the ending.
Doll,
I charge thee by the love of our youth, and by my soules rest, that thou wilte see this man paide: for if hee and his wife had not succoured me, I had died in the streetes.
Robert Greene."[498:A]
The pity which Harvey assumes upon this occasion may justly be considered as hypocritical; for the pamphlet whence the above
extract has been taken, abounds in the most rancorous abuse and exaggerated description of the vices of Greene, and contains, among other invectives, a sonnet unparalleled, perhaps, for the keen severity of its irony, and for the dreadful solemnity of tone in which it is delivered. It is put into the mouth of John Harvey, the physician, who had been dead some years, but who had largely participated of the torrent of satire which Greene had poured upon his brothers, Gabriel and Richard. If it be the composition of Gabriel, and there is reason to suppose this to be the case, from the tract in which it appears, it must be deemed infinitely superior, in point of poetical merit, to any thing else which he has written.
JOHN HARVEY THE PHYSICIAN'S WELCOME TO ROBERT GREENE!