characters, and held arguments after dinner, and illustrated each argument with a tale told by one of them. The first discussion was of Pride, first of the Deadly Sins, and Peratio told his tale of Johannes Vadislaus, a proud king in the city of Buda, who expelled Selides, a faithful noble, for warning him against effects of pride. But Vadislaus was at last cast out by his subjects, who elected Selides as his successor. Vadislaus in his beggary came to a country cottage in which Moesia, the daughter of Selides, had taken service as a country maid. There Vadislaus hears her singing at the cottage door "Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown." They know each other presently, and the tale ends with a dialogue between them. From Pride the discussion passes to another of the sins-Lust— which another of the four gentlemen, Cosimo, illustrates with a story of Ninus, who, through desire for Semiramis, the honest wife of Monon, a poor man in Babylon, killed Mœnon. Semiramis, in revenge, so gratified Ninus that he agreed to her wish to be made for three days sole and absolute sovereign. Her first act was to send him to execution, after which she entombed him royally and ruled till her son Ninus was of age to govern. Greene's seven young gentlemen and ladies then are drawn to the discussion of Gluttony, and Bernardino tells a short tale of a gluttonous Duke of Augsburg who ruined Rustico by a wrong decision given when he was not sober, for which Rustico, by device, exhibited him to his people, besmeared with his own vomit, drunk, upon a scaffold, made a speech over him, and was chosen to be governor in his place. Three of the Seven Sins having been thus dealt with by three of the company of seven young debaters, they all went in to dinner; "and so," Greene ends, "for this time we will leave them." The phrase, "for this time," leads us to infer that there would have been four more tales in a second part of the "Farewell to Folly" which Greene then intended. In the years 1591 and 1592—the two last years of his life-Greene, urged, perhaps, by the need of money, produced, among other pieces, a series of five pamphlets professing to expose the tricks of all rogues, male and female, who made it their busi Pamphlets on Co senage. ness to prey on the unwary. The first of these pamphlets, published in 1591, was called "A Notable Discouery of Coosnage. Now daily practised by sundry lewd persons, called Connie-catchers, and Crosse-biters. Plainely laying open those pernitious sleights that hath brought many ignorant men to confusion. Written for the general benefit of all Gentlemen, Citizens, Apprentises, Countrey Farmers and yeomen, that may hap to fall into the company of such coosening companions. With a delightful discourse of the coosnage of Colliers. Nascimur pro patria. By R. Greene, Maister of Arts." There were two parts of this, and in 1592 followed "The Thirde and last Part of Conny-catching. With the new devised knauish Art of Foole-taking. The like Cosenages and Villenies neuer before discouered. By R. G." Then followed, in 1592, "A Disputation betweene a Hee Conny-catcher and a Shee Conny-catcher." Last came, under the name of "The Blacke Booke's Messenger," "The Life and Death of Ned Browne, a notorious Cutpurse and Conny-catcher." In the Black Book that was promised as the closing piece of the series, Greene undertook to give what we should call a London Thieves' Directory. Death stayed his hand. Awdelay's There was nothing new in the design of these books. Thirty years before they appeared, John Awdelay-a member of the Stationers' Company who wrote some of the little books that he sought profit in publishing, and who was a zealous Protestant-had written and published, in 1561, a little pamphlet called "The Fraternitye of Vacabondes, as wel of ruflying. Vacabondes, as of begerly, of women as of men, of Gyrles as of Boyes, with their proper names and qualities. With a description of Couseners and Shifters. Whereunto also is adjoyned the xxv Order of Knaves, otherwyse called a Quartern of Knaves, Confirmed for ever by Cocke Lorell." This was reprinted in 1565, and again in 1575. In Germany Luther himself had written a preface to such a book 66 Harman's "Caveat for —a Liber Vagatorum, first published about 1514. But the previous book that especially led Greene and other men to the production of this kind of literature was A Caveat or Warning for Commen Cursetors, vulgarely called Vagabones, by Thomas Harman Esquiere," first published in 1567. This book was very popular, and much subject to piracies. The greater part of a pamphlet, published in 1592 as "The groundworke of Conny-catching," and often ascribed to Robert Greene, was a reprint from Thomas Harman's "Caveat." Cursetors." Thomas Harman was a gentleman of Kent who lived at Crayford, and had Kentish estates at Ellam, Maystreet, and Maxton. When his book was published, in 1567, he had kept, he says, for twenty years a house "where vnto pouerty dayely hath and doth repayre," and took interest in talking daily with the "wyly wanderers." At last he began to set down notes of their knavish tricks and of their ways of speech. In London, when his book was being printed, he lived at Whitefriars, within the cloister, among vagabonds who there sought freedom from arrest. Harman's discrimination of the several sorts of vagabonds under their own names-as "the Ruffler," an Upright Man," a Hooker or Angler," a Frater," "an Abraham Man -is given in little characters that may be taken for rough early examples of the character-writing that we shall soon find coming into fashion. Harman's "Caveat" also contains little stories of tricks played. It closes with a list of the of the upright men, rogues, and pallyards," and a small glossary of " their pelting speech "—their slang. names 66 66 Robert Greene in his books on Cosenage does not attempt character-writing, but takes some pains with the telling of his stories. One story he tells twice over, the second time with new seasoning, said to have sprung out of more accurate information. Greene spiced his book with occasional suggestion of peril to Greene's H-VOL. X. himself from his disclosures. In the "Dispute between a He and a She Cony-catcher "--where the He Cony-catcher is Lawrence Pickering, who is several times named as brotherin-law to Bull, the hangman-Greene says that he was once "beleagured" about by some of the crew that had protested his death, "in the Saint John's Head, within Ludgate. Being at supper there were some fourteen or fifteen of them met, and thought to have made that the fatal night of my overthrow, but that the courteous citizens and apprentices took my part, and so two or three of them were carried to the counter, although a gentleman in my company was sore hurt." We are reminded in these books more than once of the countryman in Lydgate's "London Lickpenny," who came to Westminster Hall for justice and fell among thieves. The law courts at Westminster Hall in term time, the middle aisle of St. Paul's, the Exchange, and the crowd at the annual tilting on the day of Elizabeth's accession to the throne, were regarded by the London thieves as their best places of business. Their chief harvest was in term time. Again and again we are told of the coming in of farmers from the country, with law papers in their bags, on business of litigation. They came with filled purses, and often lost them to the thieves before their coin went to the lawyers. Greene tells us that the thieves knew by the country mud upon his boots when a farmer had just come in with a purse for them. A "coney-catcher" was a card-sharper ; "cross-biters were those who plundered the unwary with the assistance of loose women. Cosenage of colliers" was by buying charcoal on its way to London from the country, transferring it to fraudulent sacks, and selling short weight to the householders. 66 In these books of Cosenage, Greene made no use of his skill as a euphuist. In the "Epistle Dedicatorie" to the second of them he said: "Heere by the way, giue me leaue to answere an obiection that some inferred against me, which was, that I shewed no eloquent phrases, nor fine figuratiue conuenience in my first booke as I had done in other of my workes: to which I reply that то πρεжо, a certaine decorum is to bee kept in euerie thing, and not to applie a high stile in a base subiect: beside the facultie is so odious, and the men so seruile and slauish minded, that I should dishonor that high misterie of eloquence, and derogate from the dignitie of our English toonge, eyther to employ any figure or bestow one choyce English word vpon such disdained rakehels as these Conny-catchers." So let us leave them; but a few years later in our story we shall meet them again when Thomas Dekker seeks his profit in the writing of books upon Cosenage, and makes more use than he should of the work of Thomas Harman. "The Black Book's Of the life and death of Ned Browne, called "The Blacke Booke's Messenger," published in the year of his own death, Greene says that it was written before he fell sick, and that he issued it while the finishing of "The Black Book" was being hindered by his sickness. Of "The Black Book" he said, "nevertheless, be assured it is the first thing I mean to publish after I am recovered." Messenger." Ned Browne, in France, caught robbing a church near Aix, was condemned to be hanged, and "having no gallows by, they hanged him out of a window, fastening the rope about the bar." In Greene's pamphlet he is supposed to tell some of his tricks, and to glory in his past career, before he himself jumps out of window with the rope about his neck. His dead body was buried outside the town, but the wolves dug it up and ate it. Rogues' Wit. It is not too much to say that in the last months of his life Greene was part Puritan. He wrote like a Puritan in condemnation of his own graceful and honest love tales, regarded them as works that he could wish destroyed, and ascribed chief value to these |