o
incorporated at Oxf. in 1588. After travelling in Spain and Italy, he
returned to Camb. and took A.M. Settling in London he was one of the wild
and brilliant crew who passed their lives in fitful alternations of
literary production and dissipation, and were the creators of the English
drama. He has left an account of his career in which he calls himself
"the mirror of mischief." During his short life about town, in the course
of which he ran through his wife's fortune, and deserted her soon after
the birth of her first child, he poured forth tales, plays, and poems,
which had great popularity. In the tales, or pamphlets as they were then
called, he turns to account his wide knowledge of city vices. His plays,
including _The Scottish History of James IV._, and _Orlando Furioso_,
which are now little read, contain some fine poetry among a good deal of
bombast; but his fame rests, perhaps, chiefly on the poems scattered
through his writings, which are full of grace and tenderness. G. _d._
from the effects of a surfeit of pickled herrings and Rheinish wine. His
extant writings are much less gross than those of many of his
contemporaries, and he seems to have given signs of repentance on his
deathbed, as is evidenced by his last work, _A Groat's worth of Wit
bought with a Million of Repentance_. In this curious work occurs his
famous reference to Shakespeare as "an upstart crow beautified with our
feathers." Among his other works may be mentioned _Euphues' censure to
Philautus_, _Pandosto, the Triumph of Time_ (1588), from which
Shakespeare borrowed the plot of _The Winter's Tale_, _A Notable
Discovery of Coosnage_, _Arbasto, King of Denmark_, _Penelope's Web_,
_Menaphon_ (1589), and _Coney Catching_. His plays, all _pub._
posthumously, include _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, _Alphonsus, King of
Aragon_, and _George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield_. His tales are
written under the influence of Lyly, whence he received from Gabriel
Harvey the nickname of "Euphues' Ape."

Plays ed. by Dyce (2 vols., 1831, new ed., 1861). His works are included
in Grosart's "Huth Library."

GREG, WILLIAM RATHBONE (1809-1881).--Essayist, _b._ in Manchester, and
_ed._ at Bristol and Edin., was for some years engaged in his father's
business as a millowner at Bury. Becoming deeply interested in political
and social questions he contributed to reviews and magazines many papers
and essays on these subjects, which were _repub._ in three collec