n supposed that Greene was very indelicate in his language, as
well as reckless in his life. But we cannot find in his plays anything
very offensive, considering the date at which he wrote, and in the tract
called "Greene's Funeralls," we read:--

His gadding Muse, although it ran of love,
Yet did he sweetly morralize his song;
Ne ever gaue the looser cause to laugh
Ne men of judgement for to be offended.

Greene died in "most woefull and rascall estate" at the house of a poor
shoemaker near Dowgate. He had previously written his "Groat's-worth of
Wit bought with a Million of Repentance;" in which he warns his former
companions and "gentlemen who spend their wits in making playes," to
take warning by his fate. He could get none of his friends to visit him
at the last but Mistress Appleby, and the mother of "his base sonne
Infortunatus Greene." He gave the following note for his wife--whom he
had not seen for six years--to the shoemaker:

"Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth, and by my soule's rest,
that thow wilte see this man paide; for if hee and his wife had not
succoured me, I had died in the streetes.

"ROBERT GREENE."

Gabriel Harvey writes, "My next businesse was to inquire after the
famous author who was reported to lye dangerously sicke in a shop neere
Dowgate, not of plague, but of a surfett of pickle herringe and rennish
wine."

Thomas Nash was one of Greene's jolly companions at this fatal banquet.
After Greene's death Harvey replied to some reflections made upon him by
Greene, and called him in accordance with the amenities of the times, "a
wilde head, ful of mad braine and a thousand crotchets; a scholler, a
discourser, a courtier, a ruffian, a gamester, a lover, a souldier, a
trauailer, a merchant, a broker, an artificer, a botcher, a pettifogger,
a player, a coosener, a rayler, a beggar, an omnium-gatherum, a
gay-nothing, a stoare-house of bald and baggage stuffe, unworth the
answering or reading, a triuall and triobular autor for knaves and
fooles," &c., &c.

Nash, although he seems to have forsaken Greene in his last distress,
became the defender of his character after his death, and answered this
vituperation by still coarser abuse and invective, saying, "Had hee
lived, Gabriel, and thou shouldest vnartifically and odiously libel
against him as thou hast done, he would have made thee an example of
ignominy to all ages that are to come, and dr