Cambridge, and was, as
Winstanley says, a great friend to the printers by the many books he
writ. He was a merry droll in those times, and a man so addicted to
pleasure, that as Winstanley observes, he drank much deeper draughts
of sack, than of the Heliconian stream; he was amongst the first of
our poets who writ for bread, and in order the better to support
himself, tho' he lived in an age far from being dissolute, viz. in
that of the renowned Queen Elizabeth; yet he had recourse to the mean
expedient of writing obscenity, and favouring the cause of vice, by
which he no doubt recommended himself to the rakes about town, who, as
they are generally no true judges of wit, to estimate the merit of
a piece, as it happens to suit their appetite, or encourage them in
every irregular indulgence. No man of honour who sees a poet endowed
with a large share of natural understanding, prostituting his pen to
the vilest purpose of debauchery and lewdness, can think of him but
with contempt; and his wit, however brilliant, ought not to screen him
from the just indignation of the sober part of mankind. When wit is
prostituted to vice, 'tis wit no more; that is, it ceases to be true
wit; and I have often thought there should be some public mark of
infamy fixed on those who hurt society by loose writings. But Mr.
Green must be freed from the imputation of hypocrisy, for we find him
practicing the very doctrines he taught. Winstanley relates that he
was married to a very fine and deserving lady, whom he basely forsook,
with a child she had by him, for the company of some harlots, to whom
he applied the wages of iniquity, while his wife starved. After some
years indulgence of this sort, when his wit began to grow stale, we
find him fallen into abject poverty, and lamenting the life he had led
which brought him to it; for it always happens, that a mistress is a
more expensive piece of furniniture than a wife; and if the modern
adulterers would speak the truth, I am certain they would acknowledge,
that half the money which, in the true sense of the word, is misspent
upon those daughters of destruction, would keep a family with decency,
and maintain a wife with honour. When our author was in this forlorn
miserable state, he writ a letter to his wife, which Mr. Winstanly has
preferred, and which, as it has somewhat tender in it I shall insert.
It has often been observed, that half the unhappy marriages in the
world, are more owing to the men