to his injured wife's forgiveness for payment of the money to the
extent of which a charitable landlord and landlady had trusted him. The
facts of this lamentable end may have been spitefully distorted by Gabriel
Harvey in his quarrel with Nash; but there is little reason to doubt that
the received story is in the main correct. Of the remarkable prose
pamphlets which form the bulk of Greene's work we speak elsewhere, as also
of the pretty songs (considerably exceeding in poetical merit anything to
be found in the body of his plays) with which both pamphlets and plays are
diversified. His actual dramatic production is not inconsiderable: a
working-up of the _Orlando Furioso_; _A Looking Glass for London and
England_ (Nineveh) with Lodge; _James IV._ (of Scotland), a wildly
unhistorical romance; _Alphonsus, King of Arragon_; and perhaps _The Pinner
of Wakefield_, which deals with his own part namesake George-a-Greene; not
impossibly also the pseudo-Shakesperian _Fair Em_. His best play without
doubt is _The History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, in which, after a
favourite fashion of the time, he mingles a certain amount of history, or,
at least, a certain number of historical personages, with a plentiful dose
of the supernatural and of horseplay, and with a very graceful and
prettily-handled love story. With a few touches from the master's hand,
Margaret, the fair maid of Fressingfield, might serve as handmaid to
Shakespere's women, and is certainly by far the most human heroine
produced by any of Greene's own group. There is less rant in Greene (though
there is still plenty of it) than in any of his friends, and his fancy for
soft female characters, loving, and yet virtuous, appears frequently. But
his power is ill-sustained, as the following extract will show:--

_Margaret._ "Ah, father, when the harmony of heaven
Soundeth the measures of a lively faith,
The vain illusions of this flattering world
Seem odious to the thoughts of Margaret.
I loved once,--Lord Lacy was my love;
And now I hate myself for that I loved,
And doted more on him than on my God,--
For this I scourge myself with sharp repents.
But now the touch of such aspiring sins
Tells me all love is lust but love of heaven;
That beauty used for love is vanity:
The world contains