iends, and not unwelcome to those who approve of your
undertaking on this side of the water.

A good deal has been advanced lately regarding the interest taken by the
inhabitants of Holland, Belgium, and Germany, in our ancient drama; and in
consistency with what was said by Thomas Heywood more than 200 years ago,
some new information has been supplied respecting the encouragement given
to English players abroad. The fact itself was well-known, and the author
last cited (Shakspeare Society's reprint of the _Apology for Actors_, 1841,
p. 58.) furnishes the name of the very play performed on one occasion at
Amsterdam. The popularity of our drama there perhaps contributed to the
popularity of our lighter literature, (especially of such as came from the
pens of our most notorious playwrights,) in the same part of Europe, and
may account for the circumstance I am about to mention.

At this time of day I need hardly allude to the reputation the celebrated
Robert Greene obtained in England, both as a dramatist and a pamphleteer;
and although we have no distinct evidence on the point, we need hardly
doubt that some of his plays had been represented with applause in Holland.
_The Four Sons of Aymon_, which Heywood tells us was acted with such
strange effect at Amsterdam, must have been a piece of precisely the same
kind as Greene's _Orlando Furioso_, which we know was extraordinarily
popular in this kingdom, and may have been equally so abroad. We may thus
suppose that Greene's fame had spread to the Netherlands, and that anything
written by him would be well received by Batavian readers.

His _Quip for an Upstart Courtier, or, a Quaint Dispute between
Velvet-breeches and Cloth-breeches_, was published in London in 1592, and
went through two, if not three, impressions in its first year. It was often
reprinted, and editions in 1606, 1615, 1620, 1625, and 1635, have come down
to us, besides others that, no doubt, have entirely disappeared. That the
fame of this production extended to Holland, I have the proof before me: it
is a copy of the tract in Dutch, with the following imprint--"_Tot Leyden.
By Thomas Basson_. M.D.CI." A friend of mine writes me from Rotterdam, that
he has a copy, without date, but printed about twenty or five-and-twenty
years after mine of 1601, which shows how long the popularity of the tract
was maintained; and I have little doubt that mine is not by any means the
earliest Dutch impression, if only because