s of
fancy, and in the right seizing and placing of character, especially
for comic effect. In his day he was vastly notorious both as a writer
and a man;--a cheap counterfeit of fame which he achieved with
remarkable ease, and seems not to have coveted any thing better. He
took his first degree at Cambridge in 1578, proceeded Master of Arts
in 1583, and was incorporated at Oxford in 1588; after which he was
rather fond of styling himself "Master of Arts in both Universities."
Soon after 1585, if not before, he betook himself to London, where he
speedily sank into the worst type of a literary adventurer.
Thenceforth his life seems to have been one continual spasm, plunging
hither and thither in transports of wild profligacy and repentance. He
died in 1592, eaten up with diseases purchased by sin.

Much of Greene's notoriety during his lifetime grew from his prose
writings, which, in the form of tracts, were rapidly thrown off, and
were well adapted both in matter and style to catch a loud but
transient popularity. One of them had the honour of being laid under
contribution for _The Winter's Tale_. In these pieces, generally, the
most striking features are a constant affecting of the euphuistic
style which John Lily had rendered popular, and a certain incontinence
of metaphors and classical allusions, the issue of a full and ready
memory unrestrained by taste or judgment; the writer galloping on from
page to page with unflagging volubility, himself evidently captivated
with the rolling sound of his own sentences. Still, his descriptions
often have a warmth and height of colouring that could not fail to
take prodigiously in an age when severity or delicacy of taste was
none of the commonest. Several of his prose pieces are liberally
interspersed with passages of poetry, in which he uses a variety of
measures, and most of them with an easy, natural skill, while his cast
of thought and imagery shows him by no means a stranger to the
springs of poetic sweetness and grace, though he never rises to any
thing like grandeur.

_The History of Orlando Furioso_ was acted as early as 1591, and
probably written some time before. The plot was partly founded on
Ariosto's romance, partly invented by Greene himself. The action, or
what stands for such, is conducted with the wildest license, and shows
no sense or idea of dramatic truth, but only a prodigious straining
after stage effect; the writer trying, apparently, how many men of
d