University
Wits, the strenuous if not always wise band of professed men of letters, at
the head of whom are Lyly, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Lodge, Nash, and
probably (for his connection with the universities is not certainly known)
Kyd. In the second, we have the irregular band of outsiders, players and
others, who felt themselves forced into literary and principally dramatic
composition, who boast Shakespere as their chief, and who can claim as
seconds to him not merely the imperfect talents of Chettle, Munday, and
others whom we may mention in this chapter, but many of the perfected
ornaments of a later time.

It may be accident or it may not, but the beginning of this period is
certainly due to the "university wits." Lyly stands a good deal apart from
them personally, despite his close literary connection. We have no kind of
evidence which even shows that he was personally acquainted with any one of
the others. Of Kyd, till Mr. Boas's recent researches, we knew next to
nothing, and we still know very little save that he was at Merchant
Taylors' School and was busy with plays famous in their day. But the other
five were closely connected in life, and in their deaths they were hardly
divided. Lodge only of the five seems to have freed himself, partly in
virtue of a regular profession, and partly in consequence of his adherence
to the Roman faith, from the Bohemianism which has tempted men of letters
at all times, and which was especially dangerous in a time of such
unlimited adventure, such loose public morals, and such unco-ordinated
society as the Elizabethan era. Whatever details we have of their lives
(and they are mostly very meagre and uncertain) convey the idea of times
out of joint or not yet in joint. The atheism of Marlowe rests on no proof
whatever, though it has got him friends in this later time. I am myself by
no means sure that Greene's supposed debauchery is not, to a great extent,
"copy." The majority of the too celebrated "jests" attributed to George
Peele are directly traceable to Villon's _Repues Franches_ and similar
compilations, and have a suspiciously mythical and traditional air to the
student of literary history. There is something a little more trustworthily
autobiographical about Nash. But on the whole, though we need not doubt
that these ancestors of all modern Englishmen who live by the gray goose
quill tasted the inconveniences of the profession, especially at a time
when it was barely cons