the venerable and successful physician. It was as "old
Doctor Lodge" that he was satirised in a Cambridge student's
Common-place Book in 1611. Heywood mentions him in 1609 among the six
most famous physicians in England, and in the _Return from Parnassus_, a
play acted in 1602, he is described as "turning over Galen every day."

Yet no one had been in the last twenty years the sixteenth century more
responsive than Lodge to the shifting moods of that excitable period.
Lodge was the son of a Lord Mayor of London, and was a contemporary at
Oxford with Sidney, Gosson, Chapman, Lyly, Peele and Watson. His life
included a round of varied experiences. A student at Lincoln's Inn, a
young aspirant for literary honours, friends with Greene, Rich, Daniel,
Drayton, Lyly and Watson, a taster of the sorrows that many of the
University wits endured when usurers got their hands upon them, for a
time perhaps a soldier, certainly a sailor following the fortunes of
Captain Clarke to Terceras and the Canaries, and of Cavendish to Brazil
and the Straits of Magellan, in London again making plays with Greene,
off to Avignon to take his degree in medicine, back again to be
incorporated an M.D. at Oxford and to practise in London, adopting
secretly the Roman Catholic faith, and sometimes hiding on the continent
as a recusant from persecution at home, imprisoned perhaps once for
debt, and entertaining a concourse of patients of his own religion till
his death in 1625:--the life of Lodge thus presents a view of the ups
and downs possible in that picturesque age.

The wide variety of his literary ventures reflects the interests of his
life. Some controversial papers, some unsuccessful plays, two dull
historical sketches in prose, some satirical and moralising works in
prose and in verse, two romantic tales in verse and three in prose, a
number of eclogues, metrical epistles and lyrics, some ponderous
translations from Latin and French, and two medical treatises; these
widely differing kinds of writing are the products of Lodge's industry
and genius. All, however, have but an antiquarian interest save two; the
prose romance called _Rosalynde, Euphues' Golden Legacy_, could not be
spared since Shakespeare borrowed its charming plot for _As You Like
It_; and _Phillis_, bound up with a sheaf of his lyrics gathered from
the pages of his stories and from the miscellanies of the time, should
be treasured for its own sake and should keep Lodge's memory g