tage, having entered himself at
Lincoln's Inn, having become a soldier, and having sailed with Clarke
and Cavendish, he went, according to Wood, to study medicine at
Avignon.[93] This change, if it took place at all, which may admit of
doubt,[94] did not occur until after 1596. In 1595 his "Fig for Momus"
appeared. Besides Satires, it contains Epistles and Eclogues; and in one
of the latter Lodge speaks in his own person, under the character of
"Golde" (the same letters that compose his name), and there states his
determination no longer to pursue ill-rewarded poetry--

"Which sound rewards, since this neglected time,
Repines to yield to men of high desert,
I'll cease to ravel out my wits in rhyme,
For such who make so base account of art;
And since by wit there is no means to climb,
I'll hold the plough awhile, and ply the cart;
And if my muse to wonted course return,
I'll write and judge, peruse, commend and burn."

The dedication of his "Wit's Misery, and the World's Madness," is dated
"from my house, at Low Layton, 5th November 1596."

The principal reasons for supposing that Lodge studied medicine are the
existence of a "Treatise of the Plague," published by "Thomas Lodge,
Doctor in Physic," in 1603, and of a collection of medical recipes in
MS., called "The Poor Man's Legacy," addressed to the Countess of
Arundel, and sold among the books of the Duke of Norfolk.[95] [There can
be little or no question that the physician and poet were one and the
same. In "England's Parnassus," 1600, he is called indifferently Thomas
Lodge and Doctor Lodge.] The author of the "Treatise of the Plague"
expressly tells the Lord Mayor of London, in the dedication, that he was
"bred and brought up" in the city. Thomas Heywood, in his "Troja
Britannica," 1609, enumerates the celebrated physicians then living--

"As famous Butler, Pedy, Turner, Poe,
Atkinson, Lyster, _Lodge_, who still survive."--C. 3.

It hardly deserves remark that Lodge is placed last in this list; but
had he been the same individual who had written for the stage, was the
friend of so many dramatists, and was so well known as a lyric poet, it
seems likely that Heywood would have said more about him.[96] It is a
singular coincidence, that having written how to prevent and cure the
plague, he should die of that disease during the great mortality of
1625. Wood's expressions on this point, however, are not decisive: "He
made h