a countrie. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses: & let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and neuer more acquaint them with your admired inuentions. I know the best husband of you all will neuer proue an Vsurer, and the kindest of them all wil neuer prooue a kinde nurse: yet, whilst you may, seeke you better Maisters; for it is pittie men of such rare wits, should be subiect to the pleasures of such rude groomes. In this I might insert two more, that both haue writ against these buckram Gentlemen: but let their owne works serue to witnesse against their owne wickednesse, if they perseuer to maintaine any more such peasants. For other new commers, I leaue them to the mercie of these painted monsters, who (I doubt not) will driue the best minded to despise them: for the rest, it skils not though they make a ieast at them.' Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Greene.
xlix. 1592. Henry Chettle.
[From Kind-Harts Dreame. Conteining fiue Apparitions, with their
Inuectiues against abuses raigning. Deliuered by seuerall Ghosts vnto him
to be publisht . . . by H. C. (N. D.). The tract was entered in the Stationers'
Register (Arber, ii. 623) on 8 Dec. 1592. The Ghosts are those of Anthony
Now Now a fiddler, William Cuckoe a juggler, Doctor Burcot a physician,
Robert Greene, and Richard Tarlton. Greene died in Sept. 1592. The
Epistle is signed by Henry Chettle (cf. ch. xxiii). The whole is reprinted by
C. M. Ingleby in Part I (1874) of the Shakspere Allusion-Books of the
New Shakspere Society.]
P. 37. To the Gentlemen Readers. 'About three moneths since
died M. Robert Greene, leauing many papers in sundry Booke sellers
hands, among other his Groatsworth of wit, in which a letter written
to diuers play-makers, is offensiuely by one or two of them taken;
and because on the dead they cannot be auenged, they wilfully forge
in their conceites a liuing Author: and after tossing it two and fro,
no remedy, but it must light on me. How I haue all the time of my
conuersing in printing hindered the bitter inueying against schollers,
it hath been very well knowne; and how in that I dealt, I can
sufficiently prooue. With neither of them that take offence was
I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I neuer be: The
other, whome at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish
I had, for that as I haue moderated the heate of liuing writers, and
might haue vsde my owne discretion (especially in such a case) the
Author beeing dead, that I did not, I am as sory as if the originall
fault had beene my fault, because my selfe haue seene his demeanor
no lesse ciuill, than he exelent in the qualitie he professes: Besides,
diuers of worship haue reported his vprightnes of dealing, which
argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writting, that aprooues
his Art. For the first, whose learning I reuerence, and at the perusing
of Greenes Booke, stroke out what then in conscience I thought he
in some displeasure writ: or had it beene true, yet to publish it,
was intollerable: him I would wish to vse me no worse than I deserue.
I had onely in the copy this share: it was il written, as sometime
