He was born in London, in 1561, three years before Shakespeare, and at a time when, from his father’s house in the Strand he could look sheer across the Thames to Southwark, where, before he was thirty, the Globe Theatre was built, in which Shakespeare acted. He was in Paris when his father died; there is no grief-stricken letter upon the event, but a curious mention that he had dreamed two nights before how his father’s house was covered with black mortar--so intent is he on mental processes. He had a mother who was pious, swift-thoughted, jealous, imperious, unreasonable, with streaks of tenderness. “Be not speedy of speech,” she says in one of her letters--“nor talk suddenly, but when discretion requireth, and that soberly then. Remember you have no father; and you have little enough--if not too little, regarded your kind, _no-simple_ mother’s wholesome advice.” And again: “Look well to your health; sup not, nor sit not up late; surely I think your drinking near to bedtime hindereth your and your brother’s digestion very much: I never knew any but sickly that used it; besides ill for head and eyes.” And again, in postscript: “I trust you, with yr servants, use prayers twice in a day, having been where reformation is. Omit it not for any.” And he responds with ceremony, waiving much of her excellent advice, and sometimes suggesting some favor she can do him,-- “It may be I shall have occasion to visit the Court this Vacation [he being then at Gray’s Inn], which I have not done this months space. In which respect, because carriage of stuff to and fro spoileth it, I would be glad of that light bed of striped stuff which your Ladyship hath, if you have not otherwise disposed it.” Sharpish words, too, sometimes pass between them; but he is always decorously and untouchingly polite.