Contemporary with Hall was Thomas Nash, whose _Pierce Penilesse's Supplication to the Devil_ was one of the most extraordinary onslaughts on the social vices of the metropolis that the period produced. Written in close imitation of Juvenal's earlier satires, he frequently approaches the standard of his master in graphic power of description, in scathing invective, and ironical mockery. In _Have with you to Saffron Walden_ he lashed Gabriel Harvey for his unworthy conduct towards the memory of Robert Greene. Both satires are written in prose, as indeed are nearly all his works, inasmuch as Nash was more of a pamphleteer than anything else. Other contemporaries of Hall were Thomas Dekker, whose fame as a dramatist has eclipsed his reputation as a satirist, but whose _Bachelor's Banquet--pleasantly discoursing the variable humours of Women, their quickness of wits and unsearchable deceits_, is a sarcastic impeachment of the gentler sex, while his _Gull's Hornbook_ must be ranked with Nash's work as one of the most unsparing castigations of social life in London. The latter is a volume of fictitious maxims for the use of youths desirous of being considered "pretty fellows". Other contemporaries were John Donne, John Marston, Jonson, George Chapman, and Nicholas Breton--all names of men who were conspicuous inheritors of the true Elizabethan spirit, and who united virility of thought to robustness and trenchancy of sarcasm. Marston and Breton were amongst the best of the group, though they are not represented in these pages owing to the unsuitability of their writings for extract. Here is a picture from one of the satires of Marston which is instinct with satiric power. It is a portrait of a love-sick swain, and runs as follows:-- "For when my ears received a fearful sound That he was sick, I went, and there I found, Him laid of love and newly brought to bed Of monstrous folly, and a franticke head: His chamber hanged about with elegies, With sad complaints of his love's miseries, His windows strow'd with sonnets and the glasse Drawn full of love-knots. I approach'd the asse, And straight he weepes, and sighes some Sonnet out To his fair love! and then he goes about, For to perfume her rare perfection, With some sweet smelling pink epitheton. Then with a melting looke he writhes his head, And straight in passion, riseth in his bed, And having kist his hand, strok'd up his haire, Made a French _conge_, cryes 'O cruall Faire!' To th' antique bed-post."[10]