He tried his hand, diffidently, as became a gentleman, at every form; realizing and pointing out, as it were, the capacity of the great instrument of the English language. "It is no mean feat," as an eminent scholar says, "to rank in history as George Gascoigne ranks with fair documentary evidence to prove his title as the actual first practitioner in English of comedy in prose, satire in regular verse, short prose tales, translated tragedy and literary animadversion" (in which word the eminent scholar refers to a short technical account of the making of English verse, prefixed to the "Steele Glas"). And apart from his writing, to which he devoted specially the last years of his life, there would be much that he would have in common with young Ralegh. Indeed, his life resembles in little the subsequent career of Ralegh himself, and the device, "Tam Marti quam Mercurio," suited him as nicely as it suited Ralegh who afterwards, by adopting the device, made it famous. He was the son of a gentleman of Bedfordshire, Sir John Gascoigne, and after going to Cambridge and being a member of Grays Inn, he served in Holland fighting for the Dutch under William, Prince of Orange, and had many strange adventures. On his return to London he had some post at Court, the exact nature of which is not known, and he sat twice as Member of Parliament for Bedfordshire. What is of special interest is, that he was in close touch with the Earl of Leicester, and Lord Grey de Wilton; for in 1575, when the Queen made her famous visit to Kenilworth, it was Gascoigne who was commissioned to devise masks for her entertainment; and it is Lord Grey de Wilton to whom he dedicates the chief of his poems. Therefore it is extremely probable that young Ralegh owed to him, if not his actual introduction to Leicester, at any rate a great furtherance of Leicester's notice of Ralegh. It is surely more than coincidence that Gascoigne's chief patrons should have also been among Ralegh's principal helpers. And Gascoigne's early death, at the age of forty, in 1577, would impress his influence upon his young friend, and that influence is discoverable in the directness and freedom from literary affectation of any kind, which is very noticeable in the work of both. And it is interesting to speculate whether, without Gascoigne, Ralegh would ever have possessed knowledge and insight enough to realize later Spenser's worth, which the scholar Harvey (no mean authority at that time) completely failed to see. Be that as it may, the friendship of Gascoigne and Ralegh anticipates pregnantly that friendship of his with Spenser which was of importance to the literature of the world.