other dramatic authors of the period when he flourished, (1600-1620,) and of the whole Elizabethan period, (1575-1625,) were nestling attorneys or barristers before they became full-fledged dramatists. We are not without contemporary evidence upon this point. Thomas Nash, friend to Robert Greene, a playwright, poet, and novelist, whose works were in vogue just before Shakespeare wrote, in an "Epistle to the Gentlemen Students of the Two Universities," with which, according to the fashion of the time, he introduced Greene's "Menaphon" (1587)[D] to the reader, has the following paragraph:-- [Footnote D: Lord Campbell gives the date 1589; but see Mr. Dyce's indisputable authority. Greene's Works. Vol. I., pp. xxxvii. and ciii.] "I will turn my back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators. It is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavors of art, that could scarcely Latinize their neck-verse, if they should have need; yet English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as, _Blood is a beggar_, and so forth; and if you intreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets,--I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches. But, oh grief! _Tempus edax rerum_,--what is that will last always? The sea, exhaled by drops, will, in continuance, be dry; and Seneca, let blood line by line and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage."