The letter evidences the fact of its having been written as a private letter to three of the poet’s friends (Marlowe, Nash and Peele). If sent, it did not reach them, but was surreptitiously procured, doubtless, by some hack-writer, (inferentially, Henry Chettle, who transcribed it.) Gabriel Harvey may have been accessory to its procurement, as his ghoulish instinct led him to visit the poor shoemaker’s house where Greene died, on the day following the poet’s funeral in search of matter foul and defamatory, and with ink of slander to blacken the poet’s memory. This snobbish ape of gentility, Gabriel Harvey, hated Greene because he called his father by “the craft he gets his living with.” However, when Greene learned that Harvey was ashamed of his father’s humble employment, that of ropemaker, he straightway canceled the offensive allusion, but Harvey still continued to manifest the same hateful malignity and venomous spite. The letter is a fine character study of the three poets addressed. Greene drew out the true feature of every distinguishing mark or trait, both mental and moral, of these, his fellow-craftsmen, who, though he did not name them, are asserted to be Marlowe, Nash and Peele. Greene characterized them individually, and twice he collectively admonished them thus, “Base minded men all three of you, if by my miseries ye be not warned,” and, in the concluding part of the letter, “But now return I again to you three, knowing my miseries is to you no news and let me heartily entreat you to be warned by my harmes.” All of Shakspere’s biographers and commentators aver that Shakspere was not one of the three persons addressed. How then could Chettle’s words bear witness to his (Shakspere’s) civil demeanor or factitious grace in writing. Mr. Fleay stated many years ago (1886) that there was an entire misconception of Chettle’s language that Shakspere was not one of those who took offense. They are expressly stated to have been two of the three authors addressed by Greene. The recent Shakespearean writers have evidently mistaken Chettle’s placation of Nash or Peele, or either of the three play-makers addressed by Greene, it does not matter which, for an apology to Shakspere, who was not the object of Greene’s satire or Chettle’s placation for were not Nash, Marlowe and Peele each “excellent in the quality he professes?” Had they not lived in an age of compliment they would have merited these complimental phrases of Henry Chettle? For their names were in the trump of fame.