Of all kinds of literature, biography extends the most generous hospitality. Its subjects live an after life in affiliation with the readers without regard to condition. In seeking to renew the enthusiasm of our youth for this species of writing we visit the public library and find many changes in biographical history, such as the elimination of spurious tradition and fanciful conjecture. For instance, instead of the traditional life of Washington, there is a life of the true Washington: and, instead of a caricatured life of Cromwell, there is a record of the duly attested facts of the many-sided and wondrous Cromwell. With what astonishment we survey the huge issue of books on Shakspere which stand conspicuous on the shelves! There are more than ten thousand books and pamphlets—many of them of the memoir order—almost every one of which has a biographical preface; but we find that most, if not all, the biographers of Shakspere still lead the reader into the shadow of chaotic conjecture and might-have-been, and that Shaksperean literature still lacks a book on the personal life of William Shakspere that shall be to most, if not all others, a pruning hook cutting out the reveries and guess work which unfortunately have seduced the historian and misled the reader. We hold in our hand one of the more recent of these books of fictitious biography, transmissive “fraud of the imagination” which authenticates nothing! As co-readers, we will now focus our attention and thoughts intently upon the celebrated letter written by the dying hand of Robert Greene, and addressed to three brother poets to whom he administers a gentle reproof on account of their by-gone and present faults, of which, play-writing was most to be shunned. This remarkable letter reveals Robert Greene as the most tragical figure of his time—a sad witness of his ultimate penitence and absolute confession, a character of pathetic sincerity, weirdness and charnel-like gloom that chills the soul. This letter, so often referred to, and seemingly so little understood, is one of the most extraordinary pieces of writing in our literary annals. It has all the credibility that a dying statement can give, but it also evidences the fact that Robert Greene had previously drawn the fire of the improvising actors “who wrought the disfigurement of the poet’s work.” There is one in particular at whom he hurls a dart and hits the mark. “Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our (poet’s) feathers, that, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute ‘Johannes Factotum,’ is in his own conceit, the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.”