to an anonymous correspondent.

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:--