of conny-catching” has “new additions containing many merry tales of all lawes worth the reading, because they are worthy to be remembered.  Discoursing strange cunning coosnage, which if you reade without laughing, Ile give you my cap for a Noble.”  But in all these works there is but little humour, and what we learn in reading them is, that a very small amount of it was then thought considerable, and that stories, which we should think slightly entertaining, appeared in that simple age to be very ingenious and even comic.  In the “Comicall Historie of Alphonsus, King of Arragon,” we do not find anything that could have possibly been humorous, unless the speaking of a brazen head, and the letting Venus down from Heaven and drawing her up again, could have been so regarded.  Greene is characteristic of his time in his love of introducing magic and enchanters, and of characters from classic and scripture history.  In the “Looking-Glasse for London and England,” in which our metropolis is compared to Nineveh, we have angels and magicians brought in.  “A hand out of a cloud threateneth a burning sword,” and “Jonas is cast out of the whale’s belly upon the stage.”

Greene is fond of introducing devils.  In “The Honourable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay,” Ralph says, “Why, Sirrah Ned we’ll ride to Oxford to Friar Bacon.  O! he is a brave scholar, sirrah; they say he is a brave necromancer, that he can make women of devils, and he can juggle cats into coster-mongers.”  Further on in the same play a devil and Miles, Bacon’s servant, enter.

Miles. A scholar, quoth you; marry, Sir, I would I had been a bottle maker, when I was made a scholar, for I can get neither to be a deacon, reader, nor schoolmaster.  No, not the clerk of the parish.  Some call me dunce, another saith my head is full of Latin, as an egg’s full of oatmeal:  thus I am tormented that the devil and Friar Bacon haunt me.  Good Lord, here’s one of my master’s devils!  I’ll go speak to him.  What Master Plutus, how cheer you?

     D. Dost know me?

     M. Know you, Sir?  Why are not you one of my master’s devils, that
     were wont to come to my master, Doctor Bacon at Brazen-Nose?

     D. Yes, marry am I.

M. Good Lord, Master Plutus, I have seen you a thousand times at my master’s; and yet I had never the manners to make you drink.  But, Sir, I am glad to see how comformable you are to the statutes.  I warrant you he’s as yeomanly a man as you shall see; mark you, masters, here’s a plain honest man without welt or guard.  But I pray you Sir, do you come lately from hell?

     D. Ay, marry, how then?

M. Faith, ’tis a place I have desired long to see:  have you not good tippling houses there?  May not a man have a lusty fire there, a good pot of ale, a pair of cards, a swinging piece of chalk, and a brown toast that will clap a white waistcoat on a cup of good drink.

     D. All this you may have there.