^^^-..JPerJility and versatility are Greene's most obvious dis-
tinctions. He mantfestSy along with these, a third. In
spite of his wj^ficiality o| style, his shallowness of characteri-

l zation^ his inconsistencies of plot, his lack of seriousness,
which are real defects, Greene exhibited a fr^om of liter-,
ary art; and although he never, even to the end of his I
career, ceased to shout morality from his title-pages, yet in
practice he came to have an almost complete enfranchise-
ment from the traditions of the earlier didactic writers. If
I may be permitted to restate the idea, I mean that notwith-
standing the conventions of Elizabethan literature in all its

1 forms, which influenced no author more than him, Greene 1

\ developed an understanding of the fact that art to be sue- j
^: cessful must not be wholly for man's sake; that it must be 1



j partly for art's sake as well. -'^

' \ Closely related to this achievement is growth toward con- \



sciousness of method. Greene's work is full of crudities, andJ
some of it is not interesting. Emphasis is often misplaced,
being upon speech rather than upon action. The first half
of a novel is unduly elaborated at the expense of the latter,
and episodes in the course of the main action are frequently
too extended. But beneath the surface, the careful reader
can perceive in Greene a definiteness of plan.
