He was an old schoolfellow of his at Bideford, and son of a merchant in that town--one of those unlucky members who are "nobody's enemy but their own"-- a handsome, idle, clever fellow, who used his scholarship, of which he had picked up some smattering, chiefly to justify his own escapades, and to string songs together.

Having drunk all that he was worth at home, he had in a penitent fit forsworn liquor, and tormented Amyas into taking him to sea, where he afterwards made as good a sailor as any one else, but sorely scandalized John Brimblecombe by all manner of heretical arguments, half Anacreontic, half smacking of the rather loose doctrines of that "Family of Love" which tormented the orthodoxy and morality of more than one Bishop of Exeter.

Poor Will Parracombe! he was born a few centuries too early.

Had he but lived now, he might have published a volume or two of poetry, and then settled down on the staff of a newspaper.

Had he even lived thirty years later than he did, he might have written frantic tragedies or filthy comedies for the edification of James's profligate metropolis, and roistered it in taverns with Marlowe, to die as Marlowe did, by a footman's sword in a drunken brawl.