The career of Thomas Lodge is one that has contributed to form the common conception of the Elizabethan. He carried on the tradition of those mid-century writers - Googe, Churchyard, Whetstone and Gascoigne - whose activities are summarised in Gascoigne's motto "Tam Marti quam Mercurio". As a University wit, a student of the Inns of Court, a Gentleman Adventurer, and professional writer in Elizabethan England and, later in life, as a physician, he is representative of an age that was impatient of specialisation and set a premium upon versatility and all round capacity. He was the second son of a prosperous city merchant and was born sometime in the late fifties, possibly in the year of Elizabeth's accession. Like his elder brother, he seems to have been intended for the law and from the university he proceeded to Lincoln's Inn, but like many men of the Inns of Court (e.g., Whetstone and Gascoigne) he seems soon to have forsaken the old profession of the law for the newly created profession of letters. Probably an interest in literature had been stimulated while he was at Oxford.