The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton

The Vnfortunate Traveller, or
The Life Of
by Thomas Nash

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Title: The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton With An
Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse
Author: Thomas Nash
Commentator: Edmund Gosse
Release Date: May 5, 2007 [EBook #21338]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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VNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER ***

Produced by David Widger

[Illustration: Titlepage]
[Illustration: Henry Howard]
"The portrait of Surrey which is now at Hampton Court, and which is
attributed to Holbein, though probably by his imitator, Guillim Stretes,
apparently dates from a period when he was a very young man. It is a
valuable and highly interesting picture; especially in regard to the dress,
which, except for the white shirt, embroidered with Moresque work, is
entirely red, and with the flat red cap, red shoes ornamented with studs
of gold, the richly chased dagger and sword, is an admirable example
of the gorgeous style of costume prevalent at Court at the latter end of
the reign of Henry VIII, 'Law's History of Hampton Court Palace in
Tudor Times.'"

THE VNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER OR THE LIFE OF JACK
WILTON: WITH AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF
THOMAS NASH BY EDMUND GOSSE
London Printed And Issued By Charles Whittingham & Co At The
Chiswick Press MDCCCXCII
Contents.
An Essay on the Life and Writings of Thomas Nash
The Dedication to the Earl of Southampton
To the Gentlemen Readers
The Induction to the Pages of the Court
The Unfortunate Traveller

AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THOMAS NASH.
It is mainly, no doubt, but I hope not exclusively, an antiquarian
interest which attaches to the name of Thomas Nash. It would be
absurd to claim for a writer so obscure a very prominent place in the
procession of Englishmen of letters. His works proclaim by their
extreme rarity the fact that three centuries of readers have existed
cheerfully and wholesomely without any acquaintance with their
contents. At the present moment, the number of those living persons
who have actually perused the works of Nash may probably be counted
on the fingers of two hands. Most of these productions are uncommon
to excess, one or two exist in positively unique examples. There is no
use in arguing against such a fact as this. If Nash had reached, or even
approached, the highest order of merit, he would have been placed,
long ere this, within the reach of all. Nevertheless, his merits, relative if
not positive, were great. In the violent coming of age of Elizabethan
literature, his voice was heard loudly, not always discordantly, and with
an accent eminently personal to himself. His life, though shadowy, has
elements of picturesqueness and pathos; his writings are a storehouse of
oddity and fantastic wit
It has been usual to class Nash with the Precursors of Shakespeare, and
until quite lately it was conjectured that he was older than Greene and
Peele, a contemporary of Lodge and Chapman. It is now known that he
was considerably younger than all these, and even than Marlowe and
Shakespeare. Thomas Nash, the fourth child of the Rev. William Nash,
who to have been curate of Lowestoft in Suffolk, was baptized in that
town in November, 1567. The Nashes continued to live in Lowestoft,
where the father died in 1603, probably three years after the death of
his son Thomas. Of the latter we hear nothing more until, in October,
1582, at the age of fifteen, he matriculated as a sizar of St. John's
College, Cambridge. Cooper says that he was admitted a scholar on the
Lady Margaret's foundation in 1584. He remained at Cambridge, in
unbroken residence, until July, 1589, "seven year together, lacking a
quarter," as he tells us positively in "Lenten Stuff."
Cambridge was the hotbed of all that was vivid and revolutionary in

literature at that moment, and Robert Greene was the centre of literary
Cambridge. When Nash arrived, Greene, who was seven years his
senior, was still in residence at his study in Clare Hall, having returned
from his travels in Italy and Spain, ready, in 1583, to take his degree as
master of arts. He was soon, however, to leave for London, and it is
unlikely that a boy of sixteen would be immediately admitted to the
society of those "lewd wags" who looked up to the already
distinguished Greene as to a master.