The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton | Page 2

But Greene, without doubt, made
frequent visits to his university, and on one of these was probably
formed that intimate friendship with Nash which lasted until near the
elder poet's death. Marlowe was at Corpus, then called Benet College,
during five years of Nash's residence, but it is by no means certain that
their acquaintance began so early. It is, indeed, in the highest degree
tantalizing that these writers, many of whom loved nothing better than
to talk about themselves, should have neglected to give us the
information which would precisely be most welcome to us. A dozen
whole "Anatomies of Absurdity" and "Supplications of Pierce
Penniless" might be eagerly exchanged for a few pages in which the
literary life of Cambridge from 1582 to 1589 should be frankly and
definitely described.
It has been surmised that Nash was ejected from the university in 1587.
His enemy, Gabriel Harvey, who was extremely ill-informed, gives this
account of what occurred:--
"[At Cambridge], (being distracted of his wits) [Nash] fell into diverse
misdemeanours, which were the first steps that brought him to this poor
estate. As, namely, in his fresh-time, how he flourished in all
impudency towards scholars, and abuse to the townsmen; insomuch
that to this day the townsmen call every untoward scholar of whom
there is great hope, a very Nash. Then, being bachelor of arts, which by
great labour he got, to show afterwards that he was not unworthy of it,
had a hand in a show called Terminus et non terminus; for the which
his partner in it was expelled the college; but this foresaid Nash played
in it (as I suppose) the Varlet of Clubs.... Then suspecting himself that
he should be stayed for egregie dunsus, and not attain to the next
degree, said he had commenced enough, and so forsook Cambridge,

being bachelor of the third year."
But, even in this poor gossip, we find nothing about ejection. Nash's
extraordinary abuse of language is probably the cause of that report. In
1589, in prefacing his "Anatomy of Absurdity," he remarked:--
"What I have written proceeded not from the pen of vainglory, but from
the process of that pensiveness, which two summers since overtook me;
whose obscured cause, best known to every name of curse, hath
compelled my wit to wander abroad unregarded in this satirical
disguise, and counselled my content to dislodge his delight from
traitors' eyes."
That the young gentleman meant something by these sentences, it is
only charitable to suppose; that he could have been intelligible, even to
his immediate contemporaries, is hardly to be believed. This "obscured
cause" has been taken to be, by some, his removal from the University,
and, by others, his entanglement with a young woman. It is perhaps
simpler to understand him to say that the ensuing pamphlet was written,
in consequence of an intellectual crisis, in 1587, when he was twenty
years of age.
At twenty-two, at all events, we find him in London, beginning his
career as a man of letters. His first separate publication seems to have
been the small quarto in black letter from which a quotation has just
been made. This composition, named an "Anatomy" in imitation of
several then recent popular treatises of a similar title, is only to be
pardoned on the supposition that it was a boyish manuscript prepared at
college. It is vilely written, in the preposterous Euphuism of the
moment; the style is founded on Lyly, the manner is the manner of
Greene, and Whetstone in his moral "Mirrors" and "Heptamerons" has
supplied the matter. The "absurdity" satirized in this jejune and tedious
tract is extravagant living of all kinds. The author attacks women with
great vehemence, but only in that temper which permitted the young
Juvenals of the hour to preach against wine and cards and stageplays
with intense zeal, while practising the worship of all these with equal
ardour. "The Anatomy of Absurdity" is a purely academic exercise,
interesting only because it shows, in the praise of Sidney and the

passage in defence of poetry, something of the intellectual aptitude of
the youthful writer.
In the same year, and a little earlier, Nash published an address "to the
gentlemen students of both universities," as a preface to a romance by
Greene. Bibliographers describe a supposititious "Menaphon" of 1587,
which nobody has ever seen; even if such an edition existed, it is
certain that Nash's address was not prefixed to it, for the style is greatly
in advance of his boyish writing of that year. It is an interesting
document, enthusiastic and gay in a manner hardly to be met with again
in its author, and diversified with graceful praise of St John's College,
defence of good poetry, and wholesome ridicule of those who were
trying to introduce the "Thrasonical