The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton | Page 6

"Dido,"
probably left incomplete by Marlowe, and finished by Nash, who
shows himself here an adept in that swelling bombast of bragging blank
verse of which he affected to disapprove. A new edition of "Christ's
Tears" also belongs to this busy year 1594, which however is mainly
interesting to us as having seen the publication of the work which we
are here introducing to modern readers.
An eminent French critic, M. Jusserand, whose knowledge of English
sixteenth-century literature is unsurpassed, was the first to draw
attention to the singular interest which attaches to "The Unfortunate
Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton," 1594. In his treatise, "Le Roman
au Temps de Shakespeare," 1887, M. Jusserand insisted upon the fact
that this neglected book was the best specimen of the picaresque tale
written in English before the days of Defoe. He shows that expressions
put in the mouth of Nash's hero, which had been carelessly treated as
autobiographical confessions of foreign travel and the like, on the part
of the author, were but features of a carefully planned fiction. "Jack
Wilton" describes the career of an adventurer, from his early youth as a
page in the royal camp of Henry VIII. at the siege of Tournay, to his

attainment of wealth, position, and a beautiful Italian wife.
The first exploit of the page is an encounter with a fraudulent innkeeper,
which is described with great spirit, and M. Jusserand has ingeniously
surmised that Shakespeare, after reading these pages, determined to
fuse the two characters, mine host and the waggish picaroon, into the
single immortal figure of Falstaff. After this point in the tale, it is
probable that the reader may find the interest of the story flag; but his
attention will be reawakened when he reaches the episode of the Earl of
Surrey and Fair Geraldine, and that in which Jack, pretending to be
Surrey, runs off with his sweet Venetian mistress, Diamante. It will be
for the reader of the ensuing pages to say whether Nash had mastered
the art of narrative quite so perfectly as M. Jusserand, in his just pride
as a discoverer, seems to think. The romance, no doubt, is incoherent
and languid at times, and is easily led aside into channels of gorgeous
description and vain moral reflection.
It will doubtless be of interest, at this point, to quote the words in which,
in a later volume, M. Jusserand has reiterated his praise of "Jack
Wilton" and his belief in Nash as the founder of the British novel of
character:--
"In the works of Nash and his imitators, the different parts are badly
dovetailed; the novelist is incoherent and incomplete; the fault lies in
some degree with the picaresque form itself. Nash, however, pointed
out the right road, the road that was to lead to the true novel. He was
the first among his compatriots to endeavour to relate in prose a
long-sustained story, having for its chief concern: the truth.... No one,
Ben Jonson excepted, possessed at that epoch, in so great a degree as
himself, a love of the honest truth. With Nash, then, the novel of real
life, whose invention in England is generally attributed to Defoe,
begins. To connect Defoe with the past of English literature, we must
get over the whole of the seventeenth century, and go back to 'Jack
Wilton,' the worthy brother of 'Roxana,' 'Moll Flanders,' and 'Colonel
Jack.'"
It is to be regretted that Nash made no second adventure in pure fiction.
"Jack Wilton," now one of the rarest of his books, was never reprinted

in its own age.
How Nash was employed during the next two years, it is not easy to
conjecture. When we meet with him once more, the smouldering fire of
his quarrel with the Harveys had burst again into flame. "Have with
you to Saffron Walden," 1596, is devoted to the chastisement of "the
reprobate brace of brothers, to wit, witless Gabriel and ruffling
Richard." No fresh public outburst on Harvey's part seems to have led
to this attack; but he bragged in private that he had silenced his
licentious antagonists. Nash admits that his opponent's last book "has
been kept idle by me, in a bye-settle out of sight amongst old shoes and
boots almost this two year." Harvey was known to have come from
Saffron Walden; Nash invites his readers to accompany him to that
town to see what they can discover, and he retails a good deal of lively
scandal about the rope-maker's sons. "Have with you" is perhaps the
smartest and is certainly the most readable of Nash's controversial
volumes. It gives us, too, some interesting fragments of autobiography.
Harvey had accused him of "prostituting his pen like a courtisan," and
Nash makes this curious and not very lucid statement in