The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton | Page 7

selfdefence:--
"Neither will I deny it nor will I grant it. Only thus far I'll go with you,
that twice or thrice in a month, when res est angusta domi, the bottom
of my purse is turned downward, and my conduit of ink will no longer
flow for want of reparations, I am fain to let my plough stand still in the
midst of a furrow, and follow some of these newfangled Galiardos and
Senior Fantasticos, to whose amorous villanellas and quipassas, I
prostitute my pen in hope of gain.... Many a fair day ago have I
proclaimed myself to the world Piers Penniless."
Gabriel Harvey must have felt, on reading "Have with you to Saffron
Walden," that his antagonist was right in saying that his pen carried
"the hot shot of a musket." Unfortunately, while Harvey was smarting
under these insulting gibes and jests, the jester himself got into public
trouble. Little is known of the circumstance which led the Queen's
Privy Council, in the summer of 1597, to throw Nash into the Fleet
Prison, but it was connected with the performance of a comedy called
"The Isle of Dogs," which gave offence to the authorities. This play

was not printed, and is no longer in existence. The Lord Admiral's
Company of actors, which produced it, had its licence withdrawn until
the 27th of August, when Nash was probably liberated. Gabriel Harvey
was not the man to allow this event to go unnoticed. He hurried into
print with his "Trimming of Thomas Nash," 1597, a pamphlet of the
most outrageous abuse addressed "to the polypragmatical,
parasitupocritical and pantophainoudendecontical puppy Thomas
Nash," and adorned with a portrait of that gentleman in irons, with
heavy gyves upon his ankles. According to Nash, however, the part of
"The Isle of Dogs" which was his composition was so trifling in extent
that his imprisonment was a gratuitous act of oppression. How the play
with this pleasing title offended has not been handed down to us.
Nash was now a literary celebrity, and yet it is at this precise moment
that his figure begins to fade out of sight For the next two years he is
not known to have made any public appearance. In 1599 he published
the best of all his books; it was unfortunately the latest "Nash's Lenten
Stuff; or, the Praise of the Red Herring" is an encomium on the
hospitable town of Yarmouth, to which, in the autumn of 1597, he had
fled for consolation, and in which, through six happy weeks, he had
found what he sought The "kind entertainment and benign hospitality"
of the compassionate clime of Yarmouth deserve from the poor exile a
cordial return, and, accordingly, he sings the praise of the Red Herring
as richly as if his mouth were still tingling with the delicate bloater. In
this book, Nash is kind enough to explain to us the cause of some of the
peculiarities of his style. His endeavour has been to be Italianate, and
"of all styles I most affect and strive to imitate Aretine's."
Whether he was deeply read in the works of il divino Aretino, we may
doubt; but it is easy to see that this Scourge of Princes, the very type of
the emancipated Italian of the sixteenth century, might have a vague
and dazzling attraction for his little eager English imitator.
Be that as it may, "Lenten Stuff" gives us evidence that Nash had now
arrived at a complete mastery of the fantastic and irrelevant manner
which he aimed at. This book is admirably composed, if we can bring
ourselves to admit that the genre is ever admirable. The writer's

vocabulary has become opulent, his phrases flash and detonate, each
page is full of unconnected sparks and electrical discharges. A sort of
aurora borealis of wit streams and rustles across the dusky surface,
amusing to the reader, but discontinuous, and insufficient to illuminate
the matter in hand. It is extraordinary that a man can make so many
picturesque, striking, and apparently apposite remarks, and yet leave us
so frequently in doubt as to his meaning. If this was the result of the
imitation of Aretino, Nash's choice of a master was scarcely a fortunate
one.
Thomas Nash was now thirty-two years of age, and with the
publication of "Lenten Stuff" we lose sight of him. His old play of
"Summers' Last Will and Testament" was printed in 1600, and he
probably died in that year. The song at the close of that comedy or
masque reads like the swan-song of its author:--
Autumn hath all the summer's fruitful treasure; Gone is our sport, fled
is poor [Nash's] pleasure! Short days, sharp days, long nights come on
apace;
Ah! who shall hide us from the winter's face? Cold doth increase, the
sickness