by Thomas Nash
Harvey was smartingunder these insulting gibes and jests, the jester himself got intopublic trouble. Little is known of the circumstance which led theQueen's Privy Council, in the summer of 1597, to throw Nash into theFleet Prison, but it was connected with the performance of a comedycalled "The Isle of Dogs," which gave offence to the authorities. Thisplay was not printed, and is no longer in existence. The Lord Admiral'sCompany of actors, which produced it, had its licence withdrawn untilthe 27th of August, when Nash was probably liberated. Gabriel Harvey wasnot the man to allow this event to go unnoticed. He hurried intoprint with his "Trimming of Thomas Nash," 1597, a pamphlet of the mostoutrageous abuse addressed "to the polypragmatical, parasitupocriticaland pantophainoudendecontical puppy Thomas Nash," and adorned with aportrait of that gentleman in irons, with heavy gyves upon his ankles.According to Nash, however, the part of "The Isle of Dogs" which washis composition was so trifling in extent that his imprisonment wasa gratuitous act of oppression. How the play with this pleasing titleoffended has not been handed down to us.
Nash was now a literary celebrity, and yet it is at this precise momentthat his figure begins to fade out of sight For the next two years he isnot known to have made any public appearance. In 1599 he published thebest of all his books; it was unfortunately the latest "Nash's LentenStuff; or, the Praise of the Red Herring" is an encomium on thehospitable town of Yarmouth, to which, in the autumn of 1597, he hadfled for consolation, and in which, through six happy weeks, he hadfound what he sought The "kind entertainment and benign hospitality"of the compassionate clime of Yarmouth deserve from the poor exile acordial return, and, accordingly, he sings the praise of the Red Herringas 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 ofthe 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 maydoubt; but it is easy to see that this Scourge of Princes, the very typeof the emancipated Italian of the sixteenth century, might have a vagueand dazzling attraction for his little eager English imitator.
Be that as it may, "Lenten Stuff" gives us evidence that Nash had nowarrived at a complete mastery of the fantastic and irrelevant mannerwhich he aimed at. This book is admirably composed, if we can bringourselves to admit that the _genre_ is ever admirable. The writer'svocabulary has become opulent, his phrases flash and detonate, eachpage is full of unconnected sparks and electrical discharges. A sortof aurora borealis of wit streams and rustles across the dusky surface,amusing to the reader, but discontinuous, and insufficient to illuminatethe matter in hand. It is extraordinary that a man can make so manypicturesque, striking, and apparently apposite remarks, and yet leave usso frequently in doubt as to his meaning. If this was the result of theimitation of Aretino, Nash's choice of a master was scarcely a fortunateone.
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 Willand 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-songof 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 will not cease, And here we lie, God knows, with little ease:
From winter, plague and pestilence, Good Lord, deliver us!
London doth mourn, Lambeth is quite forlorn, Trades cry, Woe worth that ever they were born; The want of term is town and city's harm.
Close chambers we do want, to keep us warm; Long banished must we live from our friends: This low-built house will bring us to our ends.
From winter, plague and pestilence, Good Lord, deliver us!
Whether pestilence or winter slew him, we do not know. In 1601Fitzgeoffrey published a short Latin elegy on Nash in his "Affaniae,"alluding in happy phrase to the twin lightnings of his armed tongueand his terrible pen; and Nash had six lines of tempered praise in "TheReturn from Parnassus." But all we know of the cause or manner of Nash'sdeath has to be collected from a passage in "A Knight's Conjuring,"1607, written by the satirist on whom his mantle descended, ThomasDekker. Nash is seen advancing along the Elysian Fields:--
"Marlowe, Greene, and Peele had got under the shades of a large vine,laughing to see Nash, that was but newly come to their college, stillhaunted with the sharp and satirical spirit that followed him hereupon earth; for Nash inveighed bitterly, as he had wont to do, againstdry-fisted patrons, accusing them of his untimely death, because if theyhad given his Muse that cherishment which she most worthily deserved, hehad fed to his dying day on fat capons, burnt sack and sugar, and notso desperately have ventured his life and shortened his days by keepingcompany with pickle herrings."
This looks as though Nash died of a disease attributed to coarse andunwholesome cheap food. His fame proved to be singularly ephemeral. Sofar as I am aware, no book of his was reprinted after his death, withthe single exception of "Christ's Tears over Jerusalem," which wasissued again in 1613. His name was mentioned and some interest in hiswritings was awakened at the close of the next century by Winstanley andby Langbaine, but Oldys, the celebrated antiquary, was the first personwho seriously endeavoured to trace the incidents of his life.
Dr. A. B. Grosart saved the works of Nash from all danger of destructionby printing an issue of them, in six volumes, for fifty privatesubscribers, in 1883-85. But he still remains completely inaccessible tothe general reader.
Edmund Gosse.
