by Thomas Nashe
I am of the opinion that to be famished to death is far better, for his pain in seven or eight days is at an end, whereas he that is in a consumption continues languishing many years ere death have mercy on him.
The next plague and the nearest that I know in affinity to a consumption is long depending hope frivolously defeated, than which there is no greater misery on earth, and so per consequents no men in earth more miserable than courtiers. It is a cowardly fear that is not resolute enough to despair. It is like a poor hunger-starved wretch at sea, who still in expectation of a good voyage endures more miseries than Job. He that writes this can tell, for he hath never had good voyage in his life but one, and that was to a fortunate blessed island near those pinacle rocks called the Needles. Oh, it is a purified continent, and a fertile plot fit to seat another paradise, where, or in no place, the image of the ancient hospitality is to be found.
While I live I will praise it and extol it for the true magnificence and continued honourable bounty that I saw there.
Far unworthy am I to spend the least breath of commendation in the extolling so delightful and pleasant a Tempe,84 or once to consecrate my ink with the excellent mention of the thrice-noble and illustrious chieftain under whom it is flourishingly governed.
That rare ornament of our country, learned Master Camden, 85 whose desertful name is universally admired throughout Christendom, in the last re-polished edition of his Britannia hath most elaborate and exactly described the sovereign plenteous situation of that isle, as also the inestimable happiness it inherits, it being patronized and carefully protected by so heroical and courageous a commander.86
Men that have never tasted that full spring of his liberality, wherewith, in my most forsaken extremities, right graciously he hath deigned to revive and refresh me, may rashly, at first sight, implead87 me of flattery and not esteem these my fervent terms as the necessary repayment of due debt, but words idly begotten with good looks, and in an over-joyed humour of vain hope slipped from me by chance; but therein they shall show themselves too uncivil injurious, both to my devoted observant duty and the condign88 dear purchased merit of his glory.
Too base a ground is this, whereon to embroider the rich story of his eternal renown; some longer-lived tractate I reserve for the full blaze of his virtues, which here only in the sparks I decipher. Many embers of encumbrances have I at this time, which forbid the bright flame of my zeal to mount aloft as it would. Perforce I must break from it, since other turbulent cares sit as now at the stern of my invention. Thus I conclude with this chance-medley parenthesis, that whatsoever minutes’ intermission I have of calmed content, or least respite to call my wits together, principal and immediate proceedeth from him.
Through him my tender wainscot study door is delivered from much assault and battery. Through him I look into and am looked on in the world, from whence otherwise I were a wretched banished exile. Through him all my good, as by a conduit head, is conveyed unto me; and to him all my endeavours, like rivers, shall pay tribute as to the ocean.
Did Ovid entitle Carus, a nobleman of Rome, the only constant friend he had, in his ungrateful extrusion among the Getes, and writ to him thus:
Qui quod es id vere Care vocaris?89
and in another elegy:
O mihi post nullos Care memorande sodales?90
Much more may I acknowledge all redundant prostrate vassalage to the royal descended family of the Careys, but for whom my spirit long ere this had expired, and my pen served as a poniard to gall my own heart
Why do I use so much circumstance, and in a stream on which none but gnats and flies do swim sound Fame‘s trumpet like Triton to call a number of foolish skiffs and light cock-boats91 to parley?
Fear, if I be not deceived, was the last pertinent matter I had under my displing,92 from which I fear I have strayed beyond my limits; and yet fear hath no limits, for to hell and beyond hell it sinks down and penetrates.
But this was my position, that the fear of any expected evil is worse than the evil itself, which by divers comparisons I confirmed.
Now to visions and apparitions again, as fast as I can trudge.
The glasses of our sight, in the night, are like the prospective glasses one Hostius made in Rome, which represented the images of things far greater than they were. Each mote in the dark they make a monster, and every slight glimmering a giant.
A solitary man in his bed is like a poor bed-red lazar lying by the highway-side unto whose displayed wounds and sores a number of stinging flies do swarm for pastance93 and beverage. His naked wounds are his inward heart-griping woes, the wasps and flies his idle wandering thoughts; who to that secret smarting pain he hath already do add a further sting of impatience and new-lance his sleeping griefs and vexations.
Questionless, this is an unrefutable consequence, that the man who is mocked of his fortune, he that hath consumed his brains to compass prosperity and meets with no counter-vailment94 in her likeness, but hedge wine and lean mutton and peradventure some half-eyed good looks that can hardly be discerned from winking; this poor piteous perplexed miscreant either finally despairs, or like a lank frostbitten plant loseth his vigour or spirit by little and little; any terror, the least illusion in the earth, is a Cacodaemon unto him. His soul hath left his body; for why, it is flying after these airy incorporate courtly promises, and glittering painted allurements, which when they vanish to nothing, it likewise vanisheth with them.
Excessive joy no less hath his defective and joyless operations, the spleen95 into water it melteth; so that except it be some momentary bubbles of mirth, nothing it yields but a cloying surfeit of repentance.
Divers instances have we of men whom too much sudden content and over-ravished delight hath brought untimely to their graves.
Four or five I have read of, whom the very extremity of laughter hath bereft of their lives; whereby I gather that even such another pernicious sweet, superfluous mirth is to the sense as a surfeit of honey to a man’s stomach, than the which there is nothing more dangerous.
Be it as dangerous as it will, it cannot but be an easy kind of death It is like one that is stung with an aspis, who in the midst of his pain falls delighted asleep, and in that suavity of slumber surrenders the ghost; whereas he whom grief undertakes to bring to his end, hath his heart gnawen in sunder by little and little with vultures, like Prometheus.
But this is nothing, you will object, to our journey’s end of apparitions. Yes, altogether; for of the overswelling superabundance of joy and grief we frame to ourselves most of our melancholy dreams and visions.
There is an old philosophical common proverb, Unusquisque fingit fortunam sibi: everyone shapes his own fortune as he lists. More aptly may it be said: everyone shapes his own fears and fancies as he list.
In all points our brains are like the firmament, and exhale in every respect the like gross mistempered vapours and meteors: of the more foeculent96 combustible airy matter whereof, affrighting forms and monstrous images innumerable are created, but of the slimy unwieldier drossy part, dull melancholy or drowsiness.
And as the firmament is still moving and working, so uncessant is the wheeling and rolling on of our brains, which every hour are tempering some new piece of prodigy or other, and turmoiling, mixing and changing the course of our thoughts.
I write not this for that I think there are no true apparitions or prodigies, but to show how easily we may be flouted if we take not great heed with our own antique suppositions. I will tell you a strange tale tending to this nature; whether of true melancholy or true apparition, I will not take upon me to determine.
It was my chance in February last to be in the country some threescore mile off from London, where a gentleman of good worship and credit falling sick, the very second day of his lying down he pretended to have miraculous waking visions, which before I enter to describe, thus much I will inform ye by the way, that at the reporting of them he was in perfect memory, nor had sickness yet so tyrannized over him to ma
ke his tongue grow idle. A wise, grave, sensible man he was ever reputed, and so approved himself in all his actions in his life-time. This which I deliver, with many preparative protestations, to a great man of this land he confidently avouched. Believe it or condemn it as you shall see cause, for I leave it to be censured indifferently.
The first day of his distemperature, he visibly saw, as he affirmed, all his chamber hung with silken nets and silver hooks, the devil, as it should seem, coming thither a-fishing. Whereupon, every Pater-Noster-while,97 he looked whether in the nets he should be entangled, or with the hooks ensnared. With the nets he feared to be strangled or smothered, and with the hooks to have his throat scratched out and his flesh rent and mangled. At length, he knew not how, they suddenly vanished and the whole chamber was cleared. Next a company of lusty sailors, every one a shirker98 or a swaggerer at the least, having made a brave voyage, came carousing and quaffing in large silver cans to his health. Fellows they were that had good big pop mouths99 to cry ‘port, ahelm, Saint George’, and knew as well as the best what belongs to haling of bolings100 yare101 and falling on the starboard buttock.
But to the issue of my tale. Their drunken proffers he utterly put by, and said he highly scorned and detested both them and their hellish disguisings; which notwithstanding, they tossed their cups to the skies, and reeled and staggered up and down the room like a ship shaking in the wind.
After all they danced lusty gallant102 and a drunken Danish lavalto103 or two, and so departed. For the third course, rushed in a number of stately devils, bringing in boisterous104 chests of massy treasure betwixt them. As brave they were as Turkish janissaries,105 having their apparel all powdered with gold and pearl, and their arms as it were bemailed with rich chains and bracelets, but faces far blacker than any ball of tobacco, great glaring eyes that had whole shelves of Kentish oysters in them, and terrible wide mouths, whereof not one of them but would well have made a case for Molenax’106 great globe of the world.
These lovely youths and full of favour, having stalked up and down the just measures of a sinkapace,107 opened one of the principal chests they brought, and out of it plucked a princely royal tent, whose empearled shining canopy they quickly advanced on high, and with all artificial magnificence adorned like a state; which performed, pompous Lucifer entered, imitating in goodly stature the huge picture108 of Laocoon at Rome, who sent unto him a gallant ambassador, signifying thus much, that if he would serve him, he should have all the rich treasure that he saw there, or any further wealth he would desire.
The gentleman returned this mild answer, that he knew not what he was, whether an angel or a wicked fiend, and if an angel, he was but his fellow servant, and no otherwise to be served or regarded; if a fiend, or a devil, he had nothing to do with him, for God had exalted and redeemed him above his desperate outcast condition, and a strong faith he had to defy and withstand all his juggling temptations. Having uttered these words, all the whole train of them invisibly avoided, and he never set eye on them after.
Then did there, for the third pageant, present themselves unto him an inveigling troop of naked virgins, thrice more amiable and beautiful than the bright vestals that brought in Augustus’ Testament to the Senate after his decease; but no vestal-like ornament had they about them, for from top to toe bare despoiled they were, except some one or two of them that ware masks before their faces, and had transparent azured lawn veils before the chief jewel-houses of their honours.
Such goodly lustful bonarobaes109 they were, by his report, as if any sharp-eyed painter had been there to peruse them, he might have learned to exceed divine Michael Angelo in the true bosk110 of a naked, or curious Tuns111 in quick life, whom the great masters of that art do term the sprightly old man.
Their hair they ware loose unrolled about their shoulders, whose dangling amber trammels reaching down beneath their knees seemed to drop balm on their delicious bodies, and ever as they moved to and fro, with their light windy wavings, wantonly to correct their exquisite mistresses.
Their dainty feet in their tender birdlike trippings enamelled, as it were, the dusty ground; and their odoriferous breath more perfumed the air than ordnance would that is charged with amomum, musk, civet and amber-greece.112
But to leave amplifications and proceed. Those sweet bewitching naked maids, having majestically paced about the chamber, to the end their natural unshelled shining mother pearl proportions might be more imprintingly apprehended, close to his bedside modestly blushing they approached, and made impudent proffer unto him of their lascivious embraces. He, obstinately bent to withstand these their sinful allurements, no less than the former, bad them go seek entertainment of hotter bloods, for he had not to satisfy them. A cold comfort was this to poor wenches no better clothed, yet they hearing what to trust to, very sorrowfully retired and shrunk away.
Lo, in the fourth act there sallied out a grave assembly of sober-attired matrons, much like the virgins of Mary Magdalen’s order in Rome, which vow never to see man, or the chaste daughters of Saint Philip.113
With no incontinent courtesy did they greet him, but told him if he thought good they would pray for him.
Thereupon, from the beginning to the ending he unfolded unto them how he had been mightily haunted with wicked illusions of late, but nevertheless, if he could be persuaded that they were angels or saints, their invocations could not hurt him; yea, he would add his desire to their requests to make their prayers more penetrably enforcing.
Without further parley, upon their knees they fell most devoutly and for half-an-hour never ceased extensively to intercessionate GOD for his speedy recovery.
Rising up again on the right hand of his bed, there appeared a clear light, and with that he might perceive a naked slender foot offering to steal betwixt the sheets in to him.
At which instant, entered a messenger from a knight of great honour thereabouts, who sent him a most precious extract quintessence to drink; which no sooner he tasted, but he thought he saw all the fore-named interluders at once hand-over-head leap, plunge and drown themselves in puddles and ditches hard by, and he felt perfect ease.
But long it lasted not with him, for within four hours after, having not fully settled his estate in order, he grew to trifling dotage, and raving died within two days following.
God is my witness, in all this relation I borrow no essential part from stretched-out invention, nor have I one jot abused my informations; only for the recreation of my readers, whom loath to tire with a coarse home-spun tale that should dull them worse than Holland cheese, here and there I welt and gard114 it with allusive exornations115 and comparisons; and yet methinks it comes off too gouty and lumbering.
Be it as it will, it is like to have no more allowance of English for me. If the world will give it any allowance of truth, so it is. For then I hope my excuse is already lawfully customed and authorized, since Truth is ever drawn and painted naked, and I have lent her but a leathern patched cloak at most to keep her from the cold; that is, that she come not off too lamely and coldly.
Upon the accidental occasion of this dream or apparition (call or miscall it what you will, for it is yours as freely as any waste paper that ever you had in your lives) was this pamphlet (no bigger than an old preface) speedily botched up and compiled.
Are there any doubts which remain in your mind undigested, as touching this incredible narration I have unfolded? Well, doubt you not, but I am mild and tractable and will resolve you in what I may.
First, the house where this gentleman dwelt stood in a low marish ground, almost as rotten a climate as the Low Countries, where their misty air is as thick as mould butter, and the dew lies like frothy barm on the ground. It was noted over and besides to have been an unlucky house to all his predecessors, situate in a quarter not altogether exempted from witches. The abrupt falling into his sickness was suspicious, proceeding from no apparent surfeit or mis-diet. The outrageous tyranny of it in so short a time bred thrice more admiration and wonder, a
nd his sudden death incontinent116 ensuing upon that his disclosed dream or vision, might seem some probable reason to confirm it, since none have such palpable dreams or visions but die presently after.
The like to this was Master Alington’s vision117 in the beginning of Her Majesty’s reign; than the which there is nothing more ordinarily bruited.118 Through Greek and Roman commonplaces to this purport I could run, if I were disposed to vaunt myself like a ridiculous pedant of deep reading in Fulgosius,119 Licosthenesla120 and Valerius.121
Go no further than the Court, and they will tell you of a mighty worthy man of this land, who riding in his coach from London to his house was all the way haunted with a couple of hogs, who followed him close, and do what his men could, they might not drive them from him. Wherefore at night he caused them to be shut up in a barn and commanded milk to be given them; the barn door was locked, and the key safely kept, yet were they gone by morning, and no man knew how.
A number of men there be yet living who have been haunted by their wives after their death about forswearing themselves and undoing their children of whom they promised to be careful fathers; whereof I can gather no reason but this, that women are born to torment a man both alive and dead.
I have heard of others likewise, that besides these night-terrors, have been, for whole months together, whithersoever they went or rid, pursued by weasels and rats, and oftentimes with squirrels and hares, that in the travelling of three hundred mile have still waited on their horse heels.
But those are only the exploits and stratagems of witches, which may well astonish a little at first sight, but if a man have the least heart or spirit to withstand one fierce blast of their bravadoes, he shall see them shrink faster than northern cloth,122 and outstrip time in dastardly flight.
