The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works

by Thomas Nashe

  ‘ “Thou hast that honourable carriage in arms that it shall be no discredit for me to bequeath all the glory of my beauty to thy well-governed arm. Fain would I be known where I was born; fain would I have thee known where fame sits in her chiefest theatre. Farewell, forget me not Continued deserts will eternize me unto thee; thy wishes shall be expired when thy travel shall be once ended.”

  ‘Here did my tears step out before words, and intercepted the course of my kind-conceived speech, even as wind is allayed with rain. With heart-scalding sighs I confirmed her parting request, and avowed myself hers while living heat allowed me to be mine own. Hinc illae lachrimae:142 here hence proceedeth the whole cause of my peregrination.’

  Not a little was I delighted with this unexpected love story, especially from a mouth out of which was nought wont to march but stern precepts of gravity and modesty. I swear unto you I thought his company the better by a thousand crowns because he had discarded those nice terms of chastity and continency. Now I beseech God love me so well as I do a plain-dealing man. Earth is earth, flesh is flesh, earth will to earth, and flesh unto flesh. Frail earth, frail flesh, who can keep you from the work of your creation?

  Dismissing this fruitless annotation pro et contra: towards Venice we progressed, and took Rotterdam in our way, that was clean out of our way. There we met with aged learning’s chief ornament that abundant and superingenious clerk Erasmus, as also with merry Sir Thomas More,143 our countryman, who was come purposely over a little before us to visit the said grave father Erasmus. What talk, what conference we had then it were here superfluous to rehearse; but this I can assure you – Erasmus in all his speeches seemed so much to mislike the indiscretion of princes in preferring of parasites and fools, that he decreed with himself to swim with the stream and write a book forthwith in commendation of folly.144 Quick-witted Sir Thomas More travelled in a clean contrary province, for he seeing most commonwealths corrupted by ill custom, and that principalities were nothing but great piracies which, gotten by violence and murther, were maintained by private undermining and bloodshed, that in the chiefest flourishing kingdoms there was no equal or well-divided weal one with another, but a manifest conspiracy of rich men against poor men, procuring their own unlawful commodities under the name and interest of the commonwealth, he concluded with himself to lay down a perfect plot of a commonwealth or government which he would entitle his Utopia.145

  So left we them to prosecute their discontented studies, and made our next journey to Wittenberg.

  At the very point of our entrance into Wittenberg, we were spectators of a very solemn scholastical entertainment of the Duke of Saxony thither. Whom, because he was the chief patron of their university, and had took Luther’s part in banishing the Mass and all like papal jurisdiction out of their town, they crouched unto extremely. The chief ceremonies of their entertainment were these: first, the heads of their university (they were greats heads, of certainty) met him in their hooded hypocrisy and doctorly accoutrements, secundum formum statuti,146 where by the orator of the university, whose pickerdevant147 was very plentifully besprinkled with rose water, a very learned, or rather, ruthful, oration was delivered (for it rained all the while) signifying thus much – that it was all by patch and by piecemeal stolen out of Tully, and he must pardon them though in emptying their phrase-books the world emptied his entrails; for they did it not in any ostentation of wit (which God knows, they had not) but to show the extraordinary good will they bare the Duke (to have him stand in the rain till he was through wet). A thousand quemadmodums and quapropters148 he came over him with. Every sentence he concluded with Esse posse videatur.149 Through all the Nine Worthies150 he ran with praising and comparing him. Nestor’s years he assured him of under the broad seal of their supplications and with that crow-trodden151 verse in Virgil, Dum iuga montis aper,152 he packed up his pipes and cried Dixi.153

  That pageant overpast, there rushed upon him a miserable rabblement of junior graduates that all cried upon him mightily in their gibrige, like a company of beggars, ‘God save your Grace, God save your Grace, Jesus preserve your Highness, though it be but for an hour!’

  Some three half-pennyworth of Latin here also had he thrown at his face, but it was choice stuff, I can tell you, as there is a choice even amongst rags gathered up from the dung-hill. At the town’s end met him the burghers and dunstical incorporationers154 of Wittenberg in their distinguished liveries, their distinguished livery faces, I mean, for they were most of them hot-livered drunkards and had all the coat colours of sanguine, purple, crimson, copper, carnation, that were to be had, in their countenances. Filthy knaves, no cost had they bestowed on the town for his welcome, saving new-painted their houghs155 and boozing-houses, which commonly are fairer than their churches, and over their gates set the town arms carousing a whole health to the Duke’s arms, which sounded gulping after this sort: Vanhotten, slotten, irk bloshen glotten gelderslike. Whatever the words were, the sense was this: ‘Good drink is a medicine for all diseases.’

  A bursten-belly inkhorn orator called Vanderhulke156 they picked out to present him with an oration; one that had a sulphurous big swollen large face like a Saracen, eyes like two Kentish oysters, a mouth that opened as wide every time he spake as one of those old knit trap doors, a beard as though it had been made of a bird’s nest plucked in pieces, which consisteth of straw, hair and dirt mixed together. He was apparelled in black leather new-liquored and a short gown without any gathering in the back, faced before and behind with a boisterous bear-skin, and a red night-cap on his head. To this purport and effect was this brocking157 double-beer oration.

  ‘Right noble Duke (ideo nobilis quasi no bilis, for you have no bile or choler in you), know that our present incorporation of Wittenberg, by me the tongue-man of their thankfulness, a townsman by birth, a free German by nature, an orator by art, and a scrivener by education, in all obedience and chastity, most bountifully bid you welcome to Wittenberg. Welcome, said I? Oh orificial rhetoric, wipe thy everlasting mouth and afford me a more Indian metaphor than that, for the brave princely blood of a Saxon! Oratory, uncask the barred hutch of thy compliments, and with the triumphantest trope in thy treasury do trewage unto him! What impotent speech with his eight parts may not specify, this unestimable gift, holding his peace, shall as it were (with tears I speak it) do whereby as it may seem or appear to manifest or declare, and yet it is, and yet it is not, and yet it may be a diminutive oblation meritorious to your high pusillanimity and indignity. Why should I go gadding and fizgigging158 after firking flantado amphibologies?159 Wit is wit, and good will is good will. With all the wit I have, I here, according to the premisses, offer up unto you the city’s general good will, which is a gilded can, in manner and form following, for you and the heirs of your body lawfully begotten to drink healths in. The scholastical squitterbooks160 clout you up canopies and foot-cloths of verses. We that are good fellows and live as merry as cup and can, will not verse upon you as they do, but must do as we can, and entertain you if it be but with a plain empty can. He hath learning enough that hath learned to drink to his first man.

  ‘Gentle Duke, without paradox be it spoken, thy horses at our own proper costs and charges shall knead up to the knees all the while thou art here in spruce-beer and Lubeck liquor. Not a dog thou bringest with thee but shall be banqueted with Rhenish wine and sturgeon. On our shoulders we wear no lamb-skin or miniver like these academics, yet we can drink to the confusion of thy enemies. Good lamb’s wool have we for their lamb-skins, and for their miniver, large minerals in our coffers. Mechanical men they call us, and not amiss, for most of us being Maechi,161 that is, cuckolds and whoremasters, fetch our antiquity from the temple of Maecha, where Mahomet was hung up. Three parts of the world, America, Affrike, and Asia, are of this our mechanic religion. Nero, when he cried O quantus artifex pereo,162 professed himself of our freedom, insomuch as artifex is a citizen or craftsman, as well as carnifex a scholar or hangman. Pass on by leave into the precinct
s of our abomination. Bonny Duke, frolic in our bower, and persuade thyself that even as garlic hath three properties – to make a man wink, drink and stink – so we will wink on thy imperfections, drink to thy favourites, and all thy foes shall stink before us. So be it. Farewell.’

  The Duke laughed not a little at this ridiculous oration, but that very night as great an ironical occasion was ministered, for he was bidden to one of the chief schools to a comedy handled by scholars. Acolastus, the Prodigal Child163 was the name of it, which was so filthily acted, so leathernly set forth, as would have moved laughter in Hera-clitus. One, as if he had been planing a clay floor, stampingly trod the stage so hard with his feet that I thought verily he had resolved to do the carpenter that set it up some utter shame. Another flung his arms like cudgels at a pear tree, insomuch as it was mightily dreaded that he would strike the candles that hung above their heads out of their sockets and leave them all dark. Another did nothing but wink and make faces. There was a parasite, and he with clapping his hands and thripping164 his fingers seemed to dance an antic to and fro. The only thing they did well was the prodigal child’s hunger, most of their scholars being hungerly kept. And surely you would have said they had been brought up in Hog’s Academy to learn to eat acorns, if you had seen how sedulously they fell to them. Not a jest had they to keep their auditors from sleeping but of swill and draff. Yes, now and then the servant put his hand into the dish before his master and almost choked himself, eating slovenly and ravenously to cause sport.

  The next day they had solemn disputations, where Luther and Carolostadius scolded level coil.165 A mass of words I wot well they heaped up against the Mass and the Pope, but farther particulars of their disputations I remember not. I thought verily they would have worried one another with words, they were so earnest and vehement. Luther had the louder voice; Carolostadius went beyond him in beating and bouncing with his fists. Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos:166 they uttered nothing to make a man laugh, therefore I will leave them. Marry, their outward gestures would now and then afford a man a morsel of mirth: of those two I mean not so much, as of all the other train of opponents and respondents. One pecked like a crane with his forefinger at every half-syllable he brought forth, and nodded with his nose like an old singing-man teaching a young quirister to keep time. Another would be sure to wipe his mouth with his handkerchief at the end of every full point, and ever when he thought he had cast a figure so curiously167 as he dived over head and ears into his auditors’ admiration, he would take occasion to stroke up his hair, and twine up his mustachios twice or thrice over, while they might have leisure to applaud him. A third wavered and waggled his head, like a proud horse playing with his bridle, or, as I have seen some fantastical swimmer, at every stroke, train his chin side-long over his left shoulder. A fourth sweat and foamed at the mouth for very anger his adversary had denied that part of the syllogism which he was not prepared to answer. A fifth spread his arms like an usher that goes before to make room, and thripped with his finger and his thumb when he thought he had tickled it with a conclusion. A sixth hung down his countenance like a sheep, and stuttered and slavered very pitifully when his invention was stepped aside out of the way. A seventh gasped and gaped for wind and groaned in his pronunciation as if he were hard bound with some bad argument. Gross plodders they were all, that had some learning and reading, but no wit to make use of it. They imagined the Duke took the greatest pleasure and contentment under heaven to hear them speak Latin, and as long as they talked nothing but Tully he was bound to attend them. A most vain thing it is in many universities at this day, that they count him excellent eloquent who stealeth, not whole phrases, but whole pages out of Tully. If of a number of shreds of his sentences he can shape an oration, from all the world he carries it away,168 although in truth it be no more than a fool’s coat of many colours. No invention or matter have they of their own, but tack up a style of his stale gallimaufries. The leaden-headed Germans first began this, and we Englishmen have surfeited of their absurd imitation. I pity Nizolius169 that had nothing to do but pick threads’ ends out of an old overworn garment.

  This is but by the way: we must look back to our disputants. One amongst the rest, thinking to be more conceited170 than his fellows, seeing the Duke have a dog he loved well, which sat by him on the tarras,171 converted all his oration to him, and not a hair of his tail but he combed out with comparisons: so to have courted him, if he were a bitch, had been very suspicious. Another commented and descanted on the Duke’s staff, new-tipping it with many quaint epithets. Some cast his nativity and promised him he should not die until the Day of Judgment. Omitting further superfluities of this stamp, in this general assembly we found intermixed that abundant scholar Cornelius Agrippa.172 At that time he bare the fame to be the greatest conjurer in Christendom. Scoto,173 that did the juggling tricks before the Queen, never came near him one quarter in magic reputation. The doctors of Wittenberg, doting on the rumour that went of him, desired him before the Duke and them to do something extraordinary memorable.

  One requested to see pleasant Plautus, and that he would show them in what habit he went, and with what countenance he looked when he ground corn in the mill. Another had half a month’s mind174 to Ovid and his hook nose. Erasmus, who was not wanting in that honourable meeting, requested to see Tully in that same grace and majesty he pleaded his oration pro Roscio Amerino,175 affirming that till in person he beheld his importunity of pleading, he would in no wise be persuaded that any man could carry away a manifest case with rhetoric so strangely. To Erasmus’ petition he easily condescended, and willing the doctors at such an hour to hold their convocation and everyone to keep him in his place without moving, at the time prefixed, in entered Tully, ascended his pleading-place, and declaimed verbatim the forenamed oration, but with such astonishing amazement, with such fervent exaltation of spirit, with such soul-stirring gestures, that all his auditors were ready to instal his guilty client for a god.

  Great was the concourse of glory Agrippa drew to him with this one feat. And indeed he was so cloyed with men that came to behold him that he was fain, sooner than he would, to return to the Emperor’s Court from whence he came, and leave Wittenberg before he would. With him we travelled along, having purchased his acquaintance a little before. By the way as we went, my master and I agreed to change names. It was concluded betwixt us that I should be the Earl of Surrey and he my man, only because in his own person, which he would not have reproached, he meant to take more liberty of behaviour; as for my carriage, he knew he was to tune it at a key either high or low, as he list.

  To the Emperor’s Court we came, where our entertainment was every way plentiful. Carouses we had in whole gallons instead of quart pots. Not a health was given us but contained well-near a hogshead.176 The customs of the country we were eager to be instructed in, but nothing we could learn but this: that ever at the Emperor’s coronation there is an ox roasted with a stag in the belly, and that stag in his belly hath a kid, and that kid is stuffed full of birds. Some courtiers, to weary out time, would tell us further tales of Cornelius Agrippa, and how when Sir Thomas More, our countryman, was there, he showed him the whole destruction of Troy in a dream. How, the Lord Cromwell being the King’s Ambassador there, in like case, in a perspective glass he set before his eyes King Henry the Eighth with all his lords on hunting in his forest at Windsor, and (when he came into his study and was very urgent to be partaker of some rare experiment, that he might report when he came into England) he willed him amongst two thousand great books down which he list, and begin to read one line in any place, and without book he would rehearse twenty leaves following. Cromwell did so, and in many books tried him, when in everything he exceeded his promise and conquered his expectation. To Charles the Fifth, then Emperor, they reported how he showed the Nine Worthies (David, Solomon, Gideon and the rest) in that similitude and likeness that they lived upon earth. My master and I, having by the highway-side gotten some reasonable familiarity with him,
upon this access of miracles imputed to him, resolved to request him something in our own behalfs. I, because I was his suborned lord and master, desired him to see the lively image of Geraldine, his love, in the glass, and what at that instant she did and with whom she was talking. He showed her us without any more ado, sick weeping on her bed, and resolved all into devout religion for the absence of her lord. At the sight thereof he could in no wise refrain, though he had took upon him the condition of a servant, but he must forthwith frame this extemporal ditty:177

  All soul, no earthly flesh, why dost thou fade?

  All gold, no worthless dross, why look’st thou pale?

  Sickness, how dar’st thou one so fair invade,

  Too base infirmity to work her bale?

  Heaven be distemper’d since she grieved pines,

  Never be dry, these my sad plaintive lines.

  Perch thou, my spirit, on her silver breasts,