by Thomas Nashe
I had a crotchet in my head, here to have given the reins to my pen, and run astray throughout all the coast towns of England, digging up their dilapidations, and raking out of the dust-heap or charnel house of tenebrous eld the rottenest relic of their monuments, and bright-scoured the canker-eaten brass of their first bricklayers and founders, and commented and paralogized91 on their condition in the present and in the pretertense;92 not for any love or hatred I bear them, but that I would not be snibbed93 or have it cast in my dish that therefore I praise Yarmouth so rantantingly,94 because I never elsewhere baited my horse, or took my bow and arrows and went to bed. Which leasing,95 had I been let alone, I would have put to bed with a recumbentibus,96 by uttering the best that with a safe conscience mought be uttered of the best or worst of them all; and notwithstanding all at best that tongue could speak or heart could think of them, they should bate me an ace of97 Yarmouth. Much braintossing and breaking of my skull it cost me, but farewell it; and farewell the bailies of the cinq ports, whose primordiat98 Genethliaca99 was also dropping out of my inkhorn with the silver ore of their baronry by William the Conqueror conveyed over to them at that nick100 when he firmed and rubricked the Kentishmen’s gavelkind101 of the son to inherit at fifteen, and the felony of the father not to draw a foot of land from the son, and amongst the sons the portion to be equally distributed; and if there were no sons, much good do it the daughters, for they were to share it after the same tenure, and might alienate it how they would, either by legacy or bargain, without the consent of the lord.
To shun spite I smothered these dribblements, and refrained to descant how William the Conqueror, having heard the proverb of Kent and Christendom,102 thought he had won a country as good as all Christendom when he was enfeoffed103 of Kent, for which, to make it sure unto him after he was entailed thereunto, nought they asked they needed to ask twice, it being enacted ere the word’s came out of their mouth. Of that profligated labour yet my breast pants and labours. A whole month’s mind of revolving meditation I ravelling out therein (as ravelling out signifies Penelopes telam retexere,104 the unweaving of a web before woven and contexted). It pities me, it pities me, that in cutting of so fair a diamond as Yarmouth, I have not a casket of dusky Cornish diamonds by me, and a box of muddy foils, the better to set it forth. Ut nemo miser nisi comparatus, sic nihil pro mirifico nisi cum aliis conferatur. Cedite soli, stellae scintillantes; soli Garrianano cedite, reliqua oppida veligera, sedium navalium speciocissimo. Sed redeo ad vernaculum.105
All commonwealths assume their prenominations106 of their common divided weal, as where one man hath not too much riches, and another man too much poverty. Such was Plato’s community, and Lycurgus’107 and the old Romans’ laws of measuring out their fields, their meads, their pastures and houses, and meeting out to every one his child’s portion. To this Commune bonum (or every horse his loaf) Yarmouth in propinquity is as the buckle to the thong, and the next finger to the thumb. Not that it is sib or cater-cousins108 to any mongrel Democratia, in which one is all and all is one, but that in her, as they are not all one, so one or two there pockets not up all the pieces; there being two hundred in it worth three hundred pound apiece, with poundage and shillings to the lurched,109 set aside the bailiffs, four and twenty,110 and eight and forty. Put out mine eye, who can, with such another brag of any sea-town within two hundred mile of it. But this common good within itself is nothing to the common good it communicates to the whole state. Shall I particularize unto you quibus viis et modis,111 how and wherein? There is my hand to, I will do it; and this is my exordium.112 A town of defence it is to the counties of Suffolk and Norfolk against the enemies (so accounted at the first granting of their liberties), and by the natural strength of the situation so apparent, being both environed with many sands, and now of late by great charge much more fortified than in ancient times. All the realm it profiteth many ways, as by the free fare of herring chiefly, maintained by the fishermen of Yarmouth themselves, by the great plenty of salted fish there, not so little two years past as four hundred thousand, wherein were employed about fourscore sail of barks of their own.
By the furnishing forth of forty boats for mackerel at the spring of the year when all things are dearest, which is a great relief to all the country thereabouts, and soon after Bartlemew-tide,113 a hundred and twenty sail of their own for herrings, and forty sail of other ships and barks trading Newcastle, the Low Countries and other voyages. Norwich, at Her Majesty’s coming in progress thither,114 presented her with a show of knitters on a high stage placed for the nonce. Yarmouth, if the like occasion were, could clap up as good a show of netbraiders, or those that have no clothes to wrap their hides in or bread to put in their mouths but what they earn and get by braiding of nets (not so little as two thousand pound they yearly dispersing amongst the poor women and children of the country for the spinning of twine to make them with, besides the labour of the inhabitants in working them); and, for a commodious green place near the seashore to mend and dry them, no Salisbury Plain or Newmarket Heath (though they have no vicinity or neighbourhood with the sea, or scarce with any ditch or pond of freshwater) may overpeer or outcrow her, there being above five thousand pounds worth of them at a time upon her dens115 a-sunning. A convenient quay within her haven she hath, for the delivery of nets and herrings, where you may lie afloat at a low water (I beseech you do not so in the Thames), many serviceable mariners and seafaring men she traineth up (but of that in the herring).
The marishes and lower grounds lying upon the three rivers that vagary116 up to her, comprehending many thousand acres, by the vigilant preservation of their haven are increased in value more than half, which else would be a Maeotis palus,117 a meer or lake of eels, frogs and wild-ducks. The City of Norwich, as in the Preludium hereof I had a twitch at, fares ne’er the worse for her, nor would fare so well if it were not for the fish of all sorts that she cloyeth her with, and the fellowship of their haven, into which their three rivers infuse themselves, and through which their goods and merchandise from beyond seas are keeled up with small cost to their very thresholds, and to many good towns on this side and beyond. I would be loth to build a labyrinth in the gatehouse of my book, for you to lose yourselves in, and therefore I shred off many things. We will but cast over the bill of her charge, and talk a word or two of her buildings, and break up and go to breakfast with the red herring. The haven hath cost in these twenty-eight years, six-and-twenty thousand, two hundred and six-and-fifty pound, four shillings and five pence. Fortification and poulder118 since Anno 1587, two thousand marks, and sea-service in Anno 1588, eight hundred pounds, the Portingale voyage119 a thousand pound, the voyage to Cales120 as much.
It hath lost by the Dunkerkers121 a thousand pound, by the Frenchmen three thousand, by Wafting122 eight hundred, by the Spaniards and other losses not rated, at the least three thousand more. The continual charge of the town in maintenance of their haven, five hundred pounds a year, Omnibus annis for ever, the feefarm123 of the town fifty-five pound, and five pound a year above for Kirtley Road. The continual charge of the bridge over the haven, their walls and a number of other odd reckonings we deal not with; towards all which they have not in certain revenues above fifty or three-score pounds a year, and that is in houses. The yearly charge towards the provision of fish for Her Majesty one thousand pounds; as for arable matters of tillage and husbandry, and grazing of cattle, their barren sands will not bear them, and they get not a beggar’s noble by one or other of them, but their whole harvest is by sea.
It were to be wished that other coasters were so industrious as the Yarmouth, in winning the treasure of fish out of those profundities, and then we should have twenty eggs a penny, and it would be as plentiful a world as when abbeys stood. And now, if there be any plentiful world, it is in Yarmouth. Her sumptuous porches and garnished buildings are such as no port town in our British circumference (nay, take some port city’s overplus into the bargainer) may suitably stake with, or adequate.124
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sp; By the proportion of the east surprised Gades or Cales divers have tried their cunning to configurate a twinlike image of it,125 both in the correlative analogy of the span-broad rows running betwixt, as also of the skirt or lappet126 of earth whereon it stands; herein only limiting the difference, that the houses here are not such flat custard crowns at the top as they are. But I for my part cast it aside as too obscure a canton to demonstrate and take the altitude by of so Elizian a habitation as Yarmouth. Of a bounzing side-wasted127 parish in Lancashire we have a flying voice dispersed, where they go nine mile to church every Sunday, but parish-for-parish throughout Lancashire, Cheshire, or Wingandecoy,128 both for numbers in gross of honest householders, youthful courageous valiant spirits, and substantial grave burghers, Yarmouth shall drop vie129 with them to the last Edward groat they are worth. I am posting to my proposed scope, or else I could run ten quire of paper out of breath, in further traversing her rights and dignities.
But of that fraught I must not take in too liberal, in case I want stowage for my red herring, which I rely upon as my wealthiest loading. Farewell, flourishing Yarmouth, and be every day more flourishing than other until the latter day. Whiles I have my sense or existence, I will persist in loving thee, and so with this abrupt Post script I leave thee. I have not travelled far, though conferred with farthest travellers, from our own realm. I have turned over Venerable Bede, and plenteous beadrolls130 of fiery annals following on the back of him. Polidore Vergil, Buchanan, Camden’s Britannia, and most records of friends or enemies I have searched, as concerning the later model of it; none of the inland parts thereof but I have traded them as frequently as the middle walk in Paul’s,131 or my-way to bed every night, yet for aught I have read, heard or seen, Yarmouth, regal Yarmouth, of all maritime towns that are no more but fisher towns, solely reigneth sans peer.
Not anywhere is the Word severer practised, the preacher reverentlier observed and honoured, justice sounder ministered, and a warlike people peaceablier demeanoured, betwixt this and the Grand Cathay, and the strand of Prester John.
Adieu, adieu, ten-thousand-fold delicate paramour of Neptune; the next year my standish132 may happen to address another voyage unto thee, if this have any acceptance. Now it is high heaking time,133 and be the winds never so easterly adverse and the tide fled from us, we must violently tow and hale in our redoubtable Sophy134 of the floating kingdom of Pisces, whom so much as by name I should not have acknowledged, had it not been that I mused how Yarmouth should be invested in such plenty and opulence, considering that in Mr Hakluyt’s135 English Discoveries I have not come in ken of one mizzen-mast of a man-of-war bound for the Indies or Mediterranean stern-bearer sent from her zenith or meridian, mercurial-breasted136 Mr Harborne137 always excepted, a rich spark of eternity first lighted and enkindled at Yarmouth, or there first bred and brought forth to see the light, who since, in the hottest degrees of Leo, hath echoing noised the name of our island and of Yarmouth so Tritonly that not an infant of the curtailed skinclipping pagans but talk of London as frequently as of their prophet’s tomb at Maecha, and as much worships our maidenpeace as it were but one sun that shined over them all. Our first ambassador was he to the Behemoth of Constantinople, and as Moses was sent from the omnipotent God of heaven to persuade with Sultan Pharoah to let the children of Israel go, so from the prepotent goddess of the earth, Eliza, was he sent to set free the English captives and open unto us the passage into the Red Sea and Euphrates. How impenetrable138 he was in mollifying the adamantinest tyranny of mankind and hourly crucifier of Jesus Christ crucified, and rooter up of Palestine, those that be scrutinous to pry into, let them resolve the digests of our English discoveries cited up in the precedence, and be documentized most locupletely.139 Of him and none but him, who, in valuation is worth eighteen huge Argosies full of our present-dated misshapen childish travellers, have I took scent or come in the wind of, that ever Yarmouth unshelled or engendered to weather it on, till they lost the North Star, or sailed just Antipodes against us. Nor, walking in her streets so many weeks together, could I meet with any of these swaggering captains (captains that wore a whole ancient140 in a scarf, which made them go heave-shouldered,141 it was so boisterous), or huftytufty142 youthful ruffling comrades, wearing every one three yards of feather in his cap for his mistress’ favour, such as we stumble on at each second step at Plymouth, Southampton and Portsmouth, but an universal merchantly formality in habit, speech, gestures, though little merchandise they beat their heads about, Queen Norwich for that going between them and home.
At length (oh, that length of the full-point spoils me; all gentle readers, I beseech you pardon me) I fell a-communing hereupon with a gentleman, a familiar of mine, and he eftsoons defined unto me that the red herring was this old Ticklecob or Magister fac totum, that brought in the red ruddocks143 and the grummel144 seed as thick as oatmeal, and made Yarmouth for argent to put down the City of Argentine. ‘Do but convert’, said he, ‘the slenderest twinkling reflex of your eye-sight to this flinty ring that engirts it, these towered walls, portcullised gates, and gorgeous architectures that condecorate and adorn it, and then perponder of the red herring’s priority and prevalence, who is the only unexhaustible mine that hath raised and begot all this, and minutely to riper maturity fosters and cherisheth it. The red herring alone it is that countervails the burdensome detriments of our haven, which every twelve-month devours a Justice of Peace’s living, in wears and banks to beat off the sand and overthwart ledging145 and fencing it in; that defrays all impositions and outward payments to Her Majesty (in which Yarmouth gives not the wall to146 six, though sixteen moth-eaten burgess towns, that have daubers and thatchers to their mayors, challenge in parliament the upper hand of it), and, for the vanward or suburbs of my narration, that empalls147 our sage senators or Ephori148 in princely scarlet as pompous ostentive as the Vinti quater149 of Lady Troynovant.150 Wherefore,’ quoth he, ‘if there be in thee any whit of that unquenchable sacred fire of Apollo (as all men repute) and that Minerva amongst the number of her heirs hath adopted thee, or thou wilt commend thy muse to sempiternity, and have images and statues erected to her after her unstringed silent interment and obsequies, rouse thy spirits out of this drowsy lethargy of melancholy they are drenched in, and wrest them up to the most outstretched airy strain of elocution to chant and carol forth the Alteza and excelsitude of this monarchal floody Induperator.’151
Very tractable to this lure I was trained, and put him not to the full anviling of me with any sound hammering persuasion, in that at the first sight of the top-gallant towers of Yarmouth, and a week before he had broken any of these words betwixt his teeth, my muse was ardently inflamed to do it some right; and how to bring it about fitter I knew not than in the praise of the red herring, whose proper soil and nursery it is. But this I must give you to wit, however I have took it upon me: that never since I spouted ink was I of worse aptitude to go through with such a mighty March-brewage as you expect, or temper you one right cup of that ancient wine of Falernum, which would last forty year, or consecrate to your fame a perpetual temple of the pine-trees of Ida,152 which never rot. For besides the loud bellowing prodigious flaw153 of indignation stirred up against me in my absence and extermination from the upper region of our celestial regiment, which hath dung154 me in a manner down to the infernal bottom of desolation, and so troubledly bemuddled with grief and care every cell or organ-pipe of my purer intellectual faculties, that no more they consort with any ingenuous playful merriments, of my note-books and all books else here in the country I am bereaved, whereby I might enamel and hatch-over this device more artificially and masterly, and attire it in his true orient varnish and tincture. Wherefore heart and good will, a workman is nothing without his tools. Had I my topics by me instead of my learned counsel to assist me, I might haps marshal my terms in better array, and bestow such costly coquery155 on this Marine Magnifico as you would prefer him before tart and galingale,156 which Chaucer157 preheminentest encomionizeth158 above all junke
tries159 or confectionaries whatsoever.
Now you must accept of it as the place serves, and, instead of comfits and sugar to strew him with, take well in worth a farthing worth of flour to white him over and wamble160 him in, and I having no great pieces to discharge for his benvenue, or welcoming in, with this volley of Rhapsodies or small shot he must rest pacified, and so ad rem,161 spur cut through thick and thin, and enter the triumphal chariot of the red herring.
HOMER of rats and frogs hath heroicked it.162 Other oaten pipers after him in praise of the gnat, the flea, the hazel-nut, the grasshopper, the butterfly, the parrot, the popinjay, Philip-sparrow, and the cuckoo; the wantoner sort of them sing descant on their mistress’ glove, her ring, her fan, her looking glass, her pantofle,163 and on the same jury I might impanel Johannes Secundus,164 with his book of the two hundred kind of kisses. Philosophers come sneaking in with their paradoxes of poverty, imprisonment, death, sickness, banishment and baldness, and as busy they are about the bee, the stork, the constant turtle, the horse, the dog, the ape, the ass, the fox and the ferret. Physicians deafen our ears with the Honorificabilitudinitatibus165 of their heavenly panachaea,166 their sovereign guaiacum,167 their glisters,168 their triacles,169 their mithridates170 of forty several poisons compacted, their bitter rhubarb and torturing stibium.171
The posterior172 Italian and German cornugraphers173 stick not to174 applaud and cannonize unnatural sodomitry, the strumpet errant, the gout, the ague, the dropsy, the sciatica, folly, drunkenness, and slovenry. The Galli Gallinacei, or cocking French, swarm every pissing while175 in their primer editions, Imprimeda iour duy176 of the unspeakable healthful conducibleness177 of the Gomorrian178 great Poco, a Poco,179 their true countryman every inch of him, the prescript laws of tennis or balonne180 (which is most of their gentlemen’s chief livelihoods), the commodity of hoarseness, blear-eyes, scabbed hams, threadbare cloaks, potched eggs, and panados.181 Amongst our English harmonious calinos182 one is up with the excellence of the brown bill183 and the long bow; another plays his prizes in print, in driving it home with all weapons in right of the noble science of defence; a third writes passing enamorately of the nature of white-meats,184 and justifies it under his hand to be bought and sold everywhere, that they exceed nectar and ambrosia; a fourth comes forth with something in praise of nothing; a fifth of an enflamed heel185 to coppersmith’s hall, all-to-berhymes186 it of the diversity of red noses, and the hierarchy of the rose magnificat. A sixth sweeps behind the door all earthly felicities, and makes baker’s malkins187 of them, if they stand in competency with a strong dozen of points; marry, they must be points of the matter, you must consider, whereof the foremost cod-piss point is the crane’s proverb in painted clothes, ‘Fear God and obey the King’; and the rest, some have tags and some have none. A seventh sets a tobacco pipe instead of a trumpet to his mouth, and of that divine drug proclaimeth miracles. An eighth capers it up to the spheres in commendation of dancing. A ninth offers sacrifice to the goddess Cloaca,188 and disports himself very scholarly and wittily about the reformation of close-stools189 and houses of office,190 and spicing and embalming their rank entrails that they stink not. A tenth sets forth remedies of toasted turves against famine.
