The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works

by Thomas Nashe

  This speech was no spirable odour to the Achelous of her audience.478 Wherefore she charged him by the extreme lineaments of the Erimanthian bear,479 and by the privy fistula of the Pierides,480 to commit no more such excruciating syllables to the yielding air, for she would sooner make her a Frenchhood of a cowshard481 and a gown of spiders’ webs, with the sleeves drawn out with cabbages, than be so contaminated any more with his abortive loathly motives. With this, in an Olympic rage, he calls for a clean shirt, and puts on five pair of buskins, and seeketh out eloquent Xenophon,482 out of whose mouth the Muses spake, to declame in open court against her.

  The action is entered the complaint of her withered brows presented, of a violent rape of his heart she is indicted and convinced. The circumstance that follows you may imagine or suppose; or, without supposing or imagining, I will tell you. The nut was cracked, the strife discussed, and the centre of her heart laid open, and to this wild of sorrows of excruciament she was confined either to be held a flat thorn-back or sharp pricking dog-fish to the weal public; or seal herself close to his seal-skinned rivelled483 lips, and suffer herself as a spirit to be conjured into the hellish circle of his embraces.

  It would not be, good cropshin; Madame Turbot could not away with such a dry, withered carcass to lie by her. Currat rex, vivat lex:484 come what would, she would none of him. Wherefore, as a poisoner of mankind with her beauty she was adjudged to be boiled to death in hot scalding water, and to have her posterity throughly sauced and soused and pickled in barrels of brinish tears, so ruthful and dolorous that the inhabitants of Bosphorus should be laxative in deploring it. Oh, for a legion of mice-eyed decipherers and calculators upon characters, now to augurate what I mean by this. The devil, if it stood upon his salvation, cannot do it, much less petty devils and cruel Rhadamants485 upon earth (elsewhere in France and Italy subintelligitur,486 and not in our aspicious487 island climate), men that have no means to purchase credit with their prince, but by putting him still in fear, and beating into his opinion that they are the only preservers of his life, in sitting up night and day insifting out treasons, when they are the most traitors themselves, to his life, health and quiet, in continual com-macerating488 him with dread and terror, when but to get a pension or bring him in their debt, next to God, for upholding his vital breath, it is neither so, nor so, but some fool, some drunken man, some mad man in an intoxicate humour hath uttered he knew not what, and they, being starved for intelligence or want of employment, take hold of it with tooth and nail, and in spite of all the waiters, will violently break into the King’s chamber, and awake him at midnight to reveal it.

  Say that a more piercing linceus’489 sight should dive into the entrails of this insinuating parasite’s knavery. To the strappado and the stretching torture he will refer it for trial, and there either tear him limb from limb, but he will extract some capital confession from him that shall concern the Prince’s life and his crown and dignity, and bring himself in such necessary request about his Prince as he may hold for his right hand and the only staff of his royalty, and think he were undone if he were without him, when the poor fellow so tyrannously handled would rather in that extremity of convulsion confess he crucified Jesus Christ than abide it any longer. I am not against it, for God forbid I should, that it behooves all loyal true subjects to be vigilant and jealous for their prince’s safety, and, certain, too jealous and vigilant of it they cannot be if they be good princes that reign over them, nor use too many means of disquisition by tortures or otherwise to discover treasons pretended against them; but upon the least wagging of a straw to put them in fear where no fear is, and make a hurly-burly in the realm upon ‘had I wist’, not so much for any zeal or love to their princes, or tender care of their preservation, as to pick thanks and curry a little favour that thereby they may lay the foundation to build a suit on or cross some great enemy they have, I will maintain it is most lewd and detestable. I accuse none, but such there have been belonging to princes in former ages, if there be not at this hour.

  Stay, let me look about. Where am I? In my text, or out of it? Not out, for a groat;490 out, for an angel.491 Nay, I’ll lay no wagers, for now I perponder more sadly492 upon it, I think I am out indeed. Bear with it, it was a pretty parenthesis of princes and their parasites, which shall do you no harm, for I will cloy you with herring before we part.

  Will you have the other riddle of the cropshin to make up the pair that I promised you? You shall, you shall (not have it, I mean) but bear with me, for I cannot spare it, and I persuade myself you will be well contented to spare it except it were better than the former. And yet I pray you what fault can you find with the former? Hath it any more sense in it than it should have? Is it not right of the merry cobbler’s cut in that witty play of The Case is Altered?493

  I will speak a proud word, though it may be counted arrogancy in me to praise mine own stuff. If it be not more absurd than Philips, his Venus,494 The White Tragedy or The Green Knight, or I can tell what English to make of it in part or in whole, I wish, in the foulest weather that is, to go in cut Spanish leather shoes or silk stockings or to stand barehead to a nobleman and not get of him the price of a periwig to cover my bare crown, no, not so much as a pipe of tobacco to raise my spirits and warm my brain.

  My readers peradventure may see more into it than I can. For in comparison of them, in whatsoever I set forth, I am Bernardus non vidit omnia,495 as blind as blind Bayard,496 and have the eyes of a beetle. Nothing from them is obscure, they being quicker sighted than the sun to spy in his beams the motes that are not, and able to transform the lightest murmuring gnat to an elephant. Carp or descant they as their spleen moves them, my spleen moves me not to file my hands with them, but to fall a crash497 more to the red herring.

  How many be there in the world that childishly deprave498 alchemy, and cannot spell the first letter of it! In the black book of which ignorant band of scorners it may be I am scorned up with the highest. If I be, I must entreat them to wipe me out, for the red herring hath lately been my ghostly father to convert me to their faith; the probatum est499 of whose transfiguration ex Luna in Solem,500 from his dusky tin hue into a perfect golden blandishment, only by the foggy smoke of the grossest kind of fire that is, illumines my speculative soul, what much more, not sophisticate or superficial effects, but absolute essential alterations of metals, there may be made by an artificial repurified flame and diverse other helps of nature added besides.

  Cornelius Agrippa maketh mention of some philosophers that held the skin of the sheep that bare the golden fleece to be nothing but a book of alchemy written upon it. So if we should examine matters to the proof, we should find the red herring’s skin to be little less. The accidens of alchemy I will swear it is, be it but for that experiment of his smoking alone, and, which is a secret that all tapsters will curse me for blabbing, in his skin there is plain witchcraft. For do but rub a can or quart pot round about the mouth with it, let the cunningest lickspigot swelt his heart out, the beer shall never foam or froth in the cup, whereby to deceive men of their measure, but be as settled as if it stood all night.

  Next, to draw on hounds to a scent, to a red herring skin there is nothing comparable. The round or cob501 of it dried and beaten to powder is ipse ille502 against the stone; and of the whole body of itself, the finest ladies beyond seas frame their kickshaws.503

  The rebel Jack Cade was the first that devised to put red herrings in cades,504 and from him they have their name. Now as we call it the swinging of herrings when we cade them, so in a halter was he swung and trussed up as hard and round as any cade of herring he trussed up in his time, and perhaps of his being so swung and trussed up, having first found out the trick to cade herring, they would so much honour him in his death as not only to call it swinging, but cading of herring also. If the text will bear this, we will force it to bear more, but it shall be but the weight of a straw, or the weight of Jack. Straw505 more; who, with the same Graeca fide506 I marted unto you the former, was
the first that put the red herring in straw over head and ears like beggars, and the fishermen upon that jack-strawed him ever after. And some, for he was so beggarly a knave that challenged to be a gentleman, and had no wit nor wealth but what he got by the warm wrapping up of herring, raised this proverb of him: ‘Gentleman Jack Herring,507 that puts his breeches on his head for want of wearing’. Other disgraceful proverbs of the herring there be, as ‘Ne’er a barrel better herring, neither flesh nor fish, nor good red herring’, which those that have bitten with ill bargains of either sort have dribbed forth508 in revenge, and yet not have them from Yarmouth; many coast towns besides it enterprising to curry, salt and pickle up herrings, but mar them because they want the right feat how to salt and season them. So I could pluck a crow509 with poet Martial for calling it putre halec, ‘the scald510 rotten herring’, but he meant that of the fat reasty511 Scottish herrings, which will endure no salt, and in one month (bestow what cost on them you will) wax rammish512 if they be kept, whereas our embarrelled white herrings, flourishing with the stately brand of Yarmouth upon them, scilicet513 the three half-lions and the three half-fishes with the crown over the head, last in long voyages, better than the red herring, and not only are famous at Roan, Paris, Diepe, Cane (whereof the first, which is Roan, serveth all the high countries of France with it, and Diepe, which is the last save one, victuals all Picardy with it), but here at home is made account of like a marquis and received at Court right solemnly. I care not much if I rehearse to you the manner, and that is thus.

  Every year about Lent tide, the sheriffs of Norwich bake certain herring pies (four-and-twenty, as I take it) and send them as a homage to the Lord of Caster hard by there, for lands that they hold of him; who presently upon the like tenure, in bouncing hampers, covered over with his cloth of arms, sees them conveyed to the Court in the best equipage. At Court when they arrived, his man rudely enters not at first but knocketh very civilly, and then officers come and fetch him with torchlight, where having disfraughted and unloaded his luggage, to supper he sets him down like a lord, with his wax lights before him, and hath his mess of meat allowed him with the largest, and his horses (quatenus horses514) are provendered as epicurely. After this, some four mark fee towards his charges is tendered him, and he jogs home again merrily.

  A white pickled herring? Why, it is meat for a prince. Haunce Vandervecke515 of Rotterdam, as a Dutch post informed me) in bare pickled herring laid out twenty thousand pound the last fishing. He had lost his drinking belike, and thought to store himself of medicines enough to recover it.

  Noble Caesarian Charlemagne herring, Pliny and Gesner516 were to blame they slubbered thee over so negligently. I do not see why any man should envy thee, since thou art none of these lurcones or epulones,517 gluttons or fleshpots of Egypt (as one that writes of the Christians’ captivity under the Turk enstyleth us English men), nor livest thou by the unliving or eviscerating of others, as most fishes do, or by any extraordinary filth whatsoever, but, as the chameleon liveth by the air and the salamander by the fire, so only by the water art thou nourished and nought else, and must swim as well dead as live.

  Be of good cheer, my weary readers, for I have espied land, as Diogenes518 said to his weary scholars when he had read to a waste leaf. Fishermen, I hope, will not find fault with me for fishing before the net, or making all fish that comes to the net in this history, since, as the Athenians bragged they were the first that invented wrastling, and one Ericthonius amongst them that he was the first that joined horses in collar couples for drawing, so I am the first that ever set quill to paper in praise of any fish or fishermen.

  Not one of the poets aforetime could give you or the sea a good word. Ovid saith Nimium ne credite ponto: the sea is a slippery companion, take heed how you trust him, and further Periurii poenas repetit ille locus: it is a place like hell, good for nothing but to punish perjurers. With innumerable invectives more against it throughout in every book.

  Plautus in his Rudens bringeth in fishermen cowthring519 and quaking, dung-wet after a storm, and complaining their miserable case in this form: Captamus cibutn e mari; si eventus non venit, neque quicquam captum est pisctum, salsi lautique domum redimus clanculum, dormimus incoenati (‘All the meat that we eat we catch out of the sea, and if there we miss, well washed and salted, we sneak home to bed supperless’). And upon the tail of it he brings in a parasite that flouteth and bourdeth520 them thus: Heus vos familica gens hominum ut vivitis? ut peritis?: hough, you hunger-starved gubbins or offals of men, how thrive you, how perish you? And they, cringing in their necks, like rats smothered in the hold, poorly replicated Vivimus fame, speque, sitique, with hunger and hope and thirst we content ourselves. If you would not misconceit that I studiously intended your defamation, you should have thick hailshot of these.

  Not the lousy riddle521 wherewith fishermen constrained, some say. Homer, some say another philosopher, to drown himself because he could not expound it, but should be dressed and set before you supernagulum,522 with eight-score more galliard cross-points523 and kickshiwinshes524 of giddy earwig brains, were it not I thought you too fretful and choleric with feeding altogether on salt meats to have the secrets of your trade in public displayed. Will this appease you, that you are the predecessors of the Apostles, who were poorer fishermen than you, that for your seeing wonders in the deep, you may be the sons and heirs of the prophet Jonas, that you are all cavaliers and gentlemen since the King of Fishes vouchsafed you for his subjects, that for your selling smoke525 you may be courtiers, for your keeping of fasting-days Friar Observants, and lastly, that, look in what town there is the sign of The Three Mariners, the huffcapest526 drink in that house you shall be sure of always?

  No more can I do for you than I have done, were you my god-children every one. God make you his children and keep you from the Dunkirks,527 and then I doubt not but when you are driven into harbour by fould weather, the cans shall walk to the health of Nashe’s Lenten Stuff and the praise of the red herring, and even those that attend upon the pitch-kettle528 will be drunk to my good fortunes and recommendations. One boon you must not refuse me in, if you be boni socii529 and sweet Olivers,530 that you let not your rusty swords sleep in their scabbards, but lash them out in my quarrel as hotly as if you were to cut cables or hew the main mast overboard, when you hear me mangled and torn in men’s mouths about this playing with a shuttlecock or tossing empty bladders in the air.

  Alas, poor hungerstarved muse, we shall have some spawn of a goose-quill or over-worn pander quirking and girding,531 was it so hard-driven that it had nothing to feed upon but a red herring? Another drudge of the pudding-house532 (all whose lawful means to live by throughout the whole year will scarce purchase him a red herring) says I might as well have writ of a dog’s turd (in his teeth surreverence533). But let none of these scum of the suburbs be too vinegar-tart with me; for if they be, I’ll take mine oath upon a red herring and eat it to prove that their fathers, their grandfathers, and their great-grandfathers, or any other of their kin were scullion’s dishwash and dirty draff and swill, set against a red herring. The puissant red herring, the golden Hesperides red herring, the Meonian534 red herring, the red herring of Red Herrings’ Hall, every pregnant peculiar of whose resplendent laud and honour to delineate and adumbrate to the ample life were a work that would drink dry fourscore and eighteen Castalian fountains of eloquence, consume another Athens of fecundity, and abate the haughtiest poetical fury twixt this and the burning zone and the tropic of Cancer. My conceit is cast into a sweating sickness, with ascending these few steps of his renown. Into what a hot broiling Saint Lawrence fever535 would it relapse then, should I spend the whole bag of my wind in climbing up to the lofty mountain-crest of his trophies? But no more wind will I spend on it but this: Saint Denis

  for France, Saint James for Spain, Saint

  Patrick for Ireland, Saint George for

  England, and the red herring

  for Yarmouth.

  6

 
The Choice of Valentines

  To the Right Honourable the Lord S.1

  Pardon, sweet flower of matchless poetry,

  And fairest bud the red rose ever bare,

  Although my muse divorc’d from deeper care

  Presents thee with a wanton elegy.2

  Ne blame my verse of loose unchastity

  For painting forth the things that hidden are,

  Since all men act what I in speech declare,

  Only induced by variety.3

  Complaints and praises everyone can write,

  And passion-out their pangs in stately rhymes,

  But of love’s pleasures none did ever write

  That hath succeeded in these latter times.

  Accept of it, dear Lord, in gentle gree,4

  And better lines ere long shall honour thee.

  THE CHOOSING OF VALENTINES

  It was the merry month of February,

  When young men in their jolly roguery

  Rose early in the morn ‘fore break of day

  To seek them valentines so trim and gay,

  With whom they may consort in summer-sheen

  And dance the heidegeies5 on our town-green,

  As Ale‘s6 at Easter or at Pentecost

  Perambulate the fields that flourish most,