by Thomas Nashe
The Anatomy of Absurdity (M., 1, 33).
POOR SCHOLARS
Learning nowadays gets no living if it come empty-handed. Promotion, which was wont to be the free-propounded palm of pains,4 is by many men’s lamentable practice become a purchase. Whenas wits of more towardness5 shall have spent some time in the university and have as it were tasted the elements of art and laid the foundation of knowledge, if by the death of some friend they should be withdrawn from their studies, as yet altogether raw and so consequently unfit for any calling in the Commonwealth, where should they find a friend to be unto them instead of a father, or one to perfect that which their deceased parents began? Nay, they may well betake themselves to some trade of husbandry for any maintenance they get in the way of alms at the university, or else take upon them to teach, being more fit to be taught, and perch into the pulpit, their knowledge being yet imperfect, very zealously preaching, being as yet scarce grounded in religious principles. How can those men call home the lost sheep that are gone astray, coming into the ministry before their wits be staid? This green fruit, being gathered before it be ripe, is rotten before it be mellow, and infected with schisms before they have learnt to bridle their affections, affecting innovations as newfangled, and enterprising alterations whereby the Church is mangled.
The Anatomy of Absurdity. (M., I, 37).
ADVICE TO SCHOLARS
There be three things which are wont to slack young students’ endeavour: negligence, want of wisdom, and fortune. Negligence, whenas we either altogether pretermit6 or more lightly pass over the thing we ought seriously to ponder. Want of wisdom when we observe no method in reading. Fortune is in the event of chance, either naturally happening, or whenas by poverty or some infirmity or natural dullness we are withdrawn from our studies and alienated from our intended enterprise by the imagination of the rareness of learned men. But as touching these three: for the first, that is to say negligent sloth, he is to be warned; for the second, he is to be instructed; for the third, he is to be helped. Let his reading be temperate, whereunto wisdom, not weariness, must prescribe an end. For, as immoderate fast, excessive abstinence and inordinate watchings are argued of intemperance, perishing with their immoderate use, so that these things never after can be performed as they ought in any measure; so the intemperate study of reading incurreth reprehension, and that which is laudable in his kind is blameworthy by the abuse. Reading, two ways is loathsome to the mind and troublesome to the spirit, both by the quality, namely if it be more obscure, and also by the quantity if it be more tedious, in either of which we ought to use great moderation lest that which is ordained to the refreshing of our wits be abused to the dulling of our senses. We read many things, lest by letting them pass we should seem to despise them. Some things we read lest we should seem to be ignorant in them. Other things we read not that we may embrace them, but eschew them. Our learning ought to be our lives’ amendment, and the fruits of our private study ought to appear in our public behaviour.
The Anatomy of Absurdity (M., I, 42 – 3).
2
from Preface to Greene’s Menaphon
ENGLISH SENECA, WHOLE HAMLETS AND ST JOHN’S IN CAMBRIDGE
IT is a common practice nowadays amongst a sort1 of shifting companions, that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint,2 whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinize their neck-verse3 if they should have need. Yet English Seneca4 read by candlelight yields many good sentences, as ‘Blood is a beggar,’ and so forth; and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets,5 I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches. But oh grief! Tempus edax rerum:6 what’s that will last always? The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be dry, and Seneca, let blood line by line and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage; which makes his famished followers to imitate the kid in Aesop,7 who, enamoured with the fox’s newfangles, forsook all hopes of life to leap into a new occupation. And these men, renouncing all possibilities of credit or estimation, to intermeddle with Italian translations, wherein how poorly they have plodded (as those that are neither provenzal men nor are able to distinguish of articles8), let all indifferent gentlemen that have travelled in that tongue discern by their two–penny pamphlets. And no marvel though their home-born mediocrity be such in this matter; for what can be hoped of those that thrust Elizium into hell, and have not learned, so long as they have lived in the spheres, the just measure of the horizon without an hexameter? Sufficeth them to bodge up a blank verse with ifs and ands, and otherwhile for recreation after their candle-stuff, having starched their beards most curiously, to make a peripatetical9 path into the inner parts of the City, and spend two or three hours in turning over French Dowdy,10 where they can attract more infection in one minute than they can do eloquence all days of their life by conversing with any authors of like argument.
But lest in this declamatory vein I should condemn all and commend none, I will propound to your learned imitation those men of import that have laboured with credit in this laudable kind of translation. In the forefront of whom I cannot but place that aged father Erasmus, that investest most of our Greek writers in the robes of the ancient Romans; in whose traces Philip Melancthon, Sadolet, Plantine, and many other reverent Germans insisting, have re-edified the ruins of our decayed libraries, and marvellously enriched the Latin tongue with the expense of their toil. Not long after, their emulation being transported into England, every private scholar, William Turner,11 and who not, began to vaunt their smattering of Latin in English impressions.
But amongst others in that age, Sir Thomas Elyot’s12 elegance did sever itself from all equals, although Sir Thomas More with his comical wit at that instant was not altogether idle. Yet was not Knowledge fully confirmed in her monarchy amongst us, till that most famous and fortunate nurse of all learning, Saint John’s in Cambridge, that at that time was as an university within itself, shining so far above all other houses, halls and hospitals whatsoever, that no college in the town was able to compare with the tithe of her students; having (as I have heard grave men of credit report) more candles lit in it every winter morning before four of the clock than the four-of-the-clock bell gave strokes; till she, I say, as a pitying mother put to her helping hand and sent, from her fruitful womb, sufficient scholars, both to support her own weal, as also to supply all other inferior foundations’ defects, and namely that royal erection of Trinity College, which the University Orator,13 in an Epistle to the Duke of Somerset, aptly termed Colonia deducta14 from the suburbs of Saint John’s. In which extraordinary conception, uno partu in rempublicam prodiere15 the Exchequer of Eloquence, Sir John Cheke,16 a man of men, supernaturally traded in all tongues, Sir John Mason, Doctor Watson, Redman, Ascham, Grindall, Lever, Pilkington: all which have, either by their private readings or public works, repurged the errors of art, expelled from their purity, and set before our eyes a more perfect method of study.
To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities (Preface to Greene’s Menaphon) (M., III, 315 – 17).
3
from Strange News
ROBERT GREENE1
IN short terms thus I demur upon thy long Kentish-tailed2 declaration against Greene.
He inherited more virtues than vices: a jolly long red peak, like the spire of a steeple, he cherished continually without cutting, whereat a man might hang a jewel, it was so sharp and pendent.
Why should art answer for the infirmities of manners? He had his faults, and thou thy follies.
Debt and deadly sin, who is not subject to? With any notorious crime I never knew him tainted (and yet tainting is no infamous surgery for him that hath been in so many hot skirmishes).
A good fellow he was, and would have drunk with thee for more angels3 than the lord4 thou libeledst on gave thee in Christ’s College; and in one year he pissed as much against the walls as thou and thy two brothers spent in three.
In a
night and a day would he have yarked up a pamphlet as well as in seven year, and glad was that printer that might be so blest to pay him dear for the very dregs of his wit.
He made no account of winning credit by his works, as thou dost; thou dost no good works, but thinks to be famoused by a strong faith of thy own worthiness. His only care was to have a spell in his purse to conjure up a good cup of wine with at all times.
For the lousy circumstance of his poverty before his death, and sending that miserable writ to his wife, it cannot be but thou liest, learned Gabriel.
I and one of my fellows, William Monox (hast thou never heard of him and his great dagger?), were in company with him a month before he died, at that fatal banquet of rhenish wine and pickled herring (if thou wilt needs have it so), and then the inventory of his apparel came to more than three shillings (though thou sayest the contrary). I know a broker in a spruce leather jerkin with a great number of gold rings on his fingers and a bunch of keys at his girdle shall give you thirty shillings for the doublet alone, if you can help him to it. Hark in your ear, he had a very fair cloak with sleeves, of a grave goose-turd green; it would serve you as fine as may be. No more words, if you be wise, play the good husband and listen after it: you may buy it ten shillings better cheap than it cost him. By St Silver, it is good to be circumspect in casting for the world;5 there’s a great many ropes go to ten shillings. If you want a greasy pair of silk stockings also, to show yourself in at the Court, they are there to be had too amongst his moveables. Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora: it is policy to take a rich pennyworth whiles it is offered.
Strange News or The Four Letters Confuted (M., I, 287 – 8).
4
from Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem
ATHEISTS
MOST of them, because they cannot grossly palpabrize1 or feel God with their bodily fingers, confidently and grossly discard Him. ‘Those that come to God must believe that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him’ (Hebrews 11). They, coming against God, believe that He is not, and that those prosper best, and are best rewarded, that set Him at naught. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork; one generation telleth another of the wonders He hath done’ (Psalm 18). Yet will not these faithless contradictors suffer any glory to be ascribed to Him. Stoutly they refragate2 and withstand, that the firmament is not His handiwork, nor will they credit one generation telling another of His wonders. They follow the pironicks,3 whose position and opinion it is that there is no hell or misery but opinion. Impudently they persist in it, that the late discovered Indians are able to show antiquities thousands4 before Adam.
With Cornelius Tacitus, they make Moses a wise provident man, well seen in the Egyptian learning, but deny he had any divine assistance in the greatest of his miracles. The water, they say, which he struck out of a rock in the wilderness, was not by any supernatural work of GOD, but by watching to what part the wild-asses repaired for drink.
With Albumazar, they hold that his leading the children of Israel over the Red Sea was no more but observing the influence of stars and waning season of the moon that withdraweth the tides. They seek not to know God in His works, or in His son Christ Jesus, but by His substance, His form, or the place wherein He doth exist. Because some late writers5 of our side have sought to discredit the story of Judith, of Susannah and Daniel, and of Bell and the Dragon, they think they may thrust all the rest of the Bible in like manner into the Jewish Thalmud, and tax it for a fabulous legend.
Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem (M., II, 115 – 16).
FROST-BITTEN INTELLECT
I am at my wits’ end, when I view how coldly, in comparison of other countrymen, our Englishmen write. How in their books of confutation they show no wit or courage as well as learning. In all other things Englishmen are the stoutest of all others, but being scholars and living in their own native soil, their brains are so pestered with full platters that they have no room to bestir them. Fie, fie, shall we, because we have lead and tin mines in England, have lead and tin muses? For shame, bury not your spirits in beef-pots. Let not the Italians call you dull-headed tramontani.6 So many dunces in Cambridge and Oxford are entertained as chief members into societies, under pretence, though they have no great learning, yet there is in them zeal and religion, that scarce the least hope is left us we should have any hereafter but blocks and images to confute blocks and images. That of Terence is oraculized: Patres aequum censere nos adolescentulos ilico a pueris fieri senes7 (‘Our fathers are now grown to such austerity as they would have us straight of children to become old men’). They will allow no time for a grey beard to grow in. If at the first peeping out of the shell a young student sets not a grave face on it, or seems not mortifiedly religious (have he never so good a wit, be he never so fine a scholar), he is cast off and discouraged. They set not before their eyes how all were not called at the first hour of the day, for then had none of us ever been called. That not the first son that promised his father to go into the vineyard went, but he that refused and said he would not, went That those blossoms which peep forth in the beginning of the spring are frost-bitten and die ere they can come to be fruit. That religion which is soon ripe is soon rotten.
Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem (M., II, 122 – 3).
GORGEOUS LADIES OF THE COURT
Just to dinner they will arise, and after dinner go to bed again, and lie until supper. Yea, sometimes, by no sickness occasioned, they will lie in bed three days together, provided every morning before four o’clock they have their broths and their cullises8 with pearl and gold sodden in them. If haply they break their hours and rise more early to go abanqueting, they stand practising half a day with their looking-glasses, how to pierce and to glance and to look alluringly amiable. Their feet are not so well framed to the measures as are their eyes to move and bewitch. Even as angels are painted in church-windows with glorious golden fronts beset with sunbeams, so beset they their foreheads on either side with glorious borrowed gleamy bushes; which, rightly interpreted, should signify beauty to sell, since a bush9 is not else hanged forth but to invite men to buy. And in Italy, where they set any beast to sale, they crown his head with garlands, and bedeck it with gaudy blossoms, as full as ever it may stick.
Their heads, with their top and top-gallant lawn baby-caps and snow-resembled silver curlings, they make a plain puppet stage of. Their breasts they embusk up on high, and their round roseate buds immodestly lay forth, to show at their hands there is fruit to be hoped. In their curious antic-woven garments, they imitate and mock the worms and adders that must eat them. They show the swellings of their mind in the swellings and plumpings out of their apparel. Gorgeous ladies of the Court, never was I admitted so near any of you as to see how you torture poor old Time with sponging, pinning and pouncing;10 but they say, his sickle you have burst in twain to make your periwigs more elevated arches of.
I dare not meddle with ye, since the philosopher11 that too intentively gazed on the stars stumbled and fell into a ditch; and many gazing too immoderately on our earthly stars fall in the end into the ditch of all uncleanness. Only this humble caveat let me give you by the way, that you look the devil come not to you in the likeness of a tailor or painter; that however you disguise your bodies, you lay not on your colours so thick that they sink into your souls. That your skins being too white without, your souls be not all black within.
It is not your pinches,12 your purls,13 your flowery jaggings,14 superfluous interlacings, and puffings up, that can any way offend God, but the puffings up of your souls which therein you express. For as the biting of a bullet is not that which poisons the bullet, but the lying of the gunpowder in the dint of the biting, so it is not the wearing of costly burnished apparel that shall be objected unto you for sin, but the pride of your hearts, which, like the moth, lies closely shrouded amongst the thrids of that apparel. Nothing else is garish apparel but Pride’s ulcer broken forth. How will you attire yourselves,
what gown, what head-tire will you put on, when you shall live in hell amongst hags and devils?
As many jags, blisters and scars shall toads, cankers and serpents make on your pure skins in the grave, as now you have cuts, jags or raisings upon your garments. In the marrow of your bones snakes shall breed. Your mornlike crystal countenances shall be netted over and, masker-like, cawlvizarded with crawling venomous worms. Your orient teeth toads shall steal into their heads for pearl; of the jelly of your decayed eyes shall they engender them young. In their hollow caves (their transplendent juice so pollutionately employed) shelly snails shall keep house.
Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem (M., II, 137 – 9).
STEWS AND STRUMPETS
London, what are thy suburbs but licensed stews? Can it be so many brothel-houses of salary sensuality and six-penny whoredom (the next door to the magistrates) should be set up and maintained, if bribes did not bestir them? I accuse none, but certainly justice somewhere is corrupted. Whole hospitals of ten-times-a-day dishonested strumpets have we cloistered together. Night and day the entrance unto them is as free as to a tavern. Not one of them but hath a hundred retainers. Prentices and poor servants they encourage to rob their masters. Gentlemen’s purses and pockets they will dive into and pick, even whiles they are dallying with them.
No Smithfield15 ruffianly swashbuckler will come off with such harsh hell-raking oaths as they. Every one of them is a gentlewoman, and either the wife of two husbands, or a bed-wedded bride before she was ten years old. The speech-shunning sores and sight-irking botches of their unsatiate intemperance they will unblushingly lay forth and jestingly brag of, wherever they haunt. To church they never repair. Not in all their whole life would they hear of GOD, if it were not for their huge swearing and foreswearing by Him.
