2 Ib. 400. Healey made an "exceptionally bad" translation
of St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei, which remained the only
English translation of that work until 1871.
3 In the Bodleian Library is a copy of the translation with
the title, The Discovery of a New World, Tenterbelly,
Sheeland, and Fooliana, London, n.d.
4 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 2d éd., II.
167.
While a later critic, Canon [47]Perry, says of it: "This strange
composition, sometimes erroneously described as a 'political romance,'
to which it bears no resemblance whatever, is a moral satire in prose,
with a strong undercurrent of bitter jibes at the Romish church, and its
eccentricities, which sufficiently betray the author's main purpose
in writing it. It shows considerable imagination, wit, and skill
in latinity, but it has not enough of verisimilitude to make it an
effective satire, and does not always avoid scurrility."{1} Like
Neville's production, the satire was misinterpreted.
The title of Neville's tract also recalls the lost play of Thomas
Nash--"The Isle of Dogs"--for which he was imprisoned on its appearance
in 1597, and suffered, as he asserted, for the indiscretion of others.
"As Actaeon was worried by his own hounds," wrote Francis Meres in his
"Palladis Tamia," "so is Tom Nash of his Isle of Dogs." And three
years later, in 1600, Nash referred in his "Summers Last Will" to the
excitement raised by his suppressed play. "Here's a coil about dogs
without wit! If I had thought the ship of fools would have stay'd to
take in fresh water at the Isle of Dogs, I would have furnish'd it with
a whole kennel of collections to the purpose." The incident was long
remembered. Nine years after Nash's experience John Day published his
"Isle of Gulls," drawn from Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia."{2}