Although I cannot at this time bring together positive and undoubted
evidence of the authorship of the following tract, (because the materials
are at present inaccessible to me,) at some future period, in the
Introduction to one of his accredited productions, I hope to place the
fact beyond the reach of cavil or question, that Thomas Nash, to whom
public fame has given it, was the author.
Nash was of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and took his degree of B.A.
in 1585. He is supposed to have quitted the university in some disgrace
about 1586, but of the cause we are entirely ignorant. The anonymous
author of a tract called “Polymanteia,” printed in 1595, thus alludes to
it: “Cambridge, make thy two children friends; thou hast been unkind to
one [Nash], to wean him before his time, and too fond upon the other
[Gabriel Harvey], to keep him so long without preferment; the one is
ancient and of small reading; the other is young and full of wit.” Nash
himself speaks of his beardless years, in Pierce Penniless; and Gabriel
Harvey, in his Pierce’s Supererogation, 1592, calls him “a gosling of
the printing house;” and in another place “a proper young man;” and
elsewhere, “a young man of the greenest spring, as beardless in judgment
as in face:” so that he must have taken his degree of B.A. early in life,
and we know that he never proceeded Master of Arts.
It would appear from the Introduction to the following tract that Nash
had visited Italy. Mr. Collier, in his Introduction to Nash’s Pierce
Penniless [Shakspeare Soc. 1842], says, “We find him [Nash] in London
in 1587, in which year he wrote a very amusing and clever introductory
epistle to a tract by the celebrated Robert Greene, called ‘Menaphon,’
afterwards better known by the name of ‘Greene’s Arcadia,’ the title it
bore in the later impressions. This seems to have been Nash’s earliest
appearance in the character of an author” [p. x. xi.], then adding in a
note, “We take the date of ‘Greene’s Menaphon,’ 1587, from the edition
of that author’s ‘Dramatic Works,’ by the Rev. A. Dyce.” Mr. Collier
apparently had forgotten that he had himself stated some years before
the fact of the Arcadia having been printed in 1587, “because in Greene’s
_Euphues_, his _Censure to Philautus_, of the same date, it is mentioned
as already in print.” [Hist. English Dramatic Poetry, vol. iii. p. 150.]
Whatever may be the date of the first edition of Greene’s Menaphon, we
have here only to do with Nash’s Preface to that work, and, though Sir
E. Brydges, in his reprint of it in 1814, mentions 1587, in which he is
followed by the Rev. A. Dyce in 1831, [Greene’s Works, II. c. iii], by
Mr. Collier above, in the same year, and again in 1842, all agreeing to
fix the date of Nash’s Preface in 1587; yet there is, if I mistake not,
internal evidence that it could not have been written before the date of
the first known edition, which is in 1589.
Of the accuracy of the extraordinary facts which Nash relates in the
Introduction to the Almond for a Parrot [pp. 5, 6], I had expected to
find confirmation in some book of travels of the time, but in this have
not succeeded.
Nash, in his Preface to Menaphon, addressed “To the Gentlemen Students
of both Universities,” evidently referring to the Puritans, mentions,
“the most poisonous Pasquils any dirty-mouthed _Martin_ or Momus ever
composed;” of their “spitting _ergo_ in the mouth of every one they
meet;” and, unless I am mistaken, the following refers to Penry: “But
when the irregular idiot, that was up to the ears in divinity before ever
he met with _probabile_ in the university, shall leave _pro et contra_
before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come to correct commonweals
that never heard of the name of magistrate before he came to Cambridge,
it is no marvel if every alehouse vaunt the table of the world turned
upside down, since the child beateth his father, and the ass whippeth his
master.” [Reprint of Menaphon, in Archaica, Pref. xiii., 4to, 1814.] The
allusions in the whole sentence can only be explained by referring them
to Martin Mar-Prelate’s “Epistle,” “Epitome,” &c., which were printed in
1588.
Secondly, Nash says, “It may be my _Anatomy of Absurdities_ may acquaint
you _ere long_ with my skill in surgery.” Now, the Anatomy of Absurdities
came out in 1589, and the expression “ere long” would scarcely apply had
this been written in 1587.
Thirdly, he says, “If I please, I will think my ignorance indebted unto
you that applaud it, if not, what rests but that I be excluded from your
courtesy, like Apocrypha from your Bibles?”
This passage appears to refer to a fact which Martin Mar-Prelate states
in his Epistle to the Terrible Priests. [Reprint, p. 4.] “The last
lent [he is writing in 1588] there came a commaundement from his grace
into Paules Church Yard, that no Byble should be bounde without the
Apocripha.” Strype, in his Life of Archbishop Whitgift, admits the order,
and takes some pains to justify the Archbishop in issuing it. [See
Strype’s Whitgift, i. 590.—Cooper’s Admonition, 1589.]
The foregoing inferences, however, are confirmed by the fact that there
is an allusion in this Preface to a work which did not appear until 1589.
Nash, in giving the roll of English Worthies, introduces the following
passage: “I will not say but we had a HADDON, whose pen would have
challenged the laurel from Homer; together with CAR, that came as near
him as Virgil to Theocritus. But THOMAS NEWTON, with his _Leiland_, and
GABRIEL HARVEY, with two or three other, is almost all the store that is
left us at this hour.” [Pref. to Menaphon, xviii.]
As Newton’s _Leiland_ is a work of unfrequent occurrence, I subjoin the
title at length: “Principum, ac illustrium aliquot & eruditorum in Anglia
virorum, Encomia, Trophæa, Genethliaca & Epithalamia. A Joanne Lelando
Antiquario conscripta, nunc primùm in lucem edita. Quibus etiarn adiuncta
sunt, Illustrissimorum aliquot Herôum, hodiè viventium, aliorúmq;
hinc indè Anglorum, ENCOMIA et EVLOGIA: à Thoma Newtono Cestreshyrio,
succisiuis horulis exarata. Londini, apud Thomam Orwinum, Typographum.
1589,” in 4to. This work may also contain internal evidence, in addition
to the statement in the title-page, that it was first published in 1589.
There is a poem at p. 122, “Ad Chr. Oclandum de Elizabetheide sua,” which
may refer to the first part of Ocland’s Elizabetheis, which came out in
1582, but most probably refers to the second part, printed by Thomas
Orwin, in 1589.
I should not have taken the trouble to investigate the contents of this
Preface of Nash, “the firstlings of my folly,” as he calls it himself
[p. xxi], with such minuteness, but that it establishes beyond question
the fact that Nash commenced his literary career in 1589, and not, as is
generally supposed, in 1587.
In the following Introduction, Nash says, “For comming from Venice the
last summer, and taking Bergamo in my waye homeward to England.” Now as
he afterwards alludes to the appearance of Martin Mar-prelate in England,
and also to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, “neither Philip by his
power,” this most probably was the latter part of the summer of 1588, and
if he arrived in England towards the end of 1588, there would be both
time and opportunity for him to write the various works, which, published
in 1589, are attributed to him. There is every probability, therefore,
that Nash did visit Italy, that he was there in 1588, and that, returning
to England with his mind enlarged by travel, he commenced his short,
but remarkable career in literature, which, after he had undergone the
painful vicissitudes to which authors by profession have so often been
subjected,
“Since none takes pitie of a scholler’s neede,”
was terminated by his death in 1601.
I shall not here enumerate the various works which Nash wrote, because an
opportunity will offer, in the Introduction to one of his publications,
to notice the whole of them.
Whatever was the origin of the long and bitter quarrel between Nash and
Gabriel Harvey, from this passage in the Preface to Menaphon, 1589,
“and Gabriel Harvey, with two or three other, is almost all the store
that is left us at this hour,” we may reasonably infer that it was not
in existence then. The origin, progress, and effect of this quarrel,
which included Lyly, Greene, Nash, and the three Harveys, and the right
understanding of which is necessary to elucidate the progress of the
Martin Mar-Prelate Controversy, I hope to give in the Introduction
to “Plaine Percevall the Peace-Maker of England,” a tract uniformly
attributed to Nash; but which he, in one of his publications, not only
utterly disclaims, but charges it upon one of his most hated antagonists.
The internal evidence in favour of Nash, as the author of the Almond
for a Parrot, is very strong; and cannot but appear to any one who is
conversant with his “Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem,” a work containing
more remarkable passages than any publication of the time that has ever
fallen in my way. The description of Penry, at p. 39, beginning, “Where,
what his estimation was,” &c.; but more especially the paragraph at p.
21, beginning, “Talke as long as you will of the Ioyes of heaven,” &c.,
may be compared with several passages in “Christ’s Tears” wherein Nash
describes the horrors endured by its inhabitants during the siege of
Jerusalem.
With respect to the title “An Almond for a Parrat,” the meaning appears
obvious; it is evidently a cant term, and like “A Sop to Cerberus,” means
a stopper for the mouth. Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary of Archaic and
Provincial Words, calls it “a kind of proverbial expression,” but does
not attempt to trace its origin. It is used by Skelton [Works by Dyce,
ii. 4], by Webster [Works, iii. 122], and by Middleton [Works, iii. 112].
The original, from which the present tract is reprinted, is a small
4to, printed in black letter, consisting altogether of 28 pages. The
“Protestation” is referred to at p. 11, “Pap with a Hatchet,” at p. 12,
and “Hay any worke for a Cooper,” at p. 15, by which it is certain that
its publication was subsequent to them, and may perhaps be referred to
the latter end of the year 1589.