The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton Read online

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  Henry Howard]

  "The portrait of Surrey which is now at Hampton Court, and which isattributed to Holbein, though probably by his imitator, Guillim Stretes,apparently dates from a period when he was a very young man. It is avaluable and highly interesting picture; especially in regard to thedress, which, except for the white shirt, embroidered with Moresquework, is entirely red, and with the flat red cap, red shoes ornamentedwith studs of gold, the richly chased dagger and sword, is an admirableexample of the gorgeous style of costume prevalent at Court at thelatter end of the reign of Henry VIII, 'Law's History of Hampton CourtPalace in Tudor Times.'"

  THE VNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER OR THE LIFE OF JACK WILTON: WITH AN ESSAY ONTHE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THOMAS NASH BY EDMUND GOSSE

  London Printed And Issued By Charles Whittingham & Co At The ChiswickPress MDCCCXCII

  Contents.

  An Essay on the Life and Writings of Thomas Nash

  The Dedication to the Earl of Southampton

  To the Gentlemen Readers

  The Induction to the Pages of the Court

  The Unfortunate Traveller

  AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THOMAS NASH.

  It is mainly, no doubt, but I hope not exclusively, an antiquarianinterest which attaches to the name of Thomas Nash. It would beabsurd to claim for a writer so obscure a very prominent place in theprocession of Englishmen of letters. His works proclaim by their extremerarity the fact that three centuries of readers have existed cheerfullyand wholesomely without any acquaintance with their contents. At thepresent moment, the number of those living persons who have actuallyperused the works of Nash may probably be counted on the fingers oftwo hands. Most of these productions are uncommon to excess, one or twoexist in positively unique examples. There is no use in arguing againstsuch a fact as this. If Nash had reached, or even approached, thehighest order of merit, he would have been placed, long ere this, withinthe reach of all. Nevertheless, his merits, relative if not positive,were great. In the violent coming of age of Elizabethan literature,his voice was heard loudly, not always discordantly, and with an accenteminently personal to himself. His life, though shadowy, has elements ofpicturesqueness and pathos; his writings are a storehouse of oddity andfantastic wit

  It has been usual to class Nash with the Precursors of Shakespeare, anduntil quite lately it was conjectured that he was older than Greene andPeele, a contemporary of Lodge and Chapman. It is now known that hewas considerably younger than all these, and even than Marlowe andShakespeare. Thomas Nash, the fourth child of the Rev. William Nash, whoto have been curate of Lowestoft in Suffolk, was baptized in thattown in November, 1567. The Nashes continued to live in Lowestoft, wherethe father died in 1603, probably three years after the death of his sonThomas. Of the latter we hear nothing more until, in October, 1582, atthe age of fifteen, he matriculated as a sizar of St. John's College,Cambridge. Cooper says that he was admitted a scholar on the LadyMargaret's foundation in 1584. He remained at Cambridge, in unbrokenresidence, until July, 1589, "seven year together, lacking a quarter,"as he tells us positively in "Lenten Stuff."

  Cambridge was the hotbed of all that was vivid and revolutionary inliterature at that moment, and Robert Greene was the centre of literaryCambridge. When Nash arrived, Greene, who was seven years his senior,was still in residence at his study in Clare Hall, having returned fromhis travels in Italy and Spain, ready, in 1583, to take his degree asmaster of arts. He was soon, however, to leave for London, and it isunlikely that a boy of sixteen would be immediately admitted tothe society of those "lewd wags" who looked up to the alreadydistinguished Greene as to a master. But Greene, without doubt, madefrequent visits to his university, and on one of these was probablyformed that intimate friendship with Nash which lasted until near theelder poet's death. Marlowe was at Corpus, then called Benet College,during five years of Nash's residence, but it is by no means certainthat their acquaintance began so early. It is, indeed, in the highestdegree tantalizing that these writers, many of whom loved nothing betterthan to talk about themselves, should have neglected to give us theinformation which would precisely be most welcome to us. A dozen whole"Anatomies of Absurdity" and "Supplications of Pierce Penniless"might be eagerly exchanged for a few pages in which the literary life ofCambridge from 1582 to 1589 should be frankly and definitely described.

  It has been surmised that Nash was ejected from the university in 1587.His enemy, Gabriel Harvey, who was extremely ill-informed, gives thisaccount of what occurred:--

  "[At Cambridge], (being distracted of his wits) [Nash] fell into diversemisdemeanours, which were the first steps that brought him to thispoor estate. As, namely, in his fresh-time, how he flourished in allimpudency towards scholars, and abuse to the townsmen; insomuch that tothis day the townsmen call every untoward scholar of whom there is greathope, _a very Nash_. Then, being bachelor of arts, which by great labourhe got, to show afterwards that he was not unworthy of it, had a hand ina show called _Terminus et non terminus_; for the which his partner init was expelled the college; but this foresaid Nash played in it (as Isuppose) the Varlet of Clubs.... Then suspecting himself that he shouldbe stayed for _egregie dunsus_, and not attain to the next degree, saidhe had commenced enough, and so forsook Cambridge, being bachelor of thethird year."

  But, even in this poor gossip, we find nothing about ejection. Nash'sextraordinary abuse of language is probably the cause of that report. In1589, in prefacing his "Anatomy of Absurdity," he remarked:--

  "What I have written proceeded not from the pen of vainglory, but fromthe process of that pensiveness, which two summers since overtook me;whose obscured cause, best known to every name of curse, hath compelledmy wit to wander abroad unregarded in this satirical disguise, andcounselled my content to dislodge his delight from traitors' eyes."

  That the young gentleman meant something by these sentences, it is onlycharitable to suppose; that he could have been intelligible, even tohis immediate contemporaries, is hardly to be believed. This "obscuredcause" has been taken to be, by some, his removal from the University,and, by others, his entanglement with a young woman. It is perhapssimpler to understand him to say that the ensuing pamphlet was written,in consequence of an intellectual crisis, in 1587, when he was twentyyears of age.

  At twenty-two, at all events, we find him in London, beginning hiscareer as a man of letters. His first separate publication seems to havebeen the small quarto in black letter from which a quotation has justbeen made. This composition, named an "Anatomy" in imitation of severalthen recent popular treatises of a similar title, is only to be pardonedon the supposition that it was a boyish manuscript prepared at college.It is vilely written, in the preposterous Euphuism of the moment;the style is founded on Lyly, the manner is the manner of Greene, andWhetstone in his moral "Mirrors" and "Heptamerons" has supplied thematter. The "absurdity" satirized in this jejune and tedious tract isextravagant living of all kinds. The author attacks women with greatvehemence, but only in that temper which permitted the young Juvenalsof the hour to preach against wine and cards and stageplays with intensezeal, while practising the worship of all these with equal ardour. "TheAnatomy of Absurdity" is a purely academic exercise, interesting onlybecause it shows, in the praise of Sidney and the passage in defence ofpoetry, something of the intellectual aptitude of the youthful writer.

  In the same year, and a little earlier, Nash published an address "tothe gentlemen students of both universities," as a preface to a romanceby Greene. Bibliographers describe a supposititious "Menaphon" of 1587,which nobod
y has ever seen; even if such an edition existed, it iscertain that Nash's address was not prefixed to it, for the styleis greatly in advance of his boyish writing of that year. It is aninteresting document, enthusiastic and gay in a manner hardly to be metwith again in its author, and diversified with graceful praise of StJohn's College, defence of good poetry, and wholesome ridicule of thosewho were trying to introduce the "Thrasonical huffsnuff" style of whichPhaer and Stanihurst were the prophets.

  Still in 1589, but later in the year, Nash is believed to have thrownhimself into that extraordinary clash of theological weapons which iscelebrated as the Martin Marprelate Controversy. As is well known, thispamphlet war grew out of the passionate resentment felt by the Puritansagainst the tyrannical acts of Whitgift and the Bishops. The actualcontroversy has been traced back to a defence of the