The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton Page 3

in a prominent position among London men of letters. Welearn that in 1596, four years after its original publication, it hadrun through six editions, besides being translated in 1594 into French,and, a little later, into Macaronic Latin. In "Christ's Tears" the youngwriter, conscious of his new importance, deals with what the criticshave said about his style. He tells us, and we cannot wonder at it, thatobjections have been made to "my boisterous compound words, and endingmy Italianate coined verbs all in _ize_." His defence is not unlikethat of De Quincey; we can imagine his asking, when urged to be simple,whether simplicity be in place in a description of Belshazzar's Feast Hesays that the Saxon monosyllables that swarm in the English tongue are ascandal to it, and that he is only turning this cheap silver trash intofine gold coinage. Books, he says, written in plain English, "seemlike shopkeepers' boxes, that contain nothing else save halfpence,three-farthings, and two-pences." To show what sort of doubloons heproposes to mint for English pockets, we need go no further than theopening phrases of his dedication of this very book to that amiablepoet, the Lady Elizabeth Carey:--

  "Excellent accomplished court-glorifying Lady, give me leave, with thesportive sea-porpoises, preludiately a little to play before the stormof my tears, to make my prayer before I proceed to my sacrifice. Lo, foran oblation to the rich burnished shrine of your virtue, a handful ofJerusalem's mummianized earth, in a few sheets of waste paper enwrapped,I here, humiliate, offer up at your feet."

  These, however, in spite of the odd neologisms, are sentences formed ina novel and a greatly improved manner, and the improvement is sustainedthroughout this curious volume. Probably the intimate study of theAuthorized Version of the Bible, which this semi-theological tractatenecessitated, had much to do with the clarification of the author'sstyle. At all events, from this time forth, Nash drops, except inpolemical passages where his design is provocative, that irritatingharshness in volubility which had hitherto marked his manner of writing.Here, for example, is a passage from "Christ's Tears" which is notwithout a strangely impressive melody:--

  "Over the Temple, at the solemn feast of the Passover, was seen a cometmost coruscant, streamed and tailed forth, with glistering naked swords,which in his mouth, as a man in his hand all at once, he made semblanceas if he shaked and vambrashed. Seven days it continued; all which time,the Temple was as clear and light in the night as it had been noonday.In the Sanctum Sanctorum was heard clashing and hewing of armour, whileflocks of ravens, with a fearful croaking cry, beat, fluttered andclashed against the windows. A hideous dismal owl, exceeding all herkind in deformity and quantity, in the Temple-porch built her nest. Fromunder the altar there issued penetrating plangorous howlings and ghastlydeadmen's groans."

  He tells us, in the preface, that he takes an autumnal air, and in truththere is a melancholy refinement in this volume which we may seek forin vain elsewhere in Nash's writings. The greater part of the book isa "collachrimate oration" over Jerusalem, placed in the mouth of ourSaviour; by degrees the veil of Jerusalem grows thinner and thinner,and we see more and more clearly through it the London of Elizabeth,denounced by a pensive and not, this time, a turbulent satirist.

  In 1594 Nash's pen was particularly active. It was to the Lady ElizabethCarey, again, that he dedicated "The Terrors of the Night," a discourseon apparitions. He describes some very agreeable ghosts, as, forinstance, those which appeared to a gentleman, a friend of the author's,in the guise of "an inveigling troop of naked virgins, whose odoriferousbreath more perfumed the air than ordnance would that is charged withamomum, musk, civet and ambergreece." It was surely a mock-modesty whichled Nash to fear that such ghost-stories as these would appear to hisreaders duller than Holland cheese and more tiresome than homespun. To1594, too, belongs the tragedy of "Dido," probably left incomplete byMarlowe, and finished by Nash, who shows himself here an adept inthat swelling bombast of bragging blank verse of which he affected todisapprove. A new edition of "Christ's Tears" also belongs to this busyyear 1594, which however is mainly interesting to us as having seen thepublication of the work which we are here introducing to modern readers.

  An eminent French critic, M. Jusserand, whose knowledge of Englishsixteenth-century literature is unsurpassed, was the first to drawattention to the singular interest which attaches to "The UnfortunateTraveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton," 1594. In his treatise, "Le Romanau Temps de Shakespeare," 1887, M. Jusserand insisted upon the factthat this neglected book was the best specimen of the _picaresque_ talewritten in English before the days of Defoe. He shows that expressionsput in the mouth of Nash's hero, which had been carelessly treated asautobiographical confessions of foreign travel and the like, on the partof the author, were but features of a carefully planned fiction. "JackWilton" describes the career of an adventurer, from his early youth asa page in the royal camp of Henry VIII. at the siege of Tournay, to hisattainment of wealth, position, and a beautiful Italian wife.

  The first exploit of the page is an encounter with a fraudulentinnkeeper, which is described with great spirit, and M. Jusserandhas ingeniously surmised that Shakespeare, after reading these pages,determined to fuse the two characters, mine host and the waggishpicaroon, into the single immortal figure of Falstaff. After this pointin the tale, it is probable that the reader may find the interest ofthe story flag; but his attention will be reawakened when he reachesthe episode of the Earl of Surrey and Fair Geraldine, and that inwhich Jack, pretending to be Surrey, runs off with his sweet Venetianmistress, Diamante. It will be for the reader of the ensuing pages tosay whether Nash had mastered the art of narrative quite so perfectlyas M. Jusserand, in his just pride as a discoverer, seems to think. Theromance, no doubt, is incoherent and languid at times, and is easily ledaside into channels of gorgeous description and vain moral reflection.

  It will doubtless be of interest, at this point, to quote the wordsin which, in a later volume, M. Jusserand has reiterated his praise of"Jack Wilton" and his belief in Nash as the founder of the British novelof character:--

  "In the works of Nash and his imitators, the different parts are badlydovetailed; the novelist is incoherent and incomplete; the fault lies insome degree with the picaresque form itself. Nash, however, pointed outthe right road, the road that was to lead to the true novel. He wasthe first among his compatriots to endeavour to relate in prose along-sustained story, having for its chief concern: the truth.... Noone, Ben Jonson excepted, possessed at that epoch, in so great a degreeas himself, a love of the honest truth. With Nash, then, the novel ofreal life, whose invention in England is generally attributed to Defoe,begins. To connect Defoe with the past of English literature, we mustget over the whole of the seventeenth century, and go back to 'JackWilton,' the worthy brother of 'Roxana,' 'Moll Flanders,' and 'ColonelJack.'"

  It is to be regretted that Nash made no second adventure in purefiction. "Jack Wilton," now one of the rarest of his books, was neverreprinted in its own age.

  How Nash was employed during the next two years, it is not easy toconjecture. When we meet with him once more, the smouldering fire of hisquarrel with the Harveys had burst again into flame. "Have with you toSaffron Walden," 1596, is devoted to the chastisement of "the reprobatebrace of brothers, to wit, witless Gabriel and ruffling Richard." Nofresh public outburst on Harvey's part seems to have led to thisattack; but he bragged in private that he had silenced his licentiousantagonists. Nash admits that his opponent's last book "has been keptidle by me, in a bye-settle out of sight amongst old shoes and bootsalmost this two year." Harvey was known to have come from SaffronWalden; Nash invites his readers to accompany him to that town to seewhat they can discover, and he retails a good deal of lively scandalabout the rope-maker's sons. "Have with you" is perhaps the smartest andis certainly the most readable of Nash's controversial volumes. It givesus, too, some interesting fragments of autobiography. Harvey had accusedhim of "prostituting his pen like a courtisan," and Nash makes thiscurious and not very lucid statement in selfdefence:--

  "Neither will I deny it nor will I grant it
. Only thus far I'll go withyou, that twice or thrice in a month, when _res est angusta domi_, thebottom of my purse is turned downward, and my conduit of ink will nolonger flow for want of reparations, I am fain to let my plough standstill in the midst of a furrow, and follow some of these newfangledGaliardos and Senior Fantasticos, to whose amorous _villanellas_ and_quipassas_, I prostitute my pen in hope of gain.... Many a fair day agohave I proclaimed myself to the world Piers Penniless."

  Gabriel Harvey must have felt, on reading "Have with you to SaffronWalden," that his antagonist was right in saying that his pen carried"the hot shot of a musket." Unfortunately, while