The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (58 page)

He gives young girls their gamesome sustenance,
And every gaping mouth his full sufficience.

He fortifies disdain with foreign arts,
And wanton-chaste deludes all loving hearts.

If any wight a cruel mistress serves,
Or in despair, unhappy pines and sterves,
⁴²

Curse eunuch dildo, senseless, counterfeit,
Who sooth may fill, but never can beget.

But if revenge enraged with despair
That such a dwarf his wellfare should impair,

Would fain this woman's secretary know,
Let him attend the marks that I shall show.

He is a youth almost two handfuls high,
Straight, round, and plumb,
⁴³
yet having but one eye,

Wherein the rheum so fervently doth rain,
That Stygian gulf may scarce his tears contain;

Attired in white velvet or in silk,
And nourish'd with hot water or with milk;

Arm'd otherwhile in thick congealed glass,
When he more glib to hell below would pass,

Upon a chariot of five wheels he rides,
The which an arm-strong driver steadfast guides,

And often alters pace as ways grow deep
(For who in paths unknown one gate can keep?).

Sometimes he smoothly slideth down the hill,
Another while the stones his feet do kill

In clammy ways he treadeth by and by,
And plasheth and sprayeth all that be him nigh.

So fares this jolly rider in his race,
Plunging and sourcing
⁴⁴
forward in like case,

Bedash'd, bespirted, and beplodded foul,
God give thee shame, thou blind misshapen owl.

Fie, fie, for grief: a lady's chamberlain,
And canst not thou thy tattling tongue refrain?

I read thee, beardless blab, beware of stripes,
And be advised what thou vainly pipes.

Thou wilt be whipp'd with nettles for this gear,
If Cicely show but of thy knavery here.

Saint Denis shield me from such female sprites!
Regard not, dames, what Cupid's poet writes.

I penn'd this story only for myself,
Who giving suck unto a childish elf,

And quite discourag'd in my nursery,
Since all my store seems to her penury.

I am not as was Hercules the stout,
That to the seventh journey could hold out.

I want those herbs and roots of Indian soil,
That strengthen weary members in their toil.

Drugs and electuaries of new device
Do shun my purse, that trembles at the price.

Sufficeth, all I have I yield her whole,
Which for a poor man is a princely dole.

I pay our hostess scot and lot at most,
And look as lean and lank as any ghost.

What can be added more to my renown?
She lieth breathless; I am taken down.

The waves do swell, the tides climb o'er the banks,
Judge, gentlemen, if I deserve not thanks.

And so good night unto you every one,
For lo, our thread is spun, our play is done.

Claudito iam rivos Priape, sat prata biberunt
.

THO. NASH.

Thus hath my pen presum'd to please my friend;
Oh mightst thou likewise please Apollo's eye.
No: Honour brooks no such impiety.
Yet Ovid's wanton Muse did not offend.

He is the fountain whence my streams do flow.
Forgive me if I speak as I was taught,
Alike to women, utter all I know,
As longing to unlade so bad a fraught.

My mind once purg'd of such lascivious wit,
With purified words and hallow'd verse
Thy praises in large volumes shall rehearse,
That better may thy graver view befit.

Meanwhile yet rests, you smile at what I write,
Or for attempting, banish me your sight.

THOMAS NASH
.

PRODIGAL SONS

G
OOD
counsel is never remembered nor respected till men have given their farewell to felicity and have been overwhelmed in the extremity of adversity. Young men think it a disgrace to youth to embrace the studies of age, counting their fathers fools whiles they strive to make them wise, casting that away at a cast at dice which cost their dads a year's toil, spending that in their velvets which was raked up in a russet coat; so that their revenues racked, and their rents raised to the uttermost, is scarce enough to maintain one's ruffling pride which was wont to be many poor men's relief. These young gallants having lewdly spent their patrimony, fall to begging of poor men's houses
¹
over their heads as the last refuge of their riot,
²
removing the ancient bounds of lands to support their decayed port, rather coveting to enclose that which was wont to be common than they would want
³
to maintain their private prodigality.

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 towardness
⁵
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 pretermit
⁶
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
).

ENGLISH SENECA, WHOLE HAMLETS AND ST JOHN'S IN CAMBRIDGE

I
T
is a common practice nowadays amongst a sort
¹
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-verse
³
if they should have need. Yet English Seneca
⁴
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 articles
⁸
), 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 peripatetical
⁹
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's
¹²
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 deducta
¹⁴
from the suburbs of Saint John's. In which extraordinary conception,
uno partu in rempublicam prodiere
¹⁵
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
).

ROBERT GREENE
¹

I
N
short terms thus I demur upon thy long Kentish-tailed
²
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 angels
³
than the lord
⁴
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.