humorous, as appears by his tracts against Martin Marprelate, and by his contest with Gabriel Harvey, regarding Robert Greene.1 He had a vigorous understanding, well stored with scholarship, and he was capable of giving powerful descriptions. of things, and striking characters of persons. His Supplication of Pierce Penniless to the Devil, 1592, contains a very original and awful picture of the agonies of a repentant spirit, which was followed up, though with less effect, in his Christ's Tears over Ferusalem, 1593. He led a very irregular life and was dead in the year 1600, as appears by an epitaph upon him in C. Fitzgeoffrey's Affaniæ, printed in that year.2 A tract by Nash is preserved in the library at Bridgewater House, which we have found nowhere else, and we do not recollect to have seen it mentioned in the lists of Nash's productions. It is curious not only on this account, but because it shows the high reputation of Daniel's collection of Sonnets, published under the title of Delia, twice printed in 1592, and throws new light upon the productions of a dramatic poetess of some celebrity. It is called 'The Terrors of the Night, or a Discourse of Apparitions, etc. Thomas Nash.-London, printed by John Danter, for William Jones, etc., 1594.' It is dedicated to Mistress Elizabeth Carey, 'sole daughter' of Sir George Carey, Knight. 'Miraculous (says Nash) is your wit, and so is acknowledged by the wittiest poets of our age, who have vowed to enshrine you as their second Delia'; and he subsequently thus continues: 'A worthie daughter are you of so worthie a Mother, borrowing (as another Phoebe from her bright sunne-like resplendaunce) the orient beames of your radiaunce. Into the Muses' societie herself she hath lately adopted, and purchast divine Petrarch another monument in England.' What work the mother had translated from Petrarch nowhere appears; but we apprehend the daughter is the same who afterwards wrote the tragedy of Myriam, the fair Queen of Jewry, not printed until 1613. In the body of The Terrors of the Night, Nash expresses his great obligations to Sir George Carey, probably of a pecuniary kind: "Through him my tender wainscot studie doore is delivered from much assault and batterie: through him I look into and am looked on in the world, from whence otherwise I were a wretched banished exile.' 2 The following character of Nash, from a rare tract by Thomas Summer's Last Will and Testament would require but a short notice, even if it had not been reprinted in the last edition of Dodsley's Old Plays. It makes no pretension to diversity of character in the persons, nor to interest in the plot the only part in it which can lay claim to anything like individuality, is that of Will Summer [or Sommers] the wellknown and often mentioned jester of Henry VIII, who inserts interlocutions during the performance, which was intended merely to please by the variety of its shows, and a certain degree of ingenuity in its construction. The piece depends upon a sort of pun, or confusion, between the name of the jester and the division of the year which corresponds with that name. As it was acted in the autumn of 1592, Summer is appropriately represented in the last stage of his life, calling all his attendants about him, and by making his will, preparing for death. The other seasons are also conspicuous personages in the exhibition, which is tedious, notwithstanding Nash has shown great skill, and some wit, in introducing nearly every thing that ancient and modern learning could supply to aid his purpose. It has, however, few passages of poetical merit, and that only of a secondary description: the best of these is unquestionably the following lines given to Solstitium. 'I never lov'd ambitiously to climb, Or thrust my hand too far into the fire. Dekker, called Newes from Hell, 1606, is worth quoting:-'And thou, into whose soul, if ever there were a Pythagorean metempsychosis, the raptures of that fiery and inconfinable Italian spirit were bounteously and boundlessly infused, thou sometime Secretary to Pierce Penniless, and Master of his Requests, ingenious, ingenuous, fluent, facetious T. Nash; from whose abundant pen honey flowed to thy friends, and mortal aconite to thy enemies-thou that made the Doctor [Harvey] a flat dunce, and beat him at two sundry tall weapons, poetry and oratory, sharpest satire, luculent poet, elegant orator, get leave for thy ghost to come from her abiding, and to dwell with me awhile.' To be in heaven sure is a blessed thing, I love to dwell betwixt the hills and dales, Nor yet so poor the world should pity me.' This is a favourable specimen, also, of Nash's blank-verse; and it contains almost the only instances of the employment of trochees at the ends of lines, from the beginning to the conclusion of the performance. Nash seems, like most of our early writers of 'English iambics', to have held that they ought properly to close with an accented syllable. Neither is he in the habit of varying his measure by other expedients; so that it runs with a degree of sameness that would hardly be endurable if a great part of his production were not in prose, which often comes to the relief of the ear. It is chiefly the circumstance of the monotony of Nash's versification which enables us to judge what parts of the tragedy of Dido proceeded from his pen, and what other parts from that of his coadjutor, Marlow. In the scenes, however, in which we apprehend the hand of the latter is visible, there is not only greater variety of rhythm, pause, and modulation in the verse, but a nobler and a richer vein of poetry. On these accounts it will be necessary to examine this production with a little more attention than we have bestowed upon Nash's unaided effort. Taken as a whole, Dido, Queen of Carthage, must be pronounced a very graceful and beautiful poem, although the description of the taking and sacking of Troy is in some places inflated almost to absurdity. This we consider one portion which Nash contributed: he has made up for his want of true poetic genius in descriptive passages, by the extravagance of his thoughts and images. In these respects it very much rivals the player's speech in Hamlet (act ii, scene 2), on the same subject. According to Nash, Pyrrhus first strikes off old Priam's hands 'At which the frantic queen leap'd on his face, And would have grappled with Achilles' son, Here we have substituted wind for wound, as it stands in the old copy, in conformity, probably, with the author's meaning, and with the following corresponding lines in Hamlet'Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide, But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword The unnerved father falls.' Besides, the wound was given subsequently, as is evident from the lines that succeed. The whole passage is spoken by Æneas, describing the de 1 In our extracts from this most rare play we have employed the original 4to. of 1594, in the library at Bridgewater House. struction of Troy to the Queen of Carthage. The story is conducted much as in Virgil (who is even quoted by the characters in two instances), but a pretty scene is made out of what is said in the original regarding the substitution by Venus of Cupid for Ascanius: Dido takes him to her arms, and Cupid wounds her with a dart he had concealed for the purpose she almost instantly begins to loathe her suitor Iarbas, and to doat upon Æneas. This scene, and one or two that follow it, we have little hesitation in assigning to Marlow. Soon after she is secretly wounded, Dido exclaims— 'Oh, dull-conceited Dido, that till now Did never think Æneas beautiful ! But now, for quittance of this oversight, As many kisses as the sea hath sands. And thou, Æneas, Dido's treasury, In whose fair bosom I will lock more wealth Shortly afterwards she tells Æneas (who has besought her to repair his ships), in a similar strain of poetical luxuri ance 'I'll give thee tackling made of rivel'd gold Oars of massy ivory, full of holes Through which the water shall delight to play: ! |