The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (6 page)

Nashe is an entertainer, an artist conscious of his craft, proud of success, apprehensive of failure. But ‘no man ever wrote so well', Chesterton said of Stevenson, ‘…who cared only about writing'. Nashe wrote of the human scene without reverence but with savour. We can at least do the same for him.

EDITIONS OF NASHE

The Works of Thomas Nashe
, ed. R. B. McKerrow, in five volumes, with corrections and supplementary notes edited by F. P. Wilson, Oxford,
1958
.

Thomas Nashe
(selected works), ed. Stanley Wells, The Stratford-upon-Avon Library, London,
1964
.

Three Elizabethan Pamphlets
(includes
The Unfortunate Traveller
), ed. G. R. Hibbard, London,
1951
.

The Unfortunate Traveller
(with illustrations), ed. Michael Ayrton, London,
1948
.

CRITICAL WORKS

Thomas Nashe, A Critical Introduction
, G. R. Hibbard, London,
1962
.

Shakespeare's Festive Comedy
, C. L. Barber, Princeton,
1959
.

Two Elizabethan Writers of Fiction
, R. G. Howarth, Cape Town,
1956
.

See also

The Three Parnassus Plays
, ed. J. B. Leishman, London,
1949
.

The Works of Gabriel Harvey
, ed. A. Grosart, The Huth Library,
1884
.

Barbaria grandis habere nihil
¹

A private Epistle of the Author to the Printer, wherein his full meaning and purpose in publishing this book is set forth.

F
AITH
, I am very sorry, sir, I am thus unawares betrayed to infamy. You write to me my book is hasting to the second impression: he that hath once broke the ice of impudence need not care how deep he wade in discredit. I confess it to be a mere toy, not deserving any judicial man's view. If it have found any friends, so it is; you know very well that it was abroad a fortnight ere I knew of it, and uncorrected and unfinished it hath offered itself to the open scorn of the world. Had you not been so forward in the republishing of it, you should have had certain epistles to orators and poets to insert to the latter end; as, namely, to the ghost of Machevill, of Tully, of Ovid, of Roscius,
²
of Pace,
³
the Duke of Norfolk's jester; and lastly, to the ghost of Robert Greene,
⁴
telling him what a coil
⁵
there is with pamphleting on him after his death. These were prepared for
Pierce Penniless
first setting forth, had not the fear of infection detained me with my lord
⁶
in the country.

Now this is that I would have you to do in this second edition: first, cut off that long-tailed title,
⁷
and let me not in the forefront of my book make a tedious mountebank's oration to the reader, when in the whole there is nothing praiseworthy.

I hear say there be obscure imitators that go about to frame a second part to it and offer it to sell in Paul's Churchyard and elsewhere, as from me. Let me request you, as ever you will expect any favour at my hands, to get somebody to write an epistle before it, ere you set it to sale again, importing thus much: that if any such lewd device intrude itself to their hands, it is a cozenage and plain knavery of him that sells it to get money, and that I have no manner of interest or acquaintance with it. Indeed if my leisure were such as I could wish, I might haps, half a year hence, write
The Return of the Knight of the Post
⁸
from Hell
, with the devil's answer to the supplication; but as for a second part of
Pierce Penniless
, it is a most ridiculous roguery.

Other news I am advertised of, that a scald
⁹
trivial lying pamphlet, called
Greene's Groatsworth of Wit
,
¹⁰
is given out to be of my doing. God never have care of my soul, but utterly renounce me, if the least word or syllable in it proceeded from my pen, or if I were any way privy to the writing or printing of it. I am grown at length to see into the vanity of the world more than ever I did, and now I condemn myself for nothing so much as playing the dolt in print. Out upon it, it is odious, specially in this moralizing age, wherein everyone seeks to shew himself a politician by misinterpreting.

In one place of my book, Pierce Penniless saith but to the Knight of the Post, ‘I pray how might I call you,' and they
say I meant one Howe, a knave of that trade, that I never heard of before.

The antiquaries are offended
¹¹
without cause, thinking I go about to detract from that excellent profession, when (God is my witness) I reverence it as much as any of them all, and had no manner of allusion to them that stumble at it. I hope they will give me leave to think there be fools of that art as well as of all other. But to say I utterly condemn it as an unfruitful study, or seem to despise the excellent qualified parts of it, is a most false and injurious surmise. There is nothing that if a man list he may not wrest or pervert. I cannot forbid any to think villainously,
Sed caveat emptor
,
¹²
let the interpreter beware; for none ever heard me make allegories of an idle text. Write who will against me, but let him look his life be without scandal; for if he touch me never so little, I'll be as good as
The Black Book
¹³
to him and his kindred.

Beggarly lies no beggarly wit but can invent. Who spurneth not at a dead dog? But I am of another metal; they shall know that I live as their evil angel, to haunt them world without end, if they disquiet me without cause.

Farewell, and let me hear from you as soon as it is come forth. I am the plague's prisoner in the country as yet: if the sickness cease before the third impression, I will come and alter whatsoever may be offensive to any man, and bring you the latter end.
¹⁴

Your friend,

THO. NASH

Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil

H
AVING
spent many years in studying how to live, and lived a long time without money, having tired my youth with
folly and surfeited my mind with vanity, I began at length to look back to repentance, and address my endeavours to prosperity. But all in vain I sat up late and rose early, contended with the cold, and conversed with scarcity; for all my labours turned to loss, my vulgar Muse was despised and neglected, my pains not regarded, or slightly rewarded, and I myself, in prime of my best wit, laid open to poverty.
*
Whereupon, in a malcontent humour, I accused my fortune, railed on my patrons, bit my pen, rent my papers, and raged in all points like a madman. In which agony tormenting myself a long time, I grew by degrees to a milder discontent; and pausing a while over my standish,
¹⁶
I resolved in verse to paint forth my passion,
†
Which best agreeing with the vein of my unrest, I began to complain in this sort:

Why is't damnation to despair and die,
When life is my true happiness' disease?
My soul, my soul, thy safety makes me fly
The faulty means, that might my pain appease.
     Divines and dying men may talk of hell,
     But in my heart her several torments dwell.

Ah, worthless wit, to train me to this woe,
Deceitful arts, that nourish discontent:
Ill thrive the folly that bewitched me so;
Vain thoughts, adieu, for now I will repent.
     And yet my wants persuade me to proceed,
     Since none takes pity of a scholar's need.

Forgive me, God, although I curse my birth,
And ban
¹⁸
the air, wherein I breathe a wretch;
Since misery hath daunted all my mirth,
And I am quite undone through promise-breach.
     Oh friends, no friends, that then ungently frown,
     When changing Fortune casts us headlong down.
*

Without redress complains my careless verse,
And Midas-ears relent not at my moan;
In some far land will I my griefs rehearse,
'Mongst them that will be mov'd when I shall groan.
     England, adieu, the soil that brought me forth;
     Adieu, unkind, where skill is nothing worth.

These rhymes thus abruptly set down, I tossed my imaginations a thousand ways to see if I could find any means to relieve my estate; but all my thoughts consorted to this conclusion, that the world was uncharitable, and I ordained to be miserable. Thereby I grew to consider how many base men, that wanted those parts which I had, enjoyed content at will and had wealth at command. I called to mind a cobbler, that was worth five hundred pound; an hostler, that had built a goodly inn, and might dispend forty pound yearly by his land; a car-man in a leather pilch,
²⁰
that had whipped out a thousand pound out of his horse tail. ‘And have I more wit than all these?' thought I to myself, ‘Am I better born? Am I better brought up? Yea, and better favoured?
²¹
And yet am I a beggar? What is the cause? How am I crossed? Or whence is this curse?'

Even from hence, that men that should employ such as I am, are enamoured of their own wits, and think whatever they do is excellent, though it be never so scurvy; that learning (of the ignorant) is rated after the value of the ink and paper, and a scrivener better paid for an obligation, than a
scholar for the best poem he can make; that every gross-brained idiot is suffered to come into print, who if he set forth a pamphlet of the praise of pudding-pricks,
²²
or write a treatise of Tom Thumb or the exploits of Untruss,
²³
it is bought up thick and threefold, when better things lie dead.
*
How then can we choose but be needy, when there are so many drones amongst us, or ever prove rich, that toil a whole year for fair looks?

Gentle Sir Philip Sidney, thou knewest what belonged to a scholar, thou knewest what pains, what toil, what travail, conduct to perfection; well couldst thou give every virtue his encouragement, every art his due, every writer his desert; cause none more virtuous, witty, or learned than thyself.

But thou art dead in thy grave, and hast left too few successors of thy glory, too few to cherish the sons of the Muses or water those budding hopes with their plenty, which thy bounty erst planted.
†

Believe me, gentlemen (for some cross mishaps have taught me experience), there is not that strict observation of honour, which hath been heretofore. Men of great calling take it of merit to have their names eternized by poets; and whatsoever pamphlet or dedication encounters them, they put it up in their sleeves, and scarce give him thanks that presents it. Much better is it for those golden pens to raise such ungrateful peasants from the dunghill of obscurity, and make them equal in fame to the worthies of old, when their doting self-love shall challenge it of duty, and not only give them nothing themselves, but impoverish liberality in others.

This is the lamentable condition of our times, that men of
art must seek alms of cormorants, and those that deserve best be kept under by dunces, who count it a policy to keep them bare, because they should follow their books the better; thinking belike, that, as preferment hath made themselves idle, that were erst painful in meaner places, so it would likewise slacken the endeavours of those students that as yet strive to excel in hope of advancement. A good policy to suppress superfluous liberality! But had it been practised when they were promoted, the yeomanry of the realm had been better to pass than it is, and one drone should not have driven so many bees from their honeycombs.

‘Ay, ay, we'll give losers leave to talk. It is no matter what
Sic probo
²⁶
and his penniless companions prate, whilst we have the gold in our coffers. This is it that will make a knave an honest man, and my neighbour Crampton's stripling a better gentleman than his grandsire.' Oh, it is a trim thing when Pride, the son, goes before, and Shame, the father, follows after. Such precedents there are in our commonwealth a great many; not so much of them whom learning and industry hath exalted (whom I prefer before
genus et proavos
),
²⁷
as of carterly upstarts, that out-face town and country in their velvets, when Sir Rowland Russet-coat,
²⁸
their dad, goes sagging every day in his round gaskins of white cotton, and hath much ado, poor penny-father, to keep his unthrift elbows in reparations.

Marry, happy are they (say I) that have such fathers to work for them whilst they play; for where other men turn over many leaves to get bread and cheese in their old age, and study twenty years to distill gold out of ink, our young masters do nothing but devise how to spend, and ask counsel of the wine and capons how they may quickliest consume their patrimonies. As for me, I live secure from all
such perturbations; for, thanks be to God, I am
vacuus viator
,
²⁹
and care not, though I meet the Commissioners of Newmarket Heath
³⁰
at high midnight, for any crosses,
³¹
images, or pictures that I carry about me, more than needs.

‘Than needs,' quoth I. Nay, I would be ashamed of it if
Opus
and
Usus
³²
were not knocking at my door twenty times a week when I am not within; the more is the pity, that such a frank gentleman as I should want; but, since the dice do run so untowardly on my side, I am partly provided of a remedy. For whereas those that stand most on their honour have shut up their purses and shift us off with court-holy-bread;
³³
and on the other side, a number of hypocritical hotspurs, that have God always in their mouths, will give nothing for God's sake; I have clapped up a handsome supplication to the devil and sent it by a good fellow, that I know will deliver it.