An Almond for a Parrot: Being a reply to Martin Mar-Prelate.

Puritan Discipline Tracts.
AN ALMOND FOR A PARROT; BEING A REPLY TO MARTIN MAR-PRELATE.
Re-printed from the Black Letter Edition, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES.
LONDON: JOHN PETHERAM, 71, CHANCERY LANE. 1846.


Although I cannot at this time bring together positive and undoubted evidence of the authorship of the following tract, (because the materials are at present inaccessible to me,) at some future period, in the Introduction to one of his accredited productions, I hope to place the fact beyond the reach of cavil or question, that Thomas Nash, to whom public fame has given it, was the author.
Secondly, Nash says, “It may be my Anatomy of Absurdities may acquaint you ere long with my skill in surgery.” Now, the Anatomy of Absurdities came out in 1589, and the expression “ere long” would scarcely apply had this been written in 1587.
Thirdly, he says, “If I please, I will think my ignorance indebted unto you that applaud it, if not, what rests but that I be excluded from your courtesy, like Apocrypha from your Bibles?”
As Newton’s Leiland is a work of unfrequent occurrence, I subjoin the title at length: “Principum, ac illustrium aliquot & eruditorum in Anglia virorum, Encomia, Trophæa, Genethliaca & Epithalamia. A Joanne Lelando Antiquario conscripta, nunc primùm in lucem edita. Quibus etiarn adiuncta sunt, Illustrissimorum aliquot Herôum, hodiè viventium, aliorúmq; hinc indè Anglorum, Encomia et Evlogia: à Thoma Newtono Cestreshyrio, succisiuis horulis exarata. Londini, apud Thomam Orwinum, Typographum. 1589,” in 4to. This work may also contain internal evidence, in addition to the statement in the title-page, that it was first published in 1589. There is a poem at p. 122, “Ad Chr. Oclandum de Elizabetheide sua,” which may refer to the first part of Ocland’s Elizabetheis, which came out in 1582, but most probably refers to the second part, printed by Thomas Orwin, in 1589.
In the following Introduction, Nash says, “For comming from Venice the last summer, and taking Bergamo in my waye homeward to England.” Now as he afterwards alludes to the appearance of Martin Mar-prelate in England, and also to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, “neither Philip by his power,” this most probably was the latter part of the summer of 1588, and if he arrived in England towards the end of 1588, there would be both time and opportunity for him to write the various works, which, published in 1589, are attributed to him. There is every probability, therefore, that Nash did visit Italy, that he was there in 1588, and that, returning to England with his mind enlarged by travel, he commenced his short, but remarkable career in literature, which, after he had undergone the painful vicissitudes to which authors by profession have so often been subjected,