Scenes of light comedy abound in Nash; they are especially numerous in his "Lenten Stuff,"[286] a queer little book, his last work, and one which he seems to have written con amore. Never was he in better humour than when, the year before his death, he betook himself to singing "the praise of the red herring," Monsieur Herring, Solyman Herring, Sacrapant Herring, Red Herring of Red Herring hall, Pater Patriæ, as he is fond of calling him, inventing on each page a new title for his hero. There is no event in ancient or modern history where he does not discover that "Cæsarean Charlemaine Herring" has had a part to play; no person of however mean or exalted rank who has not had to deal with "Gentleman Jacke Herring." The fishes made him their king, and the Pope made him a saint. The first time he appeared at the Pope's court was a great event in Christendom. An English sailor had sold him for three hundred ducats to the purveyor of the papal kitchen, and "delivered him the king of fishes, teaching hym to geremumble it, sauce it, and dresse it, and so sent him away a glad man. All the Pope's cookes in their white sleeves and linnen aprons met him middle way to entertaine and receyve the king of fishes, and together by the eares they went, who shoulde first handle him or touch him. But the clarke of the kitchin appeased that strife, and would admit none but him selfe to have the scorching and carbonadoing of it, and he kissed his hands thrice, and made as many humblessos before he woulde finger it; and, such obeysances performed, he drest it as he was enjoyned, kneeling on his knes, and mumbling twenty Ave Maryes to hymselfe, in the sacrifizing of it on the coales, that his diligent service in the broyling and combustion of it, both to his kingship and to his fatherhood might not seeme unmeritorious."[287]
However careful Thomas Nash had been to act according to the views attributed to Dr. Andrew Borde concerning the cultivation of mirth as a preservative of health, he reached what this authority calls "the mirth of heaven," with much more rapidity than might have been expected. His mirth diet was obviously adulterated and mingled with wrath and sorrow. He had been born in 1567, and we read about him in a comedy performed at Cambridge in 1601, these verses which are friendly if not very poetical:
"tom nash his ghost."
"Let all his faultes sleepe with his mournfull chest,
And there for ever with his ashes rest,
His style was wittie, though it had some gall,
Some things he might have mended, so may all,
Yet this I say, that for a mother witt,
Few men have ever seen the like of it."[288]
The manner in which his friend Dekker represents him, shortly after, reaching the Elysian fields, leaves little doubt that his life was shortened not only by his angry passions, but by sheer want: "Marlow, Greene and Peele had got under the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash, that was but newly come to their colledge, still haunted with the sharpe and satyricall spirit that followed him heere upon earthe: for Nash inveyed bitterly, as he had wont to do against dryfisted patrons, accusing them of his untimely death, because if they had given his Muse that cherishment which she most worthily deserved, hee had fed to his dying day on fat capons, burnt sack and sugar, and not so desperately have venturde his life and shortned his dayes by keeping company with pickle herrings."[289]
III.
Some of Shakespeare's contemporaries attempted to give their readers "the like" of Nash's wit, and tried their hand either at the picaresque novel or at the reproduction of scenes taken from ordinary life, of which Greene also had left some examples. The comic school was far from equalling the fecundity of its romantic rival; it existed however, and though absolutely forgotten now, it helped to keep up and improve the natural gift of observation which belonged to the English race.
One of the most extraordinary ventures ever attempted in the picaresque style was made by Henry Chettle, another member of the group to which Greene, Nash, and the others belonged. He was, like Nash himself, a personal friend of Greene, and published after his death his "Groats-worth of wit," 1592, for which, as we have seen, he had to offer in his next pamphlet explanations and apologies, among others, to Shakespeare. Chettle seems to have followed the literary career usual in his time; he composed many dramas alone[290] or in collaboration; he was perpetually borrowing money from the notorious Henslowe, and he was occasionally lodged in Her Majesty's prisons. In 1595 he published his "Piers Plainnes seaven yeres prentiship,"[291] in which we find, mingled together, Sidney's Arcady, Greene's romantic heroes, and the customary incidents of picaresque novels. The scene is laid in Tempe; there are Menalcas and Corydons; there are sheep who are poetically invited by their keeper to eat their grass:
"Sport on faire flocke at pleasure
Nip Vestaes flouring treasure."