"Pluck up thine heart, and drive from thence both fear and care away:
To think on this may pleasure be, perhaps, another day."
—Durato, et temet rebus servato secundis. (fol. 286.)
This was in part verified in the next year, for when Nash published his "Lenten Stuff," he referred with apparent satisfaction to his past troubles in consequence of his "Isle of Dogs."[9]
So much has been said, especially by Mr D'Israeli in his "Quarrels of Authors," on the subject of this dispute between Nash and Harvey, that it is unnecessary to add anything, excepting that it was carried to such a length, and the pamphlets contained so much scurrility, that it was ordered from authority in 1599 that all the tracts on both sides should be seized and suppressed.[10]
As with Greene, so with Nash, an opinion on his moral conduct and general deportment has been too readily formed from the assertions of his opponents; and because Gabriel Harvey, to answer a particular purpose, states, "You may be in one prison to-day and in another to-morrow," it has been taken for granted, that "after his arrival in London, he was often confined in different jails." No doubt, he and his companions Greene, Marlowe, and Peele, led very disorderly lives, and it is singular that all four died prematurely, the oldest of them probably not being forty years of age. It is certain that Nash was not living at the time when the "Return from Parnassus" was produced, which, though not printed until 1606, was written before the end of the reign of Elizabeth: his ashes are there spoken of as at rest, but the mention of him as dead, nearest to the probable date of that event, is to be found in [Fitzgeoffrey's "Affaniae," 1601, where an epitaph upon him is printed. His name also occurs in] an anonymous poem, under the title of "The Ant and the Nightingale, or Father Hubbard's Tales," 1604, where the following stanza is met with—
"Or if in bitterness thou rail like Nash:
Forgive me, honest soul, that term thy phrase
Railing; for in thy works thou wert not rash,
Nor didst affect in youth thy private praise.
Thou hadst a strife with that Tergemini;[11]
Thou hurt'dst them not till they had injured thee."[12]
The author of a MS. epitaph, in "Bibl. Sloan," Pl. XXI. A. was not so squeamish in the language he employed—
"Here lies Tom Nash, that notable railer,
That in his life ne'er paid shoemaker nor tailor."
The following from Thomas Freeman's Epigrams, 1614, is not out of its place—