It would appear from the Introduction to the following tract that Nash had visited Italy. Mr. Collier, in his Introduction to Nash’s Pierce Penniless [Shakspeare Soc. 1842], says, “We find him [Nash] in London in 1587, in which year he wrote a very amusing and clever introductory epistle to a tract by the celebrated Robert Greene, called ‘Menaphon,’ afterwards better known by the name of ‘Greene’s Arcadia,’ the title it bore in the later impressions. This seems to have been Nash’s earliest appearance in the character of an author” [p. x. xi.], then adding in a note, “We take the date of ‘Greene’s Menaphon,’ 1587, from the edition of that author’s ‘Dramatic Works,’ by the Rev. A. Dyce.” Mr. Collier apparently had forgotten that he had himself stated some years before the fact of the Arcadia having been printed in 1587, “because in Greene’s Euphues, his Censure to Philautus, of the same date, it is mentioned as already in print.” [Hist. English Dramatic Poetry, vol. iii. p. 150.]
Whatever may be the date of the first edition of Greene’s Menaphon, we have here only to do with Nash’s Preface to that work, and, though Sir E. Brydges, in his reprint of it in 1814, mentions 1587, in which he is followed by the Rev. A. Dyce in 1831, [Greene’s Works, II. c. iii], by Mr. Collier above, in the same year, and again in 1842, all agreeing to fix the date of Nash’s Preface in 1587; yet there is, if I mistake not, internal evidence that it could not have been written before the date of the first known edition, which is in 1589.
Of the accuracy of the extraordinary facts which Nash relates in the Introduction to the Almond for a Parrot [pp. 5, 6], I had expected to find confirmation in some book of travels of the time, but in this have not succeeded.
Nash, in his Preface to Menaphon, addressed “To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities,” evidently referring to the Puritans, mentions, “the most poisonous Pasquils any dirty-mouthed Martin or Momus ever composed;” of their “spitting ergo in the mouth of every one they meet;” and, unless I am mistaken, the following refers to Penry: “But when the irregular idiot, that was up to the ears in divinity before ever he met with probabile in the university, shall leave pro et contra before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come to correct commonweals that never heard of the name of magistrate before he came to Cambridge, it is no marvel if every alehouse vaunt the table of the world turned upside down, since the child beateth his father, and the ass whippeth his master.” [Reprint of Menaphon, in Archaica, Pref. xiii., 4to, 1814.] The allusions in the whole sentence can only be explained by referring them to Martin Mar-Prelate’s “Epistle,” “Epitome,” &c., which were printed in 1588.
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?”
This passage appears to refer to a fact which Martin Mar-Prelate states in his Epistle to the Terrible Priests. [Reprint, p. 4.] “The last lent [he is writing in 1588] there came a commaundement from his grace into Paules Church Yard, that no Byble should be bounde without the Apocripha.” Strype, in his Life of Archbishop Whitgift, admits the order, and takes some pains to justify the Archbishop in issuing it. [See Strype’s Whitgift, i. 590.—Cooper’s Admonition, 1589.]
The foregoing inferences, however, are confirmed by the fact that there is an allusion in this Preface to a work which did not appear until 1589. Nash, in giving the roll of English Worthies, introduces the following passage: “I will not say but we had a Haddon, whose pen would have challenged the laurel from Homer; together with Car, that came as near him as Virgil to Theocritus. But Thomas Newton, with his Leiland, and Gabriel Harvey, with two or three other, is almost all the store that is left us at this hour.” [Pref. to Menaphon, xviii.]
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.
I should not have taken the trouble to investigate the contents of this Preface of Nash, “the firstlings of my folly,” as he calls it himself [p. xxi], with such minuteness, but that it establishes beyond question the fact that Nash commenced his literary career in 1589, and not, as is generally supposed, in 1587.