NASH, Thomas, the most brilliant pamphleteer of the Elizabethan age, was born about 1564, at Lowestoft in Suf-
Nashua. folk. He became a student of St John's College, Cambridge, and in 1584 took the degree of B.A. With this honour, however, his university career closed. His satirical faculty began to try its edge upon the college authorities; and he was in consequence expelled. The next few years seem to have been spent in visiting the Continent, and moving about without any settled employment. At length, in 1589, he took up his abode in London as a literary adventurer. His pugnacious propensity hurried him at once into the contest with the Puritans. He attacked them with their own favourite weapons of ridicule and invective, and proved more than a match for them. Pap with a Hatchet, An Almond for a Parrot, and A Countercuffe to Martin Junior, following each other in rapid succession, overwhelmed his opponents with a shower of humorous sallies and cutting jibes. Such a clever satirist could scarcely fail to attract notice. Accordingly he soon became a reigning wit at supper-tables, and a choice boon companion among literary men of pleasure. He was also employed in 1590 to assist Kit Marlowe in composing The Tragedy of Dido; and in 1592 a comedy of his, entitled Summer's Last Will and Testament, was played before Queen Elizabeth. But the wit and the fancy that were so active and lively amid the din of controversy were dull and spiritless in the calm region of the drama. This failure in writing for the stage cut off Nash from almost the only source from which the professional authors of that day derived a tolerable pittance. It is no wonder, then, that we find him in 1592 in the midst of bare poverty, writing Pierce Penilesse, his Supplication to the Divell; and, with the graphic strokes of one who was representing a stern reality, describing himself as "sitting up late and rising early, contending with the cold, and conversing with scarcity," cursing the day of his birth, and scarcely restraining himself from ending his misery with his own hand. His Christes Tears over Jerusalem, published in 1593, is written in the same strain. But this melancholy was soon shaken off, when about this time he got once more into the congenial region of satire, and began to attack Dr Gabriel Harvey. That worthy individual, the friend of Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney, was then the common butt of some of the most mischievous wits about town. But "that restless buffoon Tom Nash," as old Anthony Wood calls him, used him worst of all. He twisted the many foibles of the pedantic doctor into the most ludicrous and grotesque shapes, and exposed them to ridicule. He raked up every family scandal, and cast it in his teeth. He even sketched the appearance of the lank and shrivelled old scholar with all the vivid fidelity of a portrait-painter, and held it up before the original to make him mad. In vain the learned doctor most manfully wielded his stately invective and cynical humour. These cumbrous weapons were no guard against the keen and light shafts that came pouring in upon him. The most pungent of Nash's pamphlets in this memorable contest were, Strange Newes of the Intercepting certaine Letters and a Convoy of Verses, 1592, and Have with You to Saffron Walden, 1596. At length, in 1597, the battle waxed so hot that the Archbishop of Canterbury interfered, and issued an order that all the books of both the combatants should be seized. In the same year Nash was again employed to write for the stage, and, conscious probably that the faculty of ridicule was the only power of his that could achieve success, he produced a satirical play called The Isle of Dogs. The lash, however, had been plied too vigorously. Scarcely had the drama been performed, when the author was lodged in the Fleet prison. He seems to have lain there for several days. This play is his last work on record. His death took place in 1600 or 1601. (See Israel's Calamities of Authors; and Collier's History of English Dramatic Poetry.)