We have already seen with what malignity Harvey trampled upon the corpse of Greene, and he received this apology of Nash in a corresponding spirit; for instead of accepting it, in his “New Letter of Notable Contents,” 1593, he rejects it with scorn:  “Riotous vanity (he replies) was wont to root so deeply that it could hardly be unrooted; and where reckless impudency taketh possession, it useth not very hastily to be dispossessed.  What say you to a spring of rankest villainy in February, and a harvest of ripest divinity in May?  But what should we hereafter talk any more of paradoxes or impossibilities, when he that penned the most desperate and abominable pamphlet of ‘Strange News,’ and disgorged his stomach of as poisonous rancour as ever was vomited in print, within few months is won, or charmed, or enchanted, (or what metamorphosis should I term it?) to astonish carnal minds with spiritual meditations,” &c.  Such a reception of well-intended and eloquently-written amends was enough to make Nash repent even his repentance, as far as Gabriel Harvey was concerned.[15]

Of the popularity of Nash as a writer some notion may be formed from a fact he himself mentions in his “Have with you to Saffron Walden,” that between 1592, when his “Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil” was first printed, and 1596 it “passed through the pikes of at least six impressions.”  How long his reputation as a satirist survived him may be judged from the fact that in 1640 Taylor the Water Poet published a tract, which had for its second title “Tom Nash, his Ghost (the old Martin queller), newly rouz’d:”  and in Mercurius Anti-pragmaticus, from Oct. 12 to Oct. 19, 1647, is the following passage:  “Perhaps you will be angry now, and when you steal forth disguised, in your next intelligence thunder forth threatenings against me, and be as satirical in your language as ever was your predecessor Nash, who compiled a learned treatise in the praise of a red herring.”

Only two plays in which Nash had any concern have come down to us:  his “Isle of Dogs,” before noticed, was probably never printed, or at all events it is not now known to exist.  He wrote alone—­

(1.) A pleasant Comedy called “Summer’s Last Will and Testament.” 1600. 4to.

In conjunction with Marlowe he produced—­

(2.) “The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage,” played by the children of her Majesty’s chapel. 1594. 4to.

Phillips, in his “Theatrum Poetarum,” also assigned to Nash, “See me, and see me not,” a comedy, which may be a different play, and not, as has been generally supposed, “Hans Beer Pot;” because, the name of the author, Dawbridgecourt Belchier, being subscribed to the dedication, such a mistake could not easily be made.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.